Last week a client who leads HR for her company said to me, “I did a hundred things today. Why didn’t anything happen?! I got insurance cards out, reset logins, answered emails, sat through meetings…but I don’t think I drove any meaningful progress.” Ah, the tyranny of the urgent, the whirlwind of demands. It’s a
Browsing tag: connection
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
Nat King Cole will remind us this month to be joyful, though life can be busy and hard, and our news feed reminds us of all that’s wrong in the world. This is why I love re-watching It’s a Wonderful Life each year. I need yet another voice to break through the cynicism, hurry and
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
Recently I worked with a group of struggling managers who have been under pressure to boost results within their teams. These managers care about their work, and they have several opportunities to influence the people they lead — meetings, leading by example, email/text correspondence. But none of these opportunities has the focus and depth of a
Last week I sat in an audience judging seven new business pitches from local entrepreneurs. With some combination of anxiety and excitement, each entrepreneur made their case in less than five minutes, hoping to get the audience to understand and buy in to a concept they’ve spent substantial time developing. Which entrepreneur got the most
One summer while away at college, my roommate and I rode our bikes 10 miles through the city of Boston to the ocean. We randomly arrived to see streams of elegantly dressed people moving toward a large pavilion. “What’s happening?” we asked. “John Denver concert!” Wow, we thought. This looked incredible. To see John Denver
I didn’t use ChatGPT to write this article, unlike my last one. However, I’ve been thinking about ChatGPT “prompt engineers” who make close to $350,000 without any previous professional experience. Essentially, a prompt engineer asks ChatGPT really good questions in order to get really good responses. Call them AI Whisperers. It makes me wonder, do
What I’m hearing you say is that you would like to win more deals and have greater impact this year. Is that right? Regularly recapping what you’ve heard someone (or a group) say shows that you’re listening and ensures you’ve accurately understood. It can also help people make more progress toward decisions as they agree
In my last post I considered how predictable emotional regulation contributes to trust and influence, especially under stress. Here we’ll look at how effective interpersonal interpretation, especially under stress, further contributes to trust and influence. Let’s face it, even the smartest humans aren’t capable of processing all the data around them at any given time.