What can the Las Vegas Strip teach us about training?

Whether or not you’ve personally visited the City of Sin, you’re probably familiar with its reputation. People go there to have a good time or escape the daily grind. They often eat and… Read More →

What are YOU going to do differently?

It had been a great training session – people were engaged, excited, and learning some great skills to help them communicate more effectively and productively with co-workers. As people walked out of the… Read More →

What I Learned from my 30-Day Challenge

After watching Matt Cutts’ TED Talk, in which he urges us to try something new for 30 days, I decided to try something he mentioned, taking a picture every day for 30 days.… Read More →

Why we won’t take the lettuce out of our teeth

Has a friend of yours ever pointed out that you had a piece of lettuce stuck in your teeth? How did you feel? Embarrassed? Thankful?  What did you do next? Did you immediately… Read More →

Do you have an “accidental brand”?

Do you have an “accidental brand”?  In The Hazard of Having an “Accidental” Brand, authors Jonathan Knowles and Richard Ettenson argue that many organizations – many of them large and well-known – do… Read More →

Building Necessary Capabilities (Influence and Change 5 of 10)

How do You Get to Carnegie Hall? (Practice!) You have a change in mind. You’ve identified the key behaviors that will enable this change, and the right people are excited to starting doing… Read More →

“If you’re comfortable, you aren’t growing…”

Can a person be comfortable and still be in the process of intentionally becoming something better than he or she is currently?

Leadership: Inborn Trait or Learned Behavior?

Clearly LeBron was born with an incredible amount of potential, but if he had never learned and practiced the specific skills necessary to be a basketball player, he would not be the player he is today (we might not have ever heard of him!).

Do you have common sense? Want more?

Does “common sense” really exist? Can it be learned, or are you born with (or without) it?  Dan McCarthy posted a great blog on common sense, and ways to build it. Below are some… Read More →

Where’s the “on” switch?

What if racers quit the race after the first lap?

What if athletes stopped playing after pre-season training?

What if you bought a new piece of equipment, but never turned it on?

None of these things make much sense, do they? And yet, this is often how people approach development: they go to training, but when they come back to work nothing changes.