Hannah was a young person volunteering at a community dinner. She sure seemed like she didn’t want to be there. She was listening to her iPod and had earbuds in both ears as she served peas to the public. She was surrounded by about twenty adult volunteers.
At one point, Harold, one of the adult volunteers, finally said something. He scowled, and
As promised, this week’s blog is inspired by Veteran’s Day last week. These are two stories of veterans that I told at a local Memorial Day service this year. What’s the lesson? There may be more than one, but let’s lift humility out of this. No war hero brags; in fact, they share the credit … Read more
When I was young teacher, I often found myself in the middle of student disputes. My response was always something along the lines of, “You need to learn how to solve your own problems.” I was thinking I was doing them a service by empowering them grow up and solve problems on their own. In … Read more
I once had two coworkers, Mark and Sally. In DiSC-speak, Sally was a high I, and used many many many exclamation marks in her e-mails. I am not exaggerating when I say that one of Sally’s e-mails could consist of three sentences and 13 exclamation marks. Mark, on the other hand, was a high D. … Read more
Part two of two (read part one here) My daily list fits into the narrow confines of the column on the left hand side of each day’s page in my planner. But – sometimes life becomes so hectic, and the to-do list gets so long, that it’s time to switch methods. If you are working … Read more
If we are effective, we are probably quite busy. Many of us have tried different ways to stay organized, including electronic gadgets, pen and paper planners, whiteboards, etc. I’d like to share two ways that have worked for me. I’m sharing them here, because others who have adopted them have found quite useful. Both of … Read more
When I read the (rightly) popular Good to Great, I found myself agreeing with nearly everything in principle, but thought that some concepts were a little too idealistic for a small- to mid-sized organization. Massive businesses, like his examples, have more luxury to move people around, for example.
That’s why I had a touch of a problem with
One problem with email is that it is efficient for the writer, but usually ineffective for the reader. One way to minimize this mismatch is to
If you are a leader, it is your job to keep your people motivated, and stave off any demoralization.
But what if YOU lose your mojo due to some cranky folks in your organization? It’s so easy to be derailed by those one or two “downers” who complain, or scowl, or cross their arms at you all the time.
“Hey, Tom, if you could get some of those account reviews done by Thursday, that’d be great.” Sometimes to sound “nice”, we make requests like the one above. It’s casual (good), general (bad), with a deadline (good), but without a specific request (bad) or a way to measure (very bad). The result can descend into … Read more