“Not yet, Dad! I have to get to the next level!” That’s the response I got every time I told my then 12-year-old son, Matthew, it was time to stop playing video games and go to bed. It’s hard for a parent who grew up on Space Invaders and Pacman to understand. Those games were [read more]

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a very bright and trustworthy young woman. Having learned all she could in her own village, she set out to explore the neighboring lands. After a time, she came upon a great city surrounded by a huge castle wall. “Surely I can learn something [read more]

I never considered myself an especially gifted manager of people. But every once in awhile I did something right. This week’s story is about one of those days a few years ago. I had a project review meeting with a junior manager in a corporate department that supported my team. He was an absolute top [read more]

This week I’m joined by global storytelling expert Shawn Callahan from Melbourne. Shawn is the founder of Anecdote, a strategy story consultancy and training firm. He’s also the author of a new book, Putting Stories to Work: Mastering Business Storytelling.  On the podcast, Shawn shared the following story about the chairman of the family-owned Mars, [read more]

One of the most prevalent human frailties — one that begins in childhood and stays with us the rest of our lives — is a concern about what other people think of us. To a 10-year-old, it might be what the other kids will think of her new tennis shoes. To a teenage boy, it [read more]

What’s the difference between good job performance and great job performance? And how do you explain that to a junior manager seeking guidance? Today’s post has some answers. The annual performance review As part of their annual review process, managers at many companies are given a performance rating indicating how well they did their job [read more]

Perseverance in the face of defeat is a required character trait in sports and politics. You have to lose a few games and races on the road to the Super Bowl or to Washington. But is persistence useful in business? Or does success in business only come by backing winners only as long as they’re [read more]

One of the jobs of being a leader is to help the people who work for you find more passion for their work. One of the perhaps less-than-obvious ways to do that is to remove the things they’re decidedly dispassionate about. My favorite example of that comes from Melissa Moody. Melissa runs a modeling and acting academy in [read more]

My guest this week is Dr. Mark Goulston, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and consultant. He blogs for the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Psychology Today. And he’s regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Newsweek, and Time. He’s also the author of a number of books, including Just Listen [read more]

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, this week’s story reminds us that despite the progress we’ve made, we have more work to do. A sharecropper’s daughter Beverly Keown was born on a plantation in Seaton, Arkansas, the fourth of eight children. Her father was a sharecropper. Her mother was a domestic servant in the [read more]