A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the importance of leaders taking time off work and going on vacation, a piece which I’m happy to share has been picked up by the American Management Association (AMA) and is now featured on their website. Since publishing that piece, I’ve received a number of emails from my readers and had conversations with various friends and acquaintances where they shared how vacation time is viewed by their bosses and their organizations.

While these discussions have inspired some future posts I’ll be writing for my blog, they also got me thinking about the other side of this vacation time equation. Namely, how leaders and their organizations can benefit from the downtime that inevitably arises when employees are away on vacation.

When members of your team go away on vacation, it’s only natural to feel some concern over how their time away from work might slow down certain efforts or limit the number of people available to address an unexpected problem or failure. Given today’s current work environment where Click here to continue reading »”How Leaders Can Take Advantage of the Summer Downtime”

One of the common themes I’ve written about on my blog is the key role focus plays in our ability to be successful. But how many of us are actually focusing on what we want to accomplish, as opposed to focusing more on the things we’re trying to avoid? That’s the premise behind the book “Seeing Red Cars – Driving Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization to a Positive Future” by Laura Goodrich.

Goodrich starts her book examining why 70% of the thoughts we have on any given day revolve around issues we’re trying to avoid or things we don’t want. Referring to findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, she points out that this tendency toward an avoidance focus is the result of two factors. The first being the social conditioning we received growing up, where well-intentioned parents and teachers taught us not to do certain things out of fear of a negative outcome (“Be careful! You might fall and hurt yourself!”, “If you don’t study this well, you won’t pass this test”), not to mention the common tendency to feel we’re undeserving or incapable of achieving certain goals.

The second factor behind our tendency to focus on avoiding things or situations is our real-life experiences where we encounter something negative or traumatic, leading us to focus on ensuring we don’t do anything that might lead us to a similar situation again.

This doesn’t mean that we have to remain a hostage to our past and not elevate ourselves to a point where we can be more proactive instead of apprehensive in our efforts. After all, recent studies Click here to continue reading »”Coffee House Book Review – “Seeing Red Cars” By Laura Goodrich”

If there’s one chore I could do without, it’s having to shop at the grocery store. I’m not sure if it’s because I always feel like a mouse in a maze trying to find the items on the grocery list (the logic of grocery store layouts still alludes me) or because standing in line waiting to pay for your groceries seems to take longer than any other check-out line. Regardless of the reason, a recent trip to one of our nearby grocery stores resulted in an unexpected – and pleasant – surprise in how it provided both an excellent example and inspiration on how to effectively resolve conflicts in the workplace.

After working through the various grocery aisles and finding most of the items on my grocery list (it always seems that there’s one item I can never find in the store but which my wife could find with her eyes closed), I headed toward the front of the store and stood in one of the check-out lines to pay for my groceries. As I waited in line, the cashier began scanning the various items the woman in front of me had placed on the conveyor belt. All of the sudden, she was stopped by this customer who pointed out that one item had registered at a higher price than what she saw on the shelf.

Following the typical response to such situations, the cashier called one of the nearby stock boys to go and verify the price that was written on the shelf for this item while she continued to process the woman’s purchases. Within a minute or two, the stock boy returned confirming that the price listed on the monitor was the same as what was written on the shelf.

Now, no matter how many times you’ve shopped at the grocery store, this is no doubt a scenario that you’ve witnessed or had to endure at one point or another. In fact, judging from the pained looks on the faces of those standing behind me, all of us had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen next. Click here to continue reading »”4 Keys To Successfully Resolving Conflicts in the Workplace”

I’m delighted to present a new feature here on my site: a new podcast series called “Leadership Biz Cafe”.  Through this new podcast, I hope to invite business leaders and leadership experts to join me in conversations about their ideas and insights on the challenges and opportunities to be found in today’s increasingly competitive and global market.

For my first episode, I welcome Guy Kawasaki, the best-selling author and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, to the guest chair.  Guy is the co-founder of the popular online content aggregator Alltop.com (you may have noticed the site badge in the sidebar of my site) as well as one of the founding partners of Garage Technology Ventures.  Earlier this year, he released his latest book called “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions” which recently made the New York Times bestseller list.

I had the opportunity to get an advance copy of Guy’s book and after reading it, I invited him to be the first guest on my new podcast series which he graciously accepted.

During the podcast, we discuss a number of topics including:

• What does enchantment mean and what’s the first step to take to become more enchanting
• How we can develop more trusting and beneficial relationships
• Why trying to be influential is not the best long-term strategy
• The 3 steps every leader can take to enchant their employees
• Why employees need to enchant their boss (one of the unspoken truths many of us don’t like to admit)

It’s a great interview and Guy and I even shared a few laughs along the way.  So I’d like to invite you to check out this first episode of the “Leadership Biz Cafe” podcast and please let me know what you think of the show by leaving a comment below.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new addition to my site and what topics you might be interested in hearing more about in some of upcoming shows for this new series.

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast:

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Links mentioned during the podcast:

Visit Guy Kawasaki’s website to learn more about his book.

Buy Guy Kawasaki’s book “Enchantment” on Amazon.com (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers)