You can treat everyone well. But you can’t invest equal time in every relationship. The reality is that time and energy are limited. And that can lead you to have surface relationships with everyone. But your limits can also become the impetus for you to get really clear about who and what you’ll focus on.
I’ll never forget feeling like an utter failure in my second real job. Since I had excelled in technology and process in my first real job, I thought this new role — which involved managing the development of a customer-facing website — would play to my strengths. But the job turned out to be much
Viewing someone as a human doing rather than a human being is a slippery slope, and never has that been more evident than in the headlines lately. Human Doings vs Human Beings One way to understand how this “human doing” view arises is to think of it this way: People fulfill psychological and material needs
How often do you make or receive personal introductions? Considering the value that’s created through personal networks, I wonder why people don’t do it more often. For example, this week I received an email from a new client we’d landed because of a personal introduction. “Thank you!” said the subject line, expressing very clearly the
Psychologists say that anger is a “secondary” emotion. It safeguards you from dealing with harder emotions, like shame, sadness, or fear. It also generates a powerful, self-soothing neurochemical. And it creates a heightened sense of control. As the anger expert Dr. Leon Seltzer says, “If anger helps you feel in control, no wonder you can’t
After my post last week about a difficult conversation I’d had with a colleague, several people reached out to me to share their own experiences. They told me things like: We have tense dynamics like that in our partner group. I’m struggling to have a hard conversation about performance with an employee. I’ve been there.
The same woman has been cutting my hair for the past 20 years. Over the course of that time, I’ve come to know her as an emotionally resilient single mother. So I was surprised when she told me that she recently left a work-related meeting “feeling empty inside.” It also piqued my interest, because I
The other day, my son burst through the door from a baseball game. Sweaty and breathing hard, he went straight for food. He flung open the cupboard, swiveled his arms around with the food, and knocked my full glass of water onto the floor. The glass (one of my favorites) shattered, and water splashed everywhere.
Collaboration can make 1 + 1 = 3. But in order to reach that shared gain, there will be trade-offs. Whether it’s at work, at home or in the community, collaboration can sometimes feel like a painful tug-of-war between your needs and the needs of others. Consider the case of John. John is a member
During a recruiting visit to Ohio State University, a young athlete met with John Cooper, head football coach at the time. Coach Cooper told this young athlete that he was a great player and that he wanted him to play for Ohio State. A week later, the young athlete saw Cooper in an airport. Cooper
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