Seven Pillars of Success: My Mom
This year I started a series on the blog about individuals who are really successful in one specific area of their lives. I believe that everyone has at least one component of their life that they’re really, really good at. The two I’ve written about so far are John Donovan and Eric Silverstein. Today I’d [...]
Top 10 Survival Tips for Introverts at Social Events
I’m an introvert. Myers-Briggs tells me that I’m a very low introvert, but I think that’s because I’ve learned to cope with some social situations. Otherwise I fully embrace my introversion. How do you know if you’re an introvert? If you are deflated by being around lots of people, you’re an introvert. If you’re energized [...]
Leadership Tactic #72: Praise Publicly, Criticize Privately
Praise publicly, criticize privately. It’s a simple rule. And yet many people–among them a number of managers–get it backwards. We criticize our peers in front of others so that we can feel powerful. We may not realize it, but we do. Maybe it’s a know-it-all comment about a friend’s misuse of grammar in a small [...]
Leadership Tactic #72: The Clean Desk Club
One interview question that I used to ask to applicants was, “What does your desk at work look like?” I didn’t put a lot of weight in the answer (hence my omission of that question from more recent interviews), but my theory was that a person’s desk is reflective of the way he works. If [...]
Leadership Tactic #71: Just Try It
A few weeks ago I was kind of a jerk at work. It would be inappropriate for me to go into details, but basically, a coworker and I disagreed about a certain type of publicity we were doing. I thought the existing Option A was the right way to go, and my coworker thought that [...]
Leadership Tactic #70: How to Ask for Feedback
I love to give feedback. Love it. I’d wager that this is pretty universal–who doesn’t like to offer advice? Over the past few months, I’ve seen the number of varied requests for my feedback increase significantly. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe because I’m putting the offer out there more often. I’ve given people feedback on [...]
Leadership Tactic #69: Positive Reinforcement and Jamey Points
I read a fascinating article the other day about a school in Chicago that charges students money when they start to accumulate demerits. Although I found the concept intriguing, it was this passage at the end about a different school district that really clicked with me: At Knowledge is Power Program, a network of 109 [...]
Leadership Tactic #68: How to Relieve Yourself of the Stress of a Bad Day at Work
A friend texted me today to say that she was having a bad day at work, and she wanted some advice on how to make it better (which made my day, because I love giving advice). We all have these days. I don’t care how optimistic and carefree of a person you are–every once in [...]
The Seven Pillars of Success: Eric Silverstein
I marvel at really successful people. Those who take their dreams and their happiness into their own hands and make a mark on the world. Last month, after spending quite a bit of time determining the common traits of truly successful people in some area of their lives, I featured John Donovan’s story about health. [...]
The Seven Pillars of Success: John Donovan
I often read about highly successful people. They’re successful in a myriad of different ways–professionally, financially, physically, and in terms of popularity, family, networks, etc. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to formulate the common traits that successful people seem to embody regardless of the type of success. I think I have them [...]
Leadership Tactic #67: Thanksgiving
I know, I already did a Thanksgiving entry, but something unexpected happened that is worth sharing. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and the office was quiet. It was around 2:00, and I was looking for something to fill my time before my intended departure of 4:30. A blog entry came to mind that I [...]
The VIP Experience: Young Adult vs. Wasabi
I’ve been thinking a lot about VIP treatment lately. Mostly as a way to get people to RSVP quickly, I told my Festivus guests this year that the first 20 to reply to the Evite would have access to the VIP room, which includes “exclusive access to the VIP lounge, bottle service, a commemorative Festivus [...]
Leadership Tactic #66: The Customer Isn’t Always Right
If you’ve ever waited tables, you know that the customer isn’t always right. If you’ve ever refereed a soccer game, you know that the customer isn’t always right. If you’ve ever had any job anywhere, you know that the customer isn’t always right. So why do we say that the customer is always right? I’d [...]
Leadership Tactic #65: Awesomeness
A quote from over on the Signal vs. Noise blog caught me the other day and has stuck with me ever since: Who is the star of your product? Do you want people to think your product is awesome, or would you rather they felt awesome about themselves because they used your product? This really [...]
Leadership Tactic #64: Create a Line
Every week or so, I’ve been allowing a few food trucks to park at my organization during lunch. They serve great food, they attract a crowd, and they donate some money to our international service trip. Right now there are two food trucks. One of the trucks makes food to order, so there’s always a [...]
Leadership Tactic #63: Group Grunt Work
A few weeks ago, I organized an invitation stuffing party at work. “Party” is a somewhat deceptive word, as it’s actually a finely tuned assembly line of volunteers doing mindless work and chatting while doing so. My goal every year is to stuff the 4,000 invitations faster than the previous year. This year we crushed [...]
Management Tactic #62: Secret Santa
If your company has a Secret Santa program in place, it might have a very real impact on the bottom line. I’m here to argue that companies should actually sponsor their own Secret Santa programs to improve employee satisfaction and performance. At my previous company, we had a great time playing Secret Santa every year [...]
Leadership Tactic #61: Make It About Them
There’s a line in Fight Club that I’ve loved since the first second I heard it: “When people think you’re dying, they really, really just listen to you…instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.” Once I heard that line, I started realizing how often I was just waiting for my turn to speak. [...]
Management Tactic #61: The Worst-Case Scenario Test
I had a great conversation today with one of the higher-ups in HR at a nearby university. He told me a really interesting story that I thought I’d share with you. This will be particularly interesting if you’re in a hiring position or might ever be interested in relocating for a job. The HR guy [...]
Leadership Tactic #60: Happiness Is Underrated
The other day I was talking to a happily employed friend who is being recruited for another job. He said that the recruiting company is known for targeting people who are happy in their current jobs. I thought that was really interesting, that the number one filter the company used was employee happiness. They aren’t [...]
Leadership Tactic #59: Don’t Fix Things Without Asking
A string of circumstances lately has made me think about the value (or lack therein) of fixing things for other people without asking. People’s intentions can be so good, but so counterproductive. Because some things are broken for a reason. Example 1: A few ladies were recently preparing for a wedding reception where I work. [...]
The 15 Workplace Love Languages
A year and a half ago, I wrote about the five love languages. I mostly talked about how they can be applied to improve romantic, familial, and friend relationships, but I briefly touched on how they can be effective at the workplace. Last week, I realized that I could expand upon that idea by polling [...]
Management Tactic #58: A Modest Proposal
I have a proposal for maximizing efficiency and productivity. I would suggest that all workplaces enact this policy, effective immediately. The average American worker spends 27 minutes in the bathroom a day (Stegmaier 2011). Not only are workers moving bowels and excreting liquids, they are washing hands, examining blemishes in the mirror, and adjusting their [...]
Management Tactic #57: The Marshmallow Challenge
About a year ago, I watched a TED talk online about something called “The Marshmallow Challenge.” I was fascinated by this deceptively simple teambuilding exercise and the lessons it provided to groups, companies, and leaders. So today I tried it at my work. My organization isn’t huge, so we had seven participants divided into three [...]
