I did some follow-up with participants from a workshop I conducted last week with one of my global clients. I found a consistent message from each of them as to their takeaway from the session. While they appreciated the content material I shared with them, the best part of the program was that I built in plenty of time for them to talk and listen to each other. My belief about these sessions is that the wisdom is in the...

I met with a client at 7:30 AM last week and he told me he likes to get going early in the morning. While there are several reasons, his primary one is that he doesn’t have time to watch the news, which is always a downer. I liked his thinking until we started discussing his work in sales and he began explaining to me that he couldn’t hit his sales numbers because of (fill in the blank), “software not working...

How would you like to work 4 days but get paid for 5? I’d like it and so do the employees at Perpetual Guardian Trust Company in New Zealand. A research project at this financial firm undertook to determine how productive employees were over a 4-day workweek when they were paid for 5 days. The research showed and company founder Andrew Barnes agreed that his employees got done in 4 days what was previously accomplished in 5. In addition, employee...

We are inundated with news 24/7. Regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on, national and local issues juice our brain into ruminating, worrying, and contemplating the future of civilization. Its been building for 30 years since Ted Turner started the all day news cycle with CNN and has now progressed to where we can watch TV shows, listen to news radio, and carry internet podcasts in our pocket. All this energy driven to our issues rile us...

I facilitated a leadership development program last week where participants were asked to take a company based assessment of their leadership skills. The assessment identified a number of strengths but for most of the folks, the results also came back with about 8-10 “areas of opportunity” for improvement. Most folks had a worried look on their face as they reviewed the findings asking, “What the heck do I do now?” Research conducted by Mckinsey in 2014 indicated that the context...

This past weekend was beautiful here in Pittsburgh and I spent Sunday morning over at the golf course. I was excited about playing that day and really thought I would have a good round. I was wrong. My golf game was horrible! I couldn’t drive the ball off the tee very well. My iron shots to the green went left or right. My chips and pitches were short or long of their targets, and my putts were just not finding...