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2017Don’t Ignore the Obvious
The 1950s was a good time for America. We had won the big war. The baby boom was in full swing. America liked Ike. We were feeling our collective oats. But not everything was as it seemed. In fact, we didn’t know that several decades later we’d look back on the 1950s as the Happy Days era. In reality, there was a lot of tension…
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2017Conflict Resolution Specialists: 4 Tricks of the Trade
For anyone who aspires to succeed in a field, it’s always best to study what other successful people are already doing. Through the years I’ve dealt with conflict resolution on various levels. Here are 4 tricks the greats all use: 1. They listen. Effective conflict resolvers are good listeners. They make it a point to hear what is being said. Much of the conflict I…
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2017Fast-Forward Leaders Learn to Thrive On Change
As a professional speaker, I’m a huge fan of other professional speakers. When one of my peers gets a standing O…I find myself enjoying a standing O vicariously. When a fellow speaker presents the audience with an “Aha” moment…my heart is smiling. And when I see another speaker in an embarrassing moment…I am blushing, too. Let me tell you about one of those blushing moments….
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2017Crabs Hate Succeeders
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” He was right. Tocqueville understood one of the most fundamental of all leadership concepts…one will never be a great leader until she has the courage to step away from the herd when the herd is not performing well. And, on that point, it’s rare…
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2017Here’s One Thing That Will Make You Unforgettable and Highly Valued
To paraphrase the late, great Coach Bear Bryant, “The trouble with the road to success is that it’s filled with too many parking places!” We don’t usually have difficulties and failures in our lives because we simply don’t know what we ought to do. We don’t live defeated lives because we don’t promise ourselves that we’ll do better. Instead, most of our self-disappointment comes because…
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2016The problem with the ordinary is that it is, well, so ordinary.
It’s hard to see the big picture while living in a world filled with small thinking people. We tend to start projects with high goals, but somehow drift into the weeds of life, making it difficult to remember what’s most important. Take the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright who made their first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. On…
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2016How to Kill Conflict…“Nip It In the Bud!”
To quote the great 20th-century philosopher, Mayberry’s Deputy Barney Fife, one of the best ways to avoid consequences is to do the right thing in the first place and simply, “Nip it in the bud!” Succinctly put, conflict often happens because people tend to be gutless. I’ve heard it said, “If you want to have less conflict, have more of it.” I think that’s profound….
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2016Want to Resolve a Conflict? Here are 4 Things Not to Do.
The only thing worse than a conflict is an even worse conflict. Here are four ideas from my bestseller, ReTooled & ReFueled, which you might find helpful. Picking the wrong time and place. Little good is accomplished when we are tired, stressed, ill, or focused on too many other issues. Sometimes the best thing to do is schedule an exact time for discussing a conflict….
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2016Remember: There’s Always Only One Best Way to Do Anything
Success is not determined by our hardware — it is usually determined by the software that we’re running. Most people have perfectly capable hardware…normal intelligence and decent health. The difference between winners and losers is in the software they run. By software, I’m referring to the things we tell ourselves, the way we choose to look at the world around us, our internal motivation, and…
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2016Wisdom of the Ages…for the Nasty Now & Now
“There is nothing new under the sun.” If he had never made another statement, this comment would have proven Solomon’s wisdom. Each generation goes to great lengths to convince itself that their generation is the worst and most depraved one yet. But the fact is human nature is pretty predictable. Conflict among humans has been around as long as there have been humans. In frontier…