Blog

Racism is antithetical to the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. Yet overt and unbridled expressions of tribalism, nativism and populism are on the rise. Fear, intolerance and resentment of other ethnic and cultural groups are increasingly weaponized to stir inbred fears, influence voters and undermine the progress we thought had been made […]

I’ve known many high achievers (some of whom were clients) who’ve been plagued with incessant self-doubt that they would never accomplish the expectations or lofty standards they’d set for themselves, that there was always more they should or could be doing. In order to determine coherence and find balance between our values and our aspirations, […]

Although I’ve used the above phrase for a very long time, it is perhaps more famously known as the title of an autobiographical memoir (published in 2006) by the Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass – an account of his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when his first great […]

Believing we’re right vs. being right.  Sensing we’re right is an addiction of confidence that correlates with our inborn need for certainty. It helps us give meaning to our lives. But this self-induced assurance is no guarantee of being right. According to Daniel Kahneman, who studied when we should trust our gut and when we […]

Face it: we are lousy listeners. It’s part of what makes us human. Some are more skilled than others but we can surely all get better. Over the course of decades of teaching this critical skill, whenever I’ve asked my students “How can we improve?”, invariably the answer is “Listen harder.” To which I respond, […]

  Since its creation by Thomas Watson Sr. in 1914, IBM has had cycles of precipitous decline and dramatic revitalization. Until his death in 1956, Watson made it one of the largest, most profitable and innovative enterprises in the world. At one time, during the 1980s, IBM held 83% of the market and was the […]

The biggest challenge with a compelling business presentation is the time you have available to give one. The concept of an elevator pitch is a case in point: you don’t have ten minutes to make the sale; you only have ten seconds to capture their interest. Make the wrong assumptions about your audience and you’re […]

There’s no such thing as a “win-win” compromise. Trading something you really want just to reach an agreement often results, over time, in regret. An optimal deal is getting what you want every time, though not necessarily in the way you may have thought possible at the outset. Although compromise is invariably well-intentioned, the outcome […]

I have long believed the hardest skill to acquire is perspective. That is because it comes with the experiences of aging and cannot be rushed. Some call it maturity. It makes us realize the inherent limitations, contradictions, hyperbole and nonsense of our evolving views about life. Hence, it is an avenue to humility. Perspective is […]

About a year ago, I decided to re-purpose a part of my life. Among the promises I made to myself was a commitment to blog more frequently. During the past year, I posted almost as many essays on this site as I had done in the prior ten years. So that choice was largely fulfilled. […]

I repeatedly witness and lament the loss of humility in leaders today, especially those in government (whom I no longer call leaders but, rather, the more fitting title of politicians – though I choose not to ‘go there’ in this particular essay). The challenge every leader faces in tumultuous times is to balance the critical […]

Materialism vs. idealism.  Being materialistic means you think money, status and image are more important than family, helping others or just having fun. It’s being excessively concerned with creature comforts and possessions rather than novel ideas, moral possibilities and intellectual paradoxes. In a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies, Dr. Tim Kasser concludes that materialism is associated […]

I have written three books on negotiating. These were published in 1989, 1997, 2002 and again (reprinted) in 2015. I have been blogging, off and on, for over a decade on a wide array of topics that capture my interest in the moment. Yet I have never posted an essay on negotiating, perhaps the one […]

If you want a better understanding of why unintended consequences occur the way they do, you might go back in time and revisit the causes of the economic meltdown of 2008 and its aftermath. Although this catastrophic event is now a decade old, it’s a sterling example of a place many now dwell in their […]

Intelligence is not the sum of what you know; it’s what you do with what you know. It’s having the capability to make sense of things, figure out what to do and solve real-life problems. Intelligence comes in many forms – each of which requires different skill sets. A partial list includes emotional (EQ) and […]

I am fascinated by demographics (and psychographics). Decades of experience in change management, talent development and crisis intervention have honed my belief that human nature is largely predictable, despite the obvious behavioural nuances inflicted by unforeseen circumstances and random events. I have especially come to appreciate the insights derived from research on age-dominant cohorts whose […]

The data is clear: we work longer and harder than ever before. We take work home, do what we think “must” be done, or what we’re required to do, and try to do it as best we can. It doesn’t seem to matter how many things we check off our ever expanding to-do lists, or […]

Choosing blog topics is a weekly or bi-weekly adventure for me. Normally, something in my relationships, research or practice will trigger a subject that begs further exploration and marination. Often, on the advice of family members, I limit what I want to say. My spouse especially saves me from errors, inadvertent typos, overstatements and unnecessary […]

There are two ways to move people: either by force or by persuasion. That choice is always yours. Persuasion is the ability to get what you want from others while making them feel genuinely good about themselves and, in consequence, about you. Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, built her business on […]

The quality of your life and the prosperity of the organization you lead is entirely dependent on your ability to make good choices. We make hundreds every day. Some may not qualify as important – like right or left? Stop or go? Eat or don’t eat? Some are bigger, even monumental or life-altering, and those […]

Tenacity predicts success more than intelligence or ability. While it helps to be smart, it’s not what will ultimately determine your future prospects or decide your fate. There are plenty of intelligent people around who have little to show for their brilliance. In virtually every endeavour, talent is vastly overrated in comparison to mental toughness. […]

From the beginning of recorded time, people have been intrigued and fascinated by the presence of the wise person in the room. Aristotle said wisdom is the realization of one’s ignorance, a belief I long ago came to appreciate and adopted as a personal mantra. More recently, wisdom (like just about everything else) has become […]

One of the fundamental principles of physics is the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of entropy. In simple terms, it means that uncertainty, randomness, disorder and chaos are naturally occurring events in the universe. In consequence, “things fall apart.” Including us. While entropy governs our fate, so too does atrophy. When […]

An increasing part of my work, particularly with younger professionals who are dubbed as “high potentials,” involves providing instruction on what may be the quintessential ingredient of leadership today: the ability to engender trust. Sounds simple but it’s not. Fundamentally, leadership is knowing what to do, doing it at the right time and getting others […]

We have strengths and we have weaknesses; it’s what makes us human. To ascend, we believe the objective is to eliminate our deficiencies while promoting our better qualities. Let me prick that bubble of delusion: often it’s our strengths that become our undoing. The examples abound. An ability to grasp complex concepts more quickly than […]

Should we fear AI or embrace it? A dumb question, I know. Thinking we have a choice is as nonsensical as opposing the Internet 30 years ago. Just as the world-wide web changed the way we live, work and relate to each other, so too will AI. It will exponentially ramp up the speed of […]

A lot of people worry about things they can’t control. Research says almost 40% of us do it every day. Worry is a mental strategy aimed at adapting to situations we view as uncertain, unknown, dangerous or problematical. In essence, worry is an anxiety disorder – an attempt to eliminate unpleasant surprises and harmful risks […]

Most people are lousy at giving helpful feedback. But, without frequent and candid appraisals of our behaviour, we’re incapable of addressing deficiencies, recognizing strengths overdone or finding needed perspective. Without feedback, we can’t get better. Given that maxim, is your approach to providing feedback effective? And are you really that interested in hearing honest feedback […]

Learning is a lifelong, life-altering skill. What builds and shapes our intellect is entirely within our control. Understanding and enthusiastically accepting this simple principle enables us to see effort and failure as a badge of courage and a source of immeasurably useful information. Mastering the ability to learn is the only way we can win […]

The Annals of Gullibility, written by Stephen Greenspan about a decade ago, is a summary of research into how to avoid being duped. Two days after he published it, Mr. Green discovered that Bernie Madoff, his financial advisor, was a fraud and he had lost a third of his retirement savings. We live in an […]

In a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of over 2,200 executives, less than a third said the quality of their decisions was “generally good,” almost two-thirds thought bad decisions were “as frequent as good ones” and the remaining 12% felt good decisions were “altogether infrequent.” How do you feel about the quality of choices made in […]