Make me feel important! Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, said many times, “Everyone has an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important!’” What Mary Kay meant was that people have a very strong need to have their worth validated on a regular basis. She…
Competition Competitive behavior–making yourself look good at the expense of those around you–is poor preparation if you expect to move up in an organization. While stealing another person’s ideas or taking credit for someone else’s accomplishments may seem to move you along more quickly at the lowest levels of an organization, it won’t take you very…
Is Your Ego Showing? Many people attempt to gain influence by calling attention to themselves–things they’ve accomplished, places they’ve been, things they own, people they know and so forth. While such behavior comes quite naturally to most of us, it does little to improve your standing with those around you because most people tend to…
Look At My Staff Cala is a chic, high-end Mexican Restaurant located in downtown San Francisco that’s drawing rave reviews from food critics and patrons alike. While Cala has generated an amazing amount of buzz since it opened in 2015, what makes its story even more compelling is that 40 percent of its staff is…
Acts of Kindness 8/21/2017 My daughter’s friend made the following post on Facebook. The message is so good and so timely, I felt compelled to share it with you. “When I became a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines, I thought I’d be dealing with nothing but jerks, unruly passengers and so forth, but I soon…
I was reading the Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine during a recent flight from Chicago to Phoenix when a “praising letter” from a Southwest passenger caught my attention. The letter, from Delores Sutton who was traveling in a wheel chair, said such good things about Southwest Airlines that I wanted to share it with you. It…
Living The Dream On a recent Monday evening, my wife was working late and I was too tired to cook. So, I went to a broiler and tap near my home for my favorite sliders. Since I was alone, I sat at the bar and placed my order with the bartender whose name was Rachel.…
As the holiday shopping season ramps up, malls and stores become more and more crowded which greatly increases the stress levels of many shoppers. Some of these up tight shoppers vent their increased stress at retail clerks by being rude, mean and nasty toward them. This, in turn, makes their job incredibly difficult and thankless…
By slgckgc on Flickr (Original version)UCinternational (Crop) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons A few nights ago, Toledo Mud Hen’s player Mike Hessman set a minor league baseball record by hitting his 434th minor league homerun—a grand slam. The record had stood for 80 years! This is his 20th year of professional baseball and nearly…
An article by Christopher Elliott titled, “Good behavior is your most valuable travel asset,” appeared in a recent issue of USA Today. The gist of the article was that polite travelers who demonstrate kind behavior to travel employees are treated better while those who demonstrate rude behavior are treated worse and, in some cases, much…