With Valentine’s Day just a few days away, it makes sense to remind ourselves that our relationships are a primary way to build our resilience. Having your best bud around to talk about, reflect and problem solve our daily and life challenges keeps us in balance and out ahead of the storms. A key measure that you can keep in mind for our partnerships is 5:1. Providing your partner 5 positive statements to every negative statement will help insure that...

I was coaching a senior leader who’s been working on decreasing his tendency to micromanage his employees. He’s been making good progress but he received some feedback from his team that he was, once again, directing their day-to-day activities and failing to give them the freedom and opportunity to run their own projects. “Sometimes I am my own worst enemy” he told me in our coaching session. “I just always think I have to make sure everything gets taken care...

I was coming out of my MBA accounting class when I saw the tornado sweeping down 7th Street in Fort Worth. I was out of danger but not the downtown. Soon I could see buildings shaking and windows shattering. The twister they said would never hit the City brought its full force and fury. Two people died and over 80 buildings sustained damage. That was 2000. It didn’t take long for the people of Fort Worth to pick up the...

We continue our four part series on Building Resilience in 2015 and this week it’s all about your family. I’m committed to building our family resilience this year by focusing on improving my praise and compliment giving to my family members. By reinforcing what we do well, our strengths, we build hardiness. Hardiness creates self-assurance and the capacity to withstand difficulties. Here are some ways to build up for family’s endurance and toughness. Celebrate success: Watch how professional athletes celebrate...

Change is in the air in the workplace and we’re all coming to terms with the idea that we have to become more efficient and effective in how we do our work. There is simply not enough time to get everything done and the result is that we wind up feeling exhausted and worn down—not a good resilience strategy. Here are some strategies that I think will be de rigeur for 2015 Forget the standard 60-minute meeting: Determine ahead of...

The New Year holiday represents an opportunity to consider how you want to shape 2015 for yourself. Over the next 4 Resilient Wednesday’s, I would like to discuss some small ideas to build your resilience in 2015: Week 1: Building Personal Resilience Week 2: Building Business Resilience Week 3: Building Family Resilience Week 4: Building Community Resilience Personal Resilience Don’t make any resolutions: Research shows that resolutions fail. Instead identify some new habits you want to develop and work on...