How a "Feeling Compass" Can Guide You Toward Success
What guides you when you’re faced with a difficult decision? For many of us, our choices are often driven by what we hope to achieve or prefer to avoid. But looking forward—towards something we want—also means that we don’t have it right now. In other words, if we're not paying attention, we might get tangled up in a "lack trap," identifying ourselves as someone who doesn’t have what they want or need. We all know stories about people who achieved incredible things because of
How Tricking the Brain Can Keep You Motivated
What's the secret behind lasting motivation? Any of us who have worked on complex, lengthy projects know that there are times when staying motivated can be a challenge. We've also probably learned that the best motivation comes from within ourselves in the form of passion for whatever we are doing. As long as we feel that passion, we keep doing whatever we need to do to reach our goal. But how do we maintain that feeling? And what happens when we don’t? Scott Duffy, the autho
How to Turn Not Knowing into a Super Power
Have you ever found yourself stymied by a lack of certainty . . . by the very real fact that you don’t know what’s around the next corner? Uncertainty, and how we deal with it, some researchers suggest, is one of the greatest predictors of whether we will achieve success and a sense of well-being in our professional and personal lives. In her article for Forbes, Margie Warrell explains it this way, “As much as we may try to do otherwise, it is impossible to chart a certain p
How to Tell If You’re Truly Committed
Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to decide if you can count on a person or not? One quality you’ve likely tried to assess is their level of commitment. Will they stick with it when the going gets tough? Will they find solutions and not get mired down amidst the inevitable problems that will arise? Commitment is absolutely a key attribute to assess during any hiring, promotion, or talent assessment process (or when stepping into any serious relationship). Management exp
Are You Sure You Chose the Right Person for the Job?
Is the person you’re about to select for an important team or project truly ready? Are they fully capable? Have you thoroughly assessed their capability accurately? Are you sure? When asked for their take on assessing capability, Stuart Spencer, a long-standing consulting firm for boards and CEOs, had this to say: “Sometimes the differences between today’s and tomorrow’s leaders lie not in the capabilities themselves, but the level of sophistication of the same capabilities
Why the Blame Game is Always a Lose-Lose Proposition
When things go wrong, whose fault it? Who’s to blame? And how do you decide? In our role as executive coaches and consultants, we are often called in to help sift through the wreckage of a failed project or other challenging situation that is careening off course. Time after time we discover that a fundamental source of the problem comes back to people’s basic lack of understanding regarding responsibility and accountability. For example, when we begin sorting through a scena
How What You Don’t Know Could Hurt You
What is it you don’t know that you don’t know that could be hurting you, right this very moment? Is it possible something is at play . . . something you’re utterly unaware of that could be sabotaging your progress or interfering with your ability to be at your best? The very nature of such questions can be troubling if we really explore them and yet, if we stop for a moment, it’s easy to recognize that knowledge falls into three basic categories: Things we know we know; Thing
The Power of Asking for Help in a Self-Help Society
Have you found ever yourself stuck and yet hesitant to ask for help? If so, you’re not alone. Many people go to great lengths to avoid reaching out to someone in their real world. Instead, they may thoroughly research the Internet hoping they can sort through the mountains of available information and readily understand it within its proper context. The challenge is, that while we may discover what we think is the correct answer, we may also fall prey to the phenomenon known
How Your Feelings Shape Your Future
In a recent article for Forbes, contributor, Joseph Folkman, shares how a well-communicated vision can truly inspire employees. To make his point, Folkman tells the story of a woman who was working at home one evening, when her husband’s friend came by to visit him. During the conversation with the woman’s husband, the friend kept noticing how deeply entrenched the woman was in her work. Curious and perplexed, the friend finally asked her, “For heaven’s sake, what are you doi
How Denial Can Quietly Ruin You
Everywhere we turn these days, we hear people decrying the evils of “fake news.” But what about the fake news we create for ourselves; the subtle denial processes we go through to avoid looking at uncomfortable truths? In our consulting and coaching practice, we often deal with clients who have successfully evaded the truth about their own circumstances until the inevitable day when they can no longer avoid confronting reality. By then, the situation has often become so exace
