It’s a fact of life; if you follow the crowd, you’ll never be highly successful.  On the other hand, the minute you step away from the crowd, you invite criticism–people judge you and make disparaging remarks about your ideas and dreams which can be hurtful.  So, how do you deal with criticism?  You focus on…

Having fun at work suffers from an image problem; hence it gets no respect.  It has come to imply that you’re goofing off or messing around instead of attending to the business at hand.  Well, that’s simply not true.  Fun acts functions as a turbocharger in that it releases energy in people that they didn’t even know they had.  As…

My wife has conducted a fair number of job interviews in recent years.  One of the questions she always asks is: “What kind of supervisor do you prefer?”  Never once has anyone said, “I’d love to be micromanaged.”  Or, “I love it when my boss points out my mistakes and ignores what I do well.” …

During these difficult economic times, we have stressors in the form of bad news coming at us from many directions.  As a result, people are likely to show up for work tense and on edge; ready to vent their frustration at the slightest provocation.  This can make for a very unpleasant work environment which amplifies…

It’s a fact of life, when you’re nice to people, they’re nice back–it’s called The Law of Reciprocity.  And, the more people you’re nice to, the more people you have out there who are looking for an opportunity to be nice to you.  For example, how many times have you heard someone say something like:…

USA Today recently ran a review of a new book written by Dr. Stuart Brown, a 76 year old psychiatrist, titled, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul.  According to Dr. Brown, play is extremely important during periods of prolonged stress like now when we’re not sure when this…

All of us have dreams, but not everyone’s dream comes true.  The question is, why?  The song, When You Wish Upon a Star provides two important insights necessary to answer this question.  First, as the song says, “When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.”  Having your heart in your dream…

The road to achieving your dream is usually long and difficult with numerous obsatcles and setbacks along the way.  What can make the journey even more difficult is that there are few, if any, guide posts along the way to tell you if you’re making any progress.  There will be times when it will be…

Many people tend to use the terms management and leadership as if they’re interchangeable.  Seth Godin, in his latest book, Tribes, points out a very important distinction between the two terms.  Leaders have fans–excited followers–because leaders show a generous concern for the welfare of the people who follow them.  Managers, on the other hand have employees–unexcited non-followers–because their…

It’s a long held belief that the immediate boss has the most influence over how much discretionary effort an employee is willing to apply toward his or her job.  Towers Perrin, in their Global Workforce Study which included nearly 90,000 workers from 18 countries, found this not to be true.  The study found that while…