“Wow! That’s really cool that you and the other groomsman wore matching tuxedos!” I was amazed at the comment. How could it be any other way? But this wasn’t a typical wedding, it was my brother and his Swedish bride’s wedding that took place just north of Stockholm. The sum…
He was yelling into his phone in the late evening. “You think I’m just going to take this?!” Ann and I emerged from our apartment and saw this man on the way to our car. Something about coming across someone on a cellphone connecting violently with another person struck me.…
Control is the opposite of trust. This is a challenge for managers who believe they have the clarity to see the right decision for those they manage, yet see their employees going the “wrong” direction. Often they decide to use their control to influence the situation, robbing others the chance…
I chuckled when this picture was sent to me. The depiction seems obvious and shocking from the perspective of a first grader. I really laughed though when I read the story that went along with it… A first grade girl handed in the drawing below for her homework assignment. The…
Ever read something and found your mind go numb? Was it your company’s vision statement? Most vision statements are worthless. Not because they don’t try to establish a lofty idea of what the company desires to become, but rather because they are filled with abstractions. Much of our communication has…
Sometimes even the best laid plans backfire in ways that we don’t expect. It’s easy to think we should charge for everything of value we provide, but trying to extract the last penny can cost us the entire sale. This is one such story. We were shopping in Mexico and…
“I don’t think I could ever love you, but I want to be friends that touch.” One of my friends was told this when she asked her German boyfriend to be brutally honest. Brutal honesty to an American means something different than brutal honesty to a German. Communication is tough.…
My family hopes I wear a seatbelt. So I was informed yesterday while driving on a Mexican highway to Guanajauto. Turns out my family also wants me to obey the speed limit, not to drive if I’ve been drinking, not to drive tired, and finally to listen to the above…
You have to drive through a small river to get to downtown. This is what we realized when we visited a small fishing village turned popular American retirement spot, just north of Puerto Vallarta. A flood knocked out the bridge and so now you have to drive through a shallow…
You are in a conversation with your friend, and he says, “Good friends make personal sacrifices for their friends”. Is he talking about you? You begin to wonder, but you can’t just say to him, “I DO make personal sacrifices”. Maybe he wasn’t talking about you. There is no way…