Do you have a Power Phrase?
[You: “I ate a Power Bar for breakfast. Is that the same thing?” Me: “No.”]
Think of it as a focal point, or a mantra if you like. Here’s why you should have one (or more than one; ...
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What’s your story?
Why are you in business? How did you start? What drove you to do what you do? If you work in a larger corporation, what’s their story? Do you know?
I once worked for a 92-year-old woman with a voice that sounded like 50-grit ...
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What is it that defines a truly great leader? Why is it that names like Joan of Arc, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Mother Teresa resonate throughout history, while countless others are forgotten—or footnotes at best? How do you know when someone is a truly great leader?
Here’s the test, and it may be a harsh one if you’re being honest with yourself:
Would your followers (your employees, your team ...
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Last night, I played keyboards in a band for a holiday party. I was playing songs that, for the most part, I hadn’t played in a year or more. There were several songs that I’d never played before. In fact, for some of these songs, I’d never even seen the sheet music until I pulled up a chart on my iPhone seconds before playing the song live.
Was I nervous? Nope.
Did I feel pressure? Nope.
Did I choke? Nope.
Okay, so how is ...
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Last night I attended a performance by the Seattle Symphony of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. If you’ve ever seen the movie Shine, you know how daunting this piece is to a concert pianist. It’s a 40-plus minute workout, consisting of 30,000 individual notes, all of which have to be performed—often at lightning speed—in a particular order; with nuance, dynamics, and passion; live; from memory; in front of a discerning audience of several thousand people, and an even more discerning orchestra ...
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As I’m writing this, the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend is just ending, and we’re all well into the throes of the holiday season.
There’s nothing quite like the pressure of preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for roughly 30 people. It’s an exercise in cooking, kitchen resource allocation, family dynamics, political diplomacy, alcohol distribution, and traffic flow, just to name a few.
And there’s only one chance to get it right.
Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, this probably sounds familiar. If you’re a leader, you’ve ...
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