Category: Opinion and Commentary
Talking with Strangers: 3 Tips on Making the Most of Your Conversations
“In a single week, we may meet more people than our medieval ancestors did in their entire lives. Yet in contemporary American culture, we have little or no training for all this interaction.” So, how do you avoid feeling like […]
Making Change Happen: Smart Team Building
Leaders are told that bringing people together as a “team” is the ultimate means to achieve peak performance. So we feverishly plan team events, team brainstorming, team retreats, team training, team potlucks, team sweatshirts, and every other team-building thing we […]
Going Beyond Pie Charts: More Ways to Use Visuals
“Love pie. Hate pie-charts” is a playful quote from a talented data designer featured below. It captures the we-can-do-better attitude of the individuals and organizations leading the charge for clear and effective visuals to get your point across. After an […]
How Meetings Steal Your Productivity (and 6 Ways to Get it Back)
Are you sometimes amazed at how little of substance you accomplish in a day? Yes, you went to six meetings today and checked them off your to-do list, but it’s a net loss in productivity because each meeting just generated more […]
Use the Power of Visuals to Get Your Point Across
Some people are brilliant at melding words and visuals. Most of us struggle to create engaging presentations, documents and web pages. We’ve all been told it’s crucial to appeal to visual as well as verbal thinkers, but knowing how to […]
Get Smarter in Just 15 Minutes a Day
The blogosphere is a rich and engaging resource for new ideas. So why can I hear you groaning from a mile away: “I don’t have time to do my work; I never remember to check the blogs I really like, […]
Do You Want to BE Something or DO Something?
There is time for everything that you really care about! So what’s stopping us? Each day we make choices about how we spend our time, mostly relying on our routines to get us through the day. Some of our routines […]
Does This Blog Make Me Look Fat?
We’re celebrating! It’s been three months since we launched Your Life@Work. It’s been a challenge to test our ideas and a big thrill to connect with you through your online comments, emails, phone calls, and hallway asides. So the big […]
Envisioning Successful Outcomes
How often have you been handed an assignment and plunged into it, then realized that you have an incomplete idea of what the end product is supposed to be? Have you struggled to finish something only to find yourself in an endless “re-do” loop? […]
Do You Need Help Saying ‘No’?
Do you cringe when you think about saying No to your boss, colleagues, friends or family? Do you already pride yourself on your toughness and ability to say No but find it creates tension sometimes? In either case, you will benefit […]