One of my clients told me that she had 6 meetings several days this past week which meant that she was only able to get her work done after hours. Additionally, she commented that most of the meetings were longer than they needed to be, were reporting in nature, and had several people checking their emails or drafting off memos. She even received a text from a colleague across the table with an eye rolling emoji! It’s been estimated by...

I ran into a couple of business colleagues a few weeks ago and while we were catching up we had a discussion of how excellence is related to resilience. They told me that they enjoy video games and jokingly tell each other that they can either be great at doing their job or that they can be great at video gaming but not both. They concluded that being great at their job puts food on the table and so that...

A couple of weeks ago, my wife Sheila Collins did a remarkable presentation on The Art of Grieving. Her work has led her to become a thought leader in how we approach this universal experience and how we can deal with it more effectively. Sheila believes that art is a deliberate process of arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses and the emotions. To live life in an Artful way means to be fully present, giving mindful...

Everyone feels overwhelmed and when I meet with teams and leaders I have to admit to them that their perception is correct. They are overwhelmed and if something is not done about it, the next step is burnout or worse. While much of the blame has to do with the volume of work that we all are managing, there is another little secret that its time to begin discussing. Much of the cause may be self-inflicted. We are conflicted between...

I did a workshop a few weeks ago on resilience and we discussed the 4 key ways that resilience can improve your workplace: Improving personal resilience and how you address stress. How the team manages workplace overload? How the organization addresses change in the workplace? How successes and failures are addressed? This team wanted to discuss workplace overload which they all agreed they were experiencing. What was interesting about this group was that they stated that while everyone in the...

Later today, I’ll have the honor of introducing Bruce Kraus, the City of Pittsburgh Council President as the recipient of the 2017 STANDING FIRM Champion award. It was just a year ago that I received that honor for my work on behalf of STANDING FIRM, a non-profit organization that works with busineses to addresses the issue of partner violence and it’s impact in the workplace. Twenty-five percent of all the violence in the workplace stems from a domestic or partner...