When I went through marriage counseling, one of the biggest realizations I had was this: Criticism that contradicts my idealized self-image makes me very defensive. It’s sometimes referred to as an identity quake: a rocked self-image that can be disorienting and triggering. For example, part of my self-image is that I’m highly focused on others.
I work with a large company that recently decided to stop sending clients the annual survey they had been sending out for years. While the “home office” saw it as a way to reduce administrative effort, the decision caused an uproar among field employees, who generate hundreds of meetings from the survey results each year.
Did you know that the word “but” is an acronym for “before the ultimate truth”? Ok, it’s not really…but that’s what it signals: What’s to follow is truer. When you use the word “but,” it tends to create unnecessary friction in an exchange. In my last post, I suggested seven words that lead to greater
I remember years ago leaving a meeting with several high-level leaders and saying to one of them privately: You really did a good job getting everyone to understand and buy in to that complex topic. I was in a technical role at the time, and his response shocked me: The key in these meetings, he
I loved my first job out of college developing and integrating corporate technology systems. Many days were spent either alone or with teams enabling business processes and getting systems to “talk to each other.” We learned to think in conditional (if-then) statements and Boolean logic (it’s this AND that, OR that NOT that). In other
Last week the Indiana Pacers were trailing the New York Knicks by 14 points with less than three minutes remaining in Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals. Then they did something no team that is losing by so many points with so little time remaining has done since the NBA started tracking play-by-play
One of the highlights of my week is shopping at Costco. Stick with me. Despite its size and corporate structure, it maintains high employee retention. This makes the retail experience feel more like visiting a locally owned market where you see the same people working month after month for years. I’ve developed some long-term friendships
A group of clients and I were casually standing around talking as I impulsively told another funny story. It may have been the third story I’d told them in the time that we’d been talking. They laughed…and then I realized that I was the only one telling stories. I chided myself: You shouldn’t try so
I’ve been consuming lots of podcast content over the past year. The show that’s captivated me the most is called What It’s Like to Be…with Dan Heath. It’s fun and thought-provoking, but what I find most fascinating is Dan Heath’s self-restraint. His understated, concise questions get his guests to say the most unguarded and interesting
Monks practice their faith with self-denial and dedicated simplicity. The original Christian monks lived in the Egyptian desert. One day, Abbot Macarius said to his fellow monks, “Brethren, flee.” Confused, one of the monks asked, “How can we fly further than this, seeing we are here in the desert?” Macarius placed his finger to his
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE