My dog, Happy—a gentle, twelve-year-old golden retriever—and I recently went for a walk in a massive, wooded park. Because it was very early in the morning and no one else was around, I let her run off leash. Things were peaceful until Happy trotted a short distance ahead of me up a hill, rounded a
Recently, a friend—someone whose personality is much more direct and skeptical than mine—told me that a project I created was wrong and wouldn’t work. Because of his abrupt, borderline-rude delivery, I immediately shut down and distanced myself from him. My resentment had nothing to do with whether he was right. It was entirely about the
Several years ago, my marriage counselor shared a piece of wisdom with me that fundamentally shifted how I view communication: Defensiveness is the weakest posture in an interaction. I saw this play out recently during a presentation at a city council meeting. A consultant was pitching a proposal, and the mayor questioned the data regarding
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.
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 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
On January 18, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket with four crew members to the International Space Station. It’s another successful mission for SpaceX. Behind its explosive growth, of course, is the sometimes volatile CEO Elon Musk whose tirades are well documented in Walter Isaacson’s biography and elsewhere. Isaacson also describes the numerous people who
T.S. Eliot wrote what is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century, “The Waste Land.” Even so, Eliot himself attributed much of its success to the support of his editor, Ezra Pound. Pound never held back when confronting Eliot with feedback on his writing, and Eliot appreciated that. In
A colleague recently made an important decision that affected me without asking for my input. It wasn’t the first time this happened and probably won’t be the last. It seems to be a pattern, to make decisions without involving others when the decisions impact others in meaningful ways. The question I’m wrestling with is: Should
In any leadership role, whether you’re running a family, a team, or an organization — or even in running your own life — there are three inevitables you’ll encounter: Difficult people Stressful events Hard choices As you face each of these, you have a choice: You can either respond or you can react. Responding is
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