(And Three Ways To Fix It) I’d like to begin by saying that this article isn’t an attack on you or your current leadership training. It’s an attack on leadership training in general, a $150 billion industry which has almost entirely failed to create the better leaders that it continually promises. Recent Gallup polls have…
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So innovation is a big buzzword these days. (Do people still say ‘buzzword’? Is buzzword still a buzzword?) Approximately half of the people I did my TED talk with spoke more or less explicitly about the importance of innovation. By comparison, nobody talked about inventing anything new. And why exactly would that be? Isn’t invention…
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So I’ve been living in Texas now for three months, which I think is long enough to really appreciate some of the differences between this vaguely hat-shaped state and the mitten-shaped state from which I came. I got a sunburn in December, for example – not a bad one, just mild enough for me to…
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Hi. I deliver presentations for a living, primarily because nobody wants to work with me for a full eight hours every day. Sometimes I get invited to lunch, but that’s about as far as it goes. I’ve tried making friends on the plane to and from my presentations, but those stupid noise-cancelling headphones have made…
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So in a nutshell, here’s how every funny person is born:
As some of you know, I gave my first TED talk a couple weeks ago. (I wrote it that way on purpose because it implies I’ll do another one someday.) It was a pretty cool experience, primarily because I was surprised by the entire process. After almost a decade of speaking for a living, I…
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I was honored to get the opportunity to speak at TEDxNormal a couple of months ago and Mr. TED recently released the videos. My segment from this awesome event focused on leadership and how we can improve employee engagement through some not-so-standard practices. It was a totally different experience for me even though I speak…
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Hello, and welcome to the end of another year! You’ve probably unofficially stopped working already, since the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is universally understood to be a time for ‘wrapping things up,’ which is universally understood to mean ‘putting things off for as long as possible.’ This is the perfect time of year to…
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OK, so you’re about to start reading a bunch of articles that are going to try to put 2015 into perspective and then make reasonable predictions about what’s going to happen next year. I’m perfectly happy to let others tell you what to expect for the upcoming year. What I want to do is tell…
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As some of you may know, my wife is an organic chemist. In case you didn’t have to suffer through organic chemistry in college, it’s the class that makes aspiring doctors say, “I think I might just work in a vineyard instead.” Her doctoral thesis has the impressive distinction of somehow being written in English…
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Meeting etiquette training time! Turn off your cell phones during meetings or this might happen!
You know, it’s occurred to me that way too many people are dissatisfied with themselves. It seems like every time people get into groups, complaining starts – the weather is terrible, my job is annoying, the kids are exhausting, the FBI won’t leave me alone, my joints are creaky, yada yada yada. Sometimes I wonder…
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There are a lot of numbers in my life. There are telephone numbers, of course, a few of which I still have accidentally memorized even though there’s no reason to waste my brain juices on that kind of thing anymore. I’ve got credit card numbers, bank account numbers, height, weight, age, cholesterol (is it still…
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This month I’ll be delivering my very first TEDx talk. As one of only 4,000,000,000,000 people who have been allowed the honor of doing so, I am humbled by the opportunity to say whatever I think without anyone interrupting me. (I believe that’s why parents love babies so much and progressively become less and less…
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Bringing back a popular human resources video. We interviewed real Human Resource executives across the country about the amazingly stupid things people do or say in job interviews, and this video is the first installment illustrating a few of our favorite stories. Did you hear that? People actually did these things in job interviews! So…
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Right now I’m writing this on my laptop, which is sitting right where it’s supposed to be – in my lap. The TV is on, the temperature in my house is a perfectly even 72 degrees, and nothing is on fire. If my refrigerator were within reach of my couch, I would never have to…
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Now you can get full access to all of my training videos right here on JeffHavens.com. Just click here to see our membership options.
I’m guessing you want others to think of you as a leader. Very few of us want to wallow in nameless obscurity forever, and I haven’t yet run across anyone on Twitter who describes him or herself as a ‘thought follower’. If you’re reading this then there’s a good chance that you’re young, hungry, and…
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I’m hoping you either own or work for a good business. Maybe you’re an accomplished hedge fund operator, or perhaps you employ the largest number of balloon-twisting artists in the world. You managed to weather the last recession (a time when both hedge funds and balloon animals were about equally fashionable), and perhaps you’re in…
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Which Way – This Way, or That Way? Greetings from North Mexico! This is my first newsletter from the magical land of Texas, where I shall be spending the next six months of my life. And everything here IS bigger! The people are all twelve feet tall, and the pizza bagels are actually just two…
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So you’ve want to roll out a new product/website/initiative/compensation structure, and you already know what your people are going to say. They don’t see the need for it, or that’s not how you’ve always done things, or they don’t think you should rock the boat. (That’s my favorite, by the way, since boats are literally…
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