It’s the holidays! Which means that, if you’re like most people, you’re more stressed than festive. So I thought this would be a good time to discuss some effective ways to deal with stress – not just during the shop-until-you-cry season, but all year round. “That sounds great!” you might be saying. “But you don’t…
People are always trying to predict what the world is going to be like in the future. Doing so sometimes involves imagining how current trends might affect the cost of doing business a few years from now, or how new and emerging technologies will impact the way we work and interact with our colleagues and…
Normally this article would be designed to improve some element of your psychological life. That’s what most business education focuses on, after all – improving ourselves, or our processes, or our relationships with others. But we shouldn’t neglect the importance of improving our physical lives, and anyway I’m going to a couple concerts this month,…
Everyone everywhere is interested in innovation. Of the various keynote addresses that I’ve created over the years, my Uncrapify Your Future! keynote on innovation is easily the most popular. And I understand why. Coming up with solutions to problems, or taking advantage of possible opportunities, is one of the key drivers of success, both professionally…
Impostor syndrome is one of the most insidious challenges to our mental well-being. In case you aren’t familiar with the phrase (although I’m guessing you are), impostor syndrome is a fairly common phenomenon in which individuals doubt their abilities and/or feel like they don’t deserve their accomplishments. Put another way, you think you’re in over…
This year, you probably asked Santa for a pony. Or a laser cannon, or socks – I don’t really know, but you probably didn’t ask for better work-life balance, even though it’s something you probably want. Most of us do. So, operating under the assumption that Santa didn’t put that one under the tree, I’m…
You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘emotional intelligence’ before. (It’s also sometimes called ‘emotional quotient,’ which we’re not going to use, because it makes it sound like you’ll need to divide your emotions by your hat size or something.) But that doesn’t mean you know what emotional intelligence actually is. As you undoubtedly know, our emotions…
Making important decisions, acting like a leader, being a person your colleagues can count on to get the job done – all of these are qualities associated with “taking initiative.” So if there’s a lot of extra initiative lying around, odds are you’d like to take some of it for yourself. Doing so, however, can…
In the past two decades I’ve delivered well over a thousand presentations, mostly live but also increasingly virtual as well (thanks, pandemic!). I’ve spoken to six people and to six thousand, and I’ve been everywhere from theaters to factory floors. No matter where I am, it’s fairly common for someone to ask me when I…
I’m just coming off a very lovely few weeks with my family. We saw friends, went skiing, and spent 12 solid hours on Christmas day together in the living room playing with new toys and games. It has been great. And it has also been educational. Because sometime during all this family-ness I realized that…