Twenty years ago, I read Every Leader Tells a Story by Elizabeth Weil and was impressed by the power of storytelling. This article vindicated me because my staff at the time gave me a hard time about how many stories I told. More recently, storytelling has been a hot topic and the power of stories…
My dad died three years ago. He was 85 and had slipped dramatically in the year before his death so it was not a surprise to anyone. My dad was a kind, generous, complicated man. When he played with young children, he was exceptional. My godson, Jason, once called him “Mr. Teaserman.” Many of my memories…
For a long time, I have believed that one difference between good and great people is their ability to have difficult conversations — conversations involving conflicts, delivering bad news, or other unpleasant conversations — and so I appreciate good advice on how to get difficult conversations back on track. Monique Valcour, in the Harvard…
From LinkedIn, Adam Grant discusses how to bounce back from being fired in a unique way. He talks about how relationships fail. Adam writes: As we researched and wrote the book, one of the big “aha” moments happened when Sheryl told me about something she learned from a late friend of hers, a therapist. I always…
From Fast Company, Stephanie Vozza talks about luck and how it may be possible to increase one’s luck through developing certain habits. I’ve been fascinated with the concept of increasing your luck since I read Jason Zweig‘s article R U Lucky in 2003. Stephanie writes about six habits to improve hour luck; these are my favorites:…
From Fast Company, Stephanie Vozza shares fascinating information from a study on how to get the best response from your email. Stephanie writes: GRATITUDE IS BEST An expression of gratitude resulted in a 36% increase in average response rate. “Thanks in advance” scored highest, with a 65.7% response rate. “Thanks” got 63%, and “thank you”…
From Self Development Secrets, Rebecca Temsen shares her recommendations for 41 things that will make you happier. These are my top nine from her list: 3. Talk to an old friend We all have friends with whom we have lost touch. Some of these friends are gone because of bad blood. Others though,…
From Inc., Jessica Stillman offers a guide to telling a story to help those who are challenged with storytelling. Storytelling is critical to so many interactions that it is great to have some guidance. Jessica writes: The site recently presented storytelling guru David Crabb’s simple five-beat plan to turn any meandering series of events into a…
From Harvard Business Review, Alison Wood Brooks discusses her research on how performing a ritual before a stressful task improves performance. Alison writes: In a series of experiments, I investigated this question with Juliana Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino, Adam Galinsky, Michael Norton, and Maurice Schweitzer. We tested whether pre-performance rituals can improve performance by reducing…
About 30 years ago, I took at course on securities law at Boston University School of Law. I don’t remember the professor’s and remember very little about the course, one of the things that stuck with me over the years are the seven forms of argument. The professor said that there were seven…
From the Harvard Business Review, Christopher Germer describes the importance of self-compassion to help you recover from failure. I once interviewed a woman who had gotten fired from her previous job. She told me that after that she couldn’t get out of bed for a month. Aside from not making a good impression in a job…