7 Tips on How to Avoid Being Misinterpreted

A friend of mine is launching a book this fall. Because she writes a weekly blog, she asked her PR Director if he could provide her with any email addresses from the team who might like to receive her weekly article.  A week or so later, the PR Director responded that it was against their company’s policy to provide any email addresses of their bloggers because of privacy concerns.  She was a little puzzled by his response given that she just wanted to make sure that the members of the PR firm were getting her post. My author friend decided to...

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5 Tips for Navigating “Whitewater” Conversations

In college I had the opportunity to work as a river guide running the rapids in the Grand Canyon. Later on I discovered that navigating challenging rapids was akin to the terror often experienced in holding challenging conversations. Unfortunately, when it comes to talking about potentially difficult topics, we usually engage in what we call “fake talk” whether intentionally or unintentionally. Fake talk is any conversation where we think we have handled a potentially difficult topic only to find out later, when we didn’t get results, that our conversation was ineffective. Whether running a serious rapid or holding a difficult conversation,...

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7 Ways to Improve Your Capacity for Compassion

I attended a leadership conference a few weeks ago at which I had been asked to speak.  In one of the sessions, I was surprised when a senior executive stood before a group of newly promoted leaders and said, “I want to remind you of the importance of really loving the people who work for you!”  I have long believed that leaders who truly care for their people become the leaders who are able to help others to create extraordinary results.  I just had never heard anyone express this sentiment so directly or openly. Caring for others really does have an...

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Why Don't People Take Initiative?

This is a question I have contemplated for a long time. Recently my exploration became more focused because of a challenge that occurred in our office. As I was getting on a plane to fly east, a client I was traveling to visit, informed me that the training materials we had shipped two weeks earlier had never arrived. I immediately emailed my assistant to alert her and asked her to reach out to the client to remedy the situation. When I arrived in New York, I was picked up by a car service. En route to Connecticut, I texted my assistant to...

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Is Your Workplace a Jerk Place?

All of us at one time or another have had the opportunity to work with or for someone that we would label as a jerk, idiot, or moron.  And we have all probably been a jerk at some point to those with whom we associate. Do you know people that display the characteristics listed below? Are you guilty of any of these behaviors yourself? If so, what do you think is the payoff for behaving in such a manner?  After all, we behave the way we do if we perceive that there is something we can get for doing so.  I...

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8 Strategies for Creating Rapport

Years ago, I was doing research on how we can more easily establish rapport with others.  While I was working on developing my ideas, I took an airplane flight one day and had an interaction with the woman who sat next to me that served as a real lesson in relationship building. On the flight, I was passing the time by drawing and writing in my journal. The woman sitting next to me asked me what I was doing.  I told her I was working on understanding how people develop rapport with others.  The hour-long flight passed quickly as we...

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What is Your "Come From?" 5 Tips for Increasing Positivity

With the beginning of a new year, I wanted to talk about the importance of positive thinking. There is so much negativity these days, from the shrill of the media, to unhappy coworkers, to angry bosses, or simply whining and complaining children. It can really be a challenge to stay positive. To make things even more challenging, neuroscientists suggest that we have approximately 80,000 thoughts a day, three-fourths of which are negative. We know negative thoughts fuel our negative feelings and show up as negative words and actions. All the negative thinking, feeling, saying, and doing, translates into negative results. The...

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Just an Orange for Christmas

This time of year much of the emphasis seems to be on the importance of giving--f being more charitable to those less fortunate than us. Or, in a commercial sense, all the shopping is about answering the question, “What gift should I give this year?” But what about receiving? No child would leave a wrapped gift under the tree unopened, and yet many of the gifts that are so freely offered often go unnoticed and unappreciated. When this happens, those gifts go “unreceived.” In essence, a gift “unreceived” is a gift not given. An experience I had long ago made me contemplate the gifts that are given that may go unreceived...

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Is Your Gratitude Inadvertent or Deliberate?

A contemporary philosopher once said that one of our greatest weaknesses as a people would be ingratitude.  In the week in which we celebrate Thanksgiving, it is appropriate to contemplate all that we have been given.  All of us have had successes, failures, defeats, and victories, all of which afford us the opportunity to learn, grown, and improve our life’s experience. As we reflect on these gifts and experiences, I’d like to focus on different ways we experience gratitude: inadvertent gratitude and deliberate gratitude.  Inadvertent gratitude comes to us as a reaction to experiences that cause us to stop and think...

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Dad Blew It

Last night I had an opportunity to shoot video segments for a book trailer in preparation for the launch of my new book, Overcoming Fake Talk. After the shoot was over and everyone had left, I had the chance to sit and visit with the producer and creator of our video segment, a very talented man I became friends with years ago when we were both river guides on the Colorado River. I had not seen my friend for 35 years until the evening of the videotaping, so obviously we had some catching up to do. Our talk eventually turned...

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How Do I Create Engagement When Someone Won't Engage?

Sometimes you must admit to yourself that no matter what you say or do, no matter what feeling you convey, you can’t make another person engage in conversation. You can lay out the welcome mat and invite them in, but that doesn’t mean they will accept your invitation. And why not? They are uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid. But their reticence says more about them than it does about you. That’s why it is important to never give up on those who are slow to engage or who won’t engage at all. Whatever holds them back is a reflection of perhaps...

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Are You Aware and Conscious?

I was absolutely stressed out yesterday. You know--when emotion overcomes you, when people have violated your expectations, when everyone wants a piece of you, when problems are raging out of control like forest fires, and when there just doesn't seem to be any relief in sight. Such a day is not only emotionally draining, but seems to push one to flip the “autopilot” switch. We end up focusing more on task completion in those days than we do on what’s happening in the moment. In a sense, we lose our conscious rationality.  In the midst of all this, someone came into...

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Are You Living Your Legacy?

Finally, it’s about that time of the year when we slow down, give a sigh of relief, and become more aware of where we are at the moment. You can look back at the year and see where you have been and where you seem to be headed, with the goal of determining whether the path you are on will take you where you want to go. It is not often that we stop and look at ourselves to assess the value of our activity in light of what we claim is most important.   I had an opportunity to do this...

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Prepare or Beware

Q: I heard you speak at a conference recently, and you mentioned that it is important to prepare to hold a potentially difficult conversation. You didn’t elaborate, though, and I would like to know some specifics about how preparation can help a conversation be more successful.   A: Preparing to hold a potentially difficult conversation will dramatically increase the success of the conversation. Sometimes the way our brains work can sabotage our interactions; people who don’t prepare just might fall prey to their thinking. Three different aspects of the brain play a big role in a conversation: the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious...

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How Do You Manage a Blamer?

Q: I have a coworker who is quite negative. In fact, he is always blaming me when I don’t meet his expectations. Sometimes I am shocked to learn--after the fact--what his expectations were! What could I do to defuse this person’s blaming behavior? A: I want to address your coworker’s negativity, emotional reacting, and blaming behavior. Understanding Negativity You need to recognize that this person’s negativity is really an outward expression of what is going on inside him. Like the rest of us, your coworker can’t see past what he knows--the negativity you hear from him is expressing his wants and desires in terms of...

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