It was a high-stakes meeting. Others had given their opinions, and I decided I should speak up, too. So I did. As I was speaking, though, I began to have the sense that I wasn’t saying exactly what I wanted to say. I tried to convey confidence through a strong voice and gestures, but I’m
It’s not easy to lead or influence when you’re struggling to cope with the stress or frustrations of the moment or with anxieties about what might happen in the future. This is why self-regulation is such an important quality for leaders. According to Verywell Mind, self-regulation is the ability to act in a way that
My son is a competitive tennis player and often wins matches because of his speed and strong backhand shots. The trouble is, opponents now do their best to hit to his forehand, to exploit his relative weakness. Recently, I spoke with his tennis coach about the need to improve his forehand shots. The coach reassured
After a year of doing all meetings virtually, I have discovered many essentials to making virtual meetings more productive and engaging. Beyond my own meetings, I’ve trained hundreds of leaders in the past year on how to reduce boredom, multi-tasking and burnout in virtual meetings. Of course, some virtual meeting fatigue and frustration is inevitable.
The brain’s natural response to a perceived threat is fight, flight, or freeze. We perceive threats daily from people we live and work with—slights, rude remarks, inconsiderate actions, failure to be appreciated. Enter the human brain’s amygdala response: When the threat is perceived, we conclude that the other person, at the moment, is a “foe”
A memory from the 11th grade still stands out to me today. I’m sitting at my bedroom desk, wringing my hands and finding every possible distraction from the assignment in front of me: Write an essay explaining who you are. What does that mean? Where would I begin to explain who I am? And why
One of my favorite “hacks” is re-typing highlighted portions of non-fiction I’ve read. The process of highlighting once then re-reading and re-typing later tends to lock concepts into memory for later retrieval when it’s most useful. Below are my re-typed notes from David Epstein’s recent book Range, which I found to be extremely interesting and
Is becoming a better listener the solution to world and personal peace? Might it be the most important driving factor in your career and personal success? Sure, we have to account for things that are out of our control. But for what we can control in life, what if better listening was the key to
I am advising a leader right now who has high expectations of others. Someone on her team can’t seem to meet those expectations on a project, and there isn’t much flexibility to upskill, move, or replace them. It is creating tension. The leader has three choices in the face of this tension: absorb it, avoid
The following guest post comes from my friend and client Sean Wenham, Vice President at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management. I hope you find it to be as insightful as I did… Welcome to my third edition newsletter based on a recent Dale Carnegie program I took, presented by Matt Norman. If your current profession,
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