REFLECTIONS
Inspirational Streams of Emotionally Aware Leadership
The Most Powerful Is the Most Vulnerable
Growing up as the youngest of three often felt as if I had to catch up with my siblings. There is a rather large age gap between us and being one of three boys made it fairly competitive between us. Don’t get me wrong I love my brothers, and today the age gap is...
Mastering our Thoughts and Actions Is the Key to Happiness
Society often defines success as fame, fortune, and achievement as perceived through the eyes of others. We convince ourselves that we will be happy when we finally make our fortune, find the perfect spouse, graduate college, or end up at the top of our business. But...
The ROI of Democracy at Work
I asked people at my company Nearsoft, what kind of topics might be of interest for me to write about. One of the comments came in the form of a question: “In a traditional hierarchical organization (i.e. not Nearsoft) as an individual contributor, what’s the best way...
The Business Model of the Future Is People-to-People
Before the development of the marketing concept as a management philosophy in the 1950s, marketing was defined essentially as selling. The traditional view of marketing up to that time was that marketing was responsible for creating demand for what farms, factories,...
The Impact of Self-Awareness on Achieving Goals
Remember as a kid when you purchased a puzzle and started putting it together? Some had 100s of pieces, some as many as a thousand. The more majestic the picture, the more complex the puzzle. What came first, the puzzle or the picture? The picture of course. The fun...
The Impact of Self-Awareness on Relationships
Earlier in my career I had the work persona, and the at home persona. Even a DISC assessment revealed this duality. My natural state is someone who drives things forward and who uses encouragement, or influence to bolster support. My adaptive state is someone who...
Life Lessons from The Game of Golf
I was 20 when I started to learn golf. I remember being obsessed with the game. Playing as often as possible, reading how to books, and taking as many clients on the course as possible. The best game I ever played was at River Run in Maryland. I finished seven over...
Scarcity Is an Illusion
It’s tempting and easy to choose to see life as a glass half empty or half full. It’s also easy to judge having more or less, as either being full or empty. Abundance or scarcity. Are these two opposite realities something that happens in the mind, or do they manifest...
Productivity Leads to Happiness
hap·pi·ness /ˈhapēnəs/ noun — the state of being happy. Synonyms: contentment, pleasure, contentedness, satisfaction, cheerfulness, cheeriness, merriment, merriness, gaiety, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, joviality, jollity, jolliness, glee, blitheness, carefreeness...
Ways to Develop Wisdom and Apply Emotional Intelligence
Are knowledge and wisdom the same thing? Both words are nouns. One is the application of experience using good judgement (wisdom), and the other is the gathering of experience (knowledge). knowledge /ˈnäləj/ Noun — facts, information, and skills acquired by a person...
We Need More Acceptance
With more liberty also comes more conflict. We live in a time when it’s easy to focus on the scandals, the left-side issues, and the right-side arguments, and even easier to take sides. People are cutting off friends and blocking each other on social networks. Cursing...
We Need More Authentic Leaders
We live in a time of fake news. Fake politicians. Fake social media followers. Fake advertising clicks. Fake genetically modified foods. Fake body parts. Everywhere we turn, there is some scandal followed by another one. It’s hard to know who to trust, and more...
How to Become Your Own Hero and Why You Should
Heroes can play a role in the development of your character from a tender age. We tend to look up to heroes as supreme examples of the greatness that is inherently possible in human beings. Heroes influence and shape the lives of everyone they touch. Sometimes a hero...
We Need More Human Dignity
I often think about what is needing to address many of the issues we face as a society being multi-dimensional. There are many social movements in place. They are all very good and needed initiatives. However, a lot of the ways many are addressing various societal...
True Leaders Inspire Freedom
A baby elephant was tied to a pole at the zoo. For years she tried to break free tugging at the pole by the rope tied around her neck. She tried and tried and could never break free. Many years later, she grew to be a very big and powerful elephant. She was still tied...