We laugh at movies featuring the 35 or 40 year old who won’t leave the parents’ house and get a life. We believe that the current Best Actor recipient once starred in a movie centering around such an animating theme. But failing to launch (or even failing to recognize the oncoming signs Read more…
There are veiled threats, open threats, unspoken threats and curbed threats. Threats come about when people are frustrated, feel as though they are powerless, or when they know that they have the power. Power, of course, is influence and control of events. But the weird thing about power is that Read more…
I’m a pusher. I see everywhere the potential in other people to be greater than the sum of their parts, and I see the possibilities in other people’s situations to improve and advance that they sometimes don’t see themselves. I want them to be the best that they can be Read more…
There are all kinds of competencies that a leader has to have in order to be successful in an organization. Unfortunately, we tend to focus on the flashy ones that look good on the resume, in the job description, or that can show up on the company masthead or in Read more…
Organizations, just like individuals, have a particular conflict style and support a particular conflict response culture. Since culture eats strategy for breakfast (thanks Peter Drucker), conflict is an inherent part of the cultural process of continual misalignment at many organizations. Don’t believe me? Well, organizational misalignment between cultures and products Read more…
“Let’s get serious.” So…what…we’ve just been fooling around the whole time? Those three words, codified through social niceties and small talk, are often said before official, issue driven, conversations and negotiations begin. Typically, they are used as a way to separate people from each other and to categorize those who seem Read more…
The engaged, consultant maximizes her time, so that she is working on her business, rather than in her business. This is the difference between a job and an entrepreneurial venture. Or even, dare I say the difference between golden chains and a golden ticket. There are spaces between responsibilities to Read more…
At a neurobiological level, the facts and triggers for emotions in the human mind are complicated and diaphanous. If human societies create functioning, artificial intelligence, the chance of human level emotions evolving within those machines, will be slim to none. Machines, even intelligent machines, can’t rise any higher than their Read more…
We seek experts out because, even in a world where there is no more “secret sauce,” the vast majority of us still take the shortest route to the best possible outcome. Peace building professionals should have gained knowledge of this, either through practical experiences at the peace building table, or Read more…
Someone told me the other day that I was scaling Human Services Consulting and Training horizontally in a way that has never been seen before. The projects, the marketing, the sales, the personal relationship building; apparently I’m going in multiple directions at once, spreading the tentacles of my project far Read more…