“We’ve got our first scrimmage.” Players love to hear those words from the coach because scrimmages are much more fun than squat thrusts, windmills, or shoulder and hip rotations. Scrimmaging is as close to a real game as you can get without the hoopla, and it serves multiple functions…
You come back from vacation and start your game of catch-up. This is an especially challenging game if you’re a senior leader. You have hundreds, maybe thousands of emails, a backlog of voicemails, and a to-do list that doubled or tripled in length while you were away. You need…
The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to…
How many of you remember seeing the movie “The Graduate” starring Dustin Hoffman? It not only made him a huge star, playing Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate who wasn’t sure what to do with his future, but it introduced a few memorable lines, including: “One word: plastics. The…
The best salespeople are also marketers, constantly connecting, learning and sharing. If you’re in sales , you might read that and pause. You don’t influence your company website, write white papers or contribute to the company Twitter feed. You deliver the sales plan. So why do people like me…
Humans are creatures of habits, and these habits can be analyzed and codified into rules that help us perform better. Many times, we’re not even aware of the habits that control our choices. Conside the child’s game, Rock-Paper-Scissors. The odds of winning are one in three. At least, that’s…
As an entrepreneur, you’re often the face of your company, and your ability to capture attention, to fascinate others—clients, employees, strategic partners, influencers—can make or break a business. Every time you communicate, you’re doing one of two things: You’re adding value… You’re taking up space. If you’re taking up…
Upon hearing a statistic that 83 percent of millennials sleeps with their cell phones, a baby boomer CEO exclaimed to me, who happens to be a millennial, “These people are from a different planet!” Vociferous feelings about younger generations gave existed for thousands of years. Hesiod, a Greek poet…
Three hundred years ago, during the Age of Enlightenment, the coffee house became the center of innovation. Back then, most people went from drinking beer to consuming coffee (i.e. from being tipsy to being wired) and ideas started exploding. The details of this story are important (and fun) one…
Imagine you are applying for the dream job of your life. You’ve got five minutes to explain to two interviewers why they should pick you over 100 other smartly dressed candidates. As you make your presentation, the interviewers stare at you unblinkingly like a bank teller with a lobotomy.
