The Key to Having Both Authority and Power
A while back, a young family with a 7 year old boy moved into the neighborhood. The child was entering second grade, and the mother, mentioned to his teacher that he was shy and nervous about making new friends. In class, the teacher noticed that too. Thinking she was doing a good thing, she told […]
Customers Don’t Want to Be Sold
Selling isn’t what it used to be. Buying isn’t either. The internet and social media have changed what we know, how much we know and how we want to be spoken to. But more than that. It’s changed the way we feel about the whole buying process. We can find information about anything now, and […]
What Matters to Your Employees?
Being the boss doesn’t make us leaders. To be leaders, we need followers, not people who have learned to follow because they have to in order to collect a paycheck. That’s meaningless. So what’s missing? The credibility factor. We need to be believed, and we need to demonstrate that we deserve to be trusted. In […]
Accentuate the Positive
How questions are asked directly impacts behavior be it positive or negative. Knowing this in the workplace environment can have a profound impact. In fact, the responses totally reflect the way people react in all situations – not just at the office – but how it’s played out in a work environment – can contribute to […]
What You Can Learn in 30 Seconds or Less
Do you lead with your heart or with your head? Which is better? Let’s find out. With your forefinger, draw a capital E on your forehead. Did you draw it so that you can ‘read’ the ‘E,’ or so whoever would be facing you could read it? A study performed at Northwestern University a while […]
The Fine Art of Self-Sabotage and What You Can Do About It
They say that attitude is everything, but even in business, we’ve seen that sometimes even the best and the brightest demonstrate behaviors that undermine their success. Why do people do that? I mean, make up excuses about why they can’t do something, when doing it may be just what they need to propel themselves and their […]
What Does it Take to Become a True Leader? Lessons from MLK
How do you want to be remembered? I ask because as we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King today, like many other people I find myself thinking of his “I Have a Dream” speech and remember when I first heard it on an old, rabbit-eared television 51 years ago. As a teenager, living in […]
Risking Failure to Succeed
We may strive to be perfect, but sometimes we fail. We can set our goals, and plan for success but fall short or fail miserably. We don’t intend to fail. We do everything we can not to go there, but sometimes it happens. In fact, it may happen many times. What do we do about […]
The Lost Market and What You Have to Gain
Everyone claims their customer service is excellent; yet we’ve all heard horror stories about how poor customer service ruins sales and loses customers. Business owners hear that too, but many will simply discount it, thinking it doesn’t apply to them. Others may just chalk off one lost sale as a drop in the bucket. But it does count, […]
Where Do You Want To Be A Year From Now?
Napoleon Hill made an apt analogy when he said ‘A goal is a dream with a deadline.’ Quite true, isn’t it? After all, yearend 2014 is almost a year away and it’s easy for the day to day to take precedence, and override the bigger picture off in the distance. After all, we have plenty […]