Are we more interested in the appearance of the thing, or the thing itself? There is a seduction of the surface. It’s easy to see. It’s easy to put in a photo. It’s easy to say, “We’re doing it right.” It’s just plain easier. As stress levels rise and we are too busy even to be busy, we skim. The surface is faster. Depth takes reflection. It takes ambiguity and curiosity and the effort of turning the wheel firmly enough to leap out of the deeply worn ruts in the roads of our minds.
Sometimes people talk about luck as a kind of “magical wish” that’s outside us. I don’t know if such a thing exists, but I certainly know that “feeling lucky” is a powerful force. Life happens, then we can choose how we feel about that. If we choose to feel lucky, we create a sense of abundance and gratitude – which reduce stress, increase optimism, and strengthen our ability to solve problems. Maybe that’s a really lucky way to live?
I don’t know who told me this, but many years ago someone said, “The difference between a writer and a non-writer? A writer writes.” Sometimes it’s a delight, sometimes it’s sheer agony, but get words on the page. As I work on my 5th book, here are six tips that might help you – including some emotional intelligence!
Apparently in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, rescue dogs faced a massive challenge. But it wasn’t the rubble and death that affected them: It was their handlers’ distress. This offers an important lesson to us as managers, parents, teachers, and friends.
A new analysis of over 24,000 leaders and workers from all around the globe shows female leaders, statistically, have an edge in three key areas of people-leadership: (1) EQ is made of numerous component parts, Females are particularly higher in some – but not all; (2) the largest gap is in the capacity to predict the emotional consequences of actions allowing women to be more strategic with feelings; (3) In key aspects of EQ, women in leadership roles are even further ahead of their male counterparts, suggesting that these differentiators may be essential for females to advance their careers. For both females and males, the new data suggests important opportunities for leveraging strengths to become more effective at people leadership.
One of the basic facts about emotion: Feelings motivate. Fear motivates protection. Anger motivates attack. Joy motivates connection. Disgust motivates rejection. Trust motivates stepping forward. Sorrow motivates withdrawing. Surprise motivates stopping to assess. Anticipation motivates looking forward. There are myriad combinations of these expressed in thousands of words for feelings. One of the basic [...]
I was talking to a colleague about a project we’ll launch for her senior leadership team and the importance of framing this work in terms of strategic value. In our work, normally that means, “How do we increase and leverage emotional capital to create enduring value?” It’s about strengthening the leadership capacity to foster a [...]
I was telling a friend about a recent meeting with a senior leadership team: “It was a great meeting because they immediately ‘got’ that the way they treat their people affects the way their people treat their customers.” My friend (who is very non-corporate) laughed, “Even I get that!” This seems like an incredibly obvious [...]
Giving is an art, an essence of existence and a test of our character. It asks deep questions about our relationship to others, to ourselves and to time itself. To give well, appropriately and often is to establish a beautiful symmetry between the part of us that wishes to be generous and the part of [...]
It’s hard to summarize all the insights from the 24EQ Virtual Conference. We’ve received hundreds of emails and several hundred people responded to our post-event feedback survey; many shared their key learnings there and I’ll attempt to synthesize it later. This is the first event we’ve done where we attempted to use Twitter actively (follow [...]