Many of our resolutions, personal or professional, are about things that we’d like to DO. Some are about things we want to STOP doing. I rather like this little piece by Jeff Haden at Inc. on ten things to stop doing in order to be happier at work: blaming, impressing, clinging, interrupting, whining, controlling, criticizing, […]
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A common complaint that I hear from my intentional community clients as we prepare to work on a vexing issue is, “We talked about this same issue LAST year!” There is a great desire to be DONE with it already, to set it to rest, to come up with a final solution or policy that […]
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I’ve been blogging via Google’s Blogspot for awhile. Google makes me nervous. There are a lot of things about their new policies that are bugging me. I trust my local internet service provider (Sonic.net) and the open source WordPress community more than I trust Google. So, I’m moving! I’ll do all my new posting over […]
Tags: Google Is Evil, Ranting and Raving
Recently I had two fairly challenging gigs back to back. Immediately after each one I floated on a high of exhausted euphoria…I love my work, I did cool stuff, the client had a major breakthrough, etc. This was followed by a complete crash, in which I picked apart every possible thing I might have done […]
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Tags: Evaluation, I Was Wrong
When I was a kid, my list included: teacher doctor first woman president artist nun (I went to Catholic school, OK?) It occurred to me recently that I have managed to incorporate elements of all of these roles into my work life! I lead workshops and I teach at two local colleges. I worked […]
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>In a recent blog post, Harvard Business Review writer Peter Bregman calls PowerPoint the “#1 Killer of Meetings.” I’m not sure if I agree it’s number one – I’ve been to any number of sucky meetings that didn’t involve PowerPoint – but it is definitely in the top five. I personally am on a one-woman […]
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>Just as visual artists know that white space is a key element in a good design, good facilitators know that break time is a key element in good meeting design. When there is a lot of work to be done or information to be conveyed, it is tempting to schedule every minute, but this will […]
> When Kim Coontz first asked me to lead a workshop on strategic planning at the California Cooperative Conference I was a little surprised; I usually teach meeting facilitation, communication skills, or conflict resolution, so it seemed outside my area of expertise. She pointed out that as a facilitator, I am frequently hired to help […]
> I have long felt an attraction to the poetry and teachings of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi. I recently stumbled upon a delightful book that condenses Rumi’s spiritual practices into a short, simple easily-remembered list. Rumi’s Four Essential Practices: Ecstatic Body, Awakened Soul by Will Johnson explains the practices and connects them to the larger body […]
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>My friend Kathy (names changed to protect privacy) asked for help in dealing with conflict in one of her project groups. As she told me more about it, I doodled a rough map of the relationships between each of the individuals as well as the different organizations involved in the project. It has been my […]
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