Charlie was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. The enemy shot Charlie down during his 75th combat mission in the war. He ejected from his jet and parachuted into enemy territory. Charlie spent six years as a prisoner of war. When Charlie was released, someone recognized him when he got back …
Resilience is a shield protecting us from perpetual change, persistent stress, and constant pressures—it leverages our most challenging situations towards our growth. The story of the donkey and the farmer illustrates the power of resilience. One afternoon, a farmer’s donkey fell into a pit. The creature bellowed for hours as …
Wells Fargo paid $3 billion to federal prosecutors because of a fourteen-year failure of communication. That bank’s management communicated information in a condescending, emotionally laced, and unnecessary way. That created a culture where employees did not speak with transparency. In the Wells Fargo scandal, the bank’s senior administrators urged its …
Nolan is a cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles. The highpoint of his position is sacking the quarterback. That’s because it creates a psychological change in the quarterback. It makes him angry. We know that anger causes tunnel vision. It narrows your senses and significantly erodes your ability to make intelligent …
Howard was born into a low-income family in Brooklyn. He got a scholarship to college and started a sales career, eventually joining a small coffee wholesaling business as the third employee. They sent him on a trip to Italy, where Howard saw how coffee houses were places where people were …
Imagine that a customer wants to return a dress to your store that she wore and ripped. You’re reluctant to take back such an expensive piece. But your supervisor tells you her loyalty is worth much more. You do it anyway. That clerk was Stanley Marcus, of Nieman Marcus. And …
A new pastor in a small town got on a bus for his first trip downtown in his new city. When he got the change back from the bus driver, the preacher noticed that the driver gave him an extra quarter. Thoughts raced through the preacher’s mind. “You’d better give …
As a leader, it is your job to create a workplace where jerks don’t thrive. You can lose employees, customers, and productivity with one critically positioned offensive employee. Respect is an essential leadership behavior. Developing respect in the workplace builds an environment where employees and their companies become the best …
If you’re not having fun at work, then you’re not working hard enough. Twenty years of employment studies illustrate that having fun at work is profitable. Companies that are in the top quartile for employee engagement have 22% higher profitability than their competitors, even during a recession. Having fun at the office …
Soon, COVID-19 will be over, and we will return to work in ways that we did before this global pandemic. We don’t know how much damage it will create or precisely when it ends. But it will end. We must prepare ourselves and our teams for the great return to …
