November 24, 2016

Talking Emotional Literacy

   “The publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, marked a turning point in popular culture. Finally, emotions were deemed critical to human intelligence. Ironically, the book presents a model of emotional intelligence that is founded in the subordination of emotions to reason.” Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions Wine Connoisseurs know that there is a vast array of wines […]
November 21, 2016

Creating a Culture of Gratitude in the Workplace

We seem to get the “gratitude spirit” during the end of year holiday season. We hear the heart-felt stories about kindness and giving start to appear.  Tis’ the season, so to speak.   It’s a time when even the busiest and most cynical among us pause (even if only for a short time) and reflect.   But too often, the feelings of […]
September 30, 2016

Do “Sensitive” Men Get Overlooked in Business?

Let’s face it, there isn’t much written about “nice” guys and “sensitive” men in the workplace. One of the rare articles exploring ideas about your “atypical” workplace male was explored in the Harvard Business Review article, “Sensitive Men: It’s Your Glass Ceiling,” by Andrew O’Connell. The article raised some interesting questions and assumptions that present a starting point for the […]
August 18, 2016

Seeking Human Kindness

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Is kindness “compassion in action?” While there are distinctions made between kindness, empathy, compassion and altruism, most people experience kindness as action. With kindness we take our cognitive experience of […]
June 17, 2016

People at Work ~ I Want To Know More About You

Ask me what is most important. And I will reply, It is people, It is people, It is people Maori Proverb You read a lot these days about the need for new workplace models. There is a growing consensus that decades of rigid, bottom line, often authoritarian management structures kill the culture necessary for real collaborative relationships.  The old models […]
June 11, 2016

The 5 Habits of an Empathetic Communicator

How we respond to others is largely a function of habit. Many small, repetitive, automatic responses that grow over a long period of time form habits. Mostly, these reactions are outside of our conscious awareness. They’re built on foundations formed by our beliefs, and in most cases, they stayed fixed, usually reinforcing old beliefs and naturally – old habits. Charles […]
April 21, 2016

Emotional Baggage at Work

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.” Anthony Brandt We all bring it – we all have it. It is a matter of degree – and awareness. In every interaction we have at work, we bring the dynamics of our families, culture, generation and gender with us.  The first problem is that most of us […]
February 4, 2016

Can I Trust You?

Trust is a fragile and complex thing. It’s a dynamic process  made up of our thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings and most important – our actions. It is often indefinable, highly personal and mostly an unconscious process that governs the why and how of what we do. Although trust, at all levels, appears to be at an all time low – […]
January 11, 2016

11 Ways to Be More Mindful in Your Work Relationships

Do you know about the marshmallow test? No, it’s not about seeing how many marshmallows you can toast and eat by the fire. It’s the classic Marshmallow Study conducted in 1968 at Stanford University by clinical psychologist Walter Mischel that became one of the longest running experiments in psychology. The initial study examined 600 children to see how they would […]