Look, I get it. January rolls around and suddenly everyone’s a different person (or wants to be). You’re going to connect with all those contacts you always say you will, finally get organized personally and professionally, and go to the gym five days a week – and this time it’s all going to stick. The problem is that by February or maybe March, if you’re...
The fastest way to lose credibility is to treat your first thought as your final answer. You’re in a meeting, someone asks a complex question, and your brain immediately serves up a response. It feels right. It sounds confident. And it’s probably wrong. The nightmare isn’t that you had the thought—it’s that you believed it without scrutiny and shared it. ...
Beginning in 2014, many of you probably read my blog regarding having a checkup for you and, if you have one, your business. This does not involve the doctor, but it does involve all the other professionals in your personal and business life. Based on positive feedback, I have made this an annual tradition. I originally made this post about the week between Christm...
In a few days it will be Thanksgiving 2025, in what seems like a world gone crazy. In thinking about writing about being thankful or gratitude, I looked back to my posts from the week of Thanksgiving in prior years. I can’t say it better, so here is my annual blog for the week of Thanksgiving.
This is a good time of year to think of gratitude generally and what ...
Almost nobody hears too many sincere compliments. We’re all walking around with positive thoughts about colleagues, clients, and people in our professional circles, but we keep most of them to ourselves. It is as if there is some invisible force field that stops us from just saying what we’re thinking when we appreciate someone.
The solution is simple. Complim...
We’ve all heard countless times that listening is a lost art, an undervalued skill that could transform our businesses and relationships if only we’d slow down and truly hear what others are saying. Management books devote chapters to the practice of being present and attentive. And they’re right to do so, listening matters enormously. But while we’ve been ...
Confidence is the most valuable currency in business, but most people trade in counterfeit bills. It’s easy to mistake volume for conviction and swagger for certainty, and later watch that same person crater when the pressure arrives. Real confidence isn’t about never showing weakness. It’s about knowing your value so thoroughly that you don’t need to perfo...
Many people secretly believe that other people should just know what we’re thinking. When your co-worker doesn’t acknowledge your contribution in a meeting or when your client appears to be ignoring your carefully crafted advice, it’s natural to feel slighted. The narrative that forms in your head is compelling and feels true: they don’t care about you, the...
One lesson that separates the truly successful from the perpetually frustrated is the understanding that your ego is the biggest obstacle standing between you and your goals. Harry Truman supposedly said, “You can get anywhere you want in life as long as you don’t care who gets the credit,” and nowhere is this truer than in the world of business.
Most profes...
Professionals who achieve lasting professional success all share something fundamental: they’ve learned to embrace discomfort as a constant companion rather than an obstacle to avoid. Every meaningful career milestone I’ve witnessed has required someone to lean into uncertainty and stay there long enough to see it through.
The uncomfortable truth about buildin...