According to the folks at Foursquare, today is Fall Off the Wagon Day – the day most people bail on their New Year’s Resolutions to exercise, eat more healthfully, and so on. This is consistent with my observations – attendance at my fitness boot camp goes up in January, and drops back to normal in […]
Tag Archives: Book Recommendation
My approach to New Year’s Resolutions for 2014 has been heavily influenced by the book I Dare Me by LuAnn Cahn. For an entire year, Cahn did something new every day – something she had either never done before in her life, or had not done since childhood. I’m not sure why this idea has […]
I recently read Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why after watching this TED talk…later that week, walking through the hall at work, I saw Sinek’s diagram on another person’s whiteboard! Talk about serendipity! Sinek’s key point is that WHY you do whatever you do is more important to your target audience or customer than WHAT […]
As a facilitator, I have often worked with groups in the process of clarifying their common values. Inevitably, there is someone in the group who questions the value of this exercise. It is true that there are a lot of generic, meaningless values statements gathering dust in drawers across the nation. So how do we […]
Since communication and conflict resolution are what I do for a living, I am expected to excel at both…even when I am officially “off duty.” Some days I consider this an advantage; I am continually pushed to improve myself. Other days I find it exhausting, as my natural state of being is somewhat cranky and […]
> 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 […]
There are many ways to influence people’s behavior, and the best strategy is to incorporate multiple pathways. In order to change, people must have both the motivation and the ability to do so. Social and environmental factors are often overlooked. One of my favorite books on creating change within an organization is Influencer: The Power […]
> I spent a good chunk of last week at the annual conference of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners, a creative bunch of folks who help businesses document meetings, capture ideas, and solve problems using graphics. I am relatively new to this practice (you can see examples of my graphic work here), so it […]
>Kerry Patterson is co- author of three books to which I refer again and again: Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. I receive his e-newsletter, Kerrying On, which I always read immediately — I consign most e-newsletters to the trash folder rather quickly, but I always find useful tips, tools, and stories in this invaluable. […]
>One of my favorite recent reads is Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project. She embarked on a year-long quest to become a happier person. As I am a sometimes snarky, often irritated, highly critical person, the idea of instigating a similar project for myself was somewhat appealing. (It was especially appealing to my wife!) So I have […]