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On September 26, 1990, a brand new show premiered on ABC, and television history was made. This show broke the rules, defied expectations, and was unlike anything anybody had ever seen before. The reason I say the show made history is because TV Guide rated it number 8 in their list of the 50 worst TV shows of all time. The show was called Cop Rock, and it ...
One of the biggest benefits of being a motivational speaker is that I get to work with many different organizations in many different industries. Because of this, I can sometimes see patterns that others who work within just one sector can miss. (I can also sometimes hear voices that others don’t hear, but that’s a different conversation altogether. And the medication helps.)
One common refrain that I hear from leaders across the board is this:
[quote]I ... Continue Reading →Posted by:
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal talks about leadership and creativity (one of my favorite topics, and the focus of my keynote program The Emmy Effect: How to Develop and Lead Award Winning Talent and Teams). In the article, author Justin Brady says:
[quote]Most leaders talk about creativity (or its cousin, innovation) without understanding what it is and how it happens. The process of real creativity is messy, chaotic, sometimes even disgusting, and ... Continue Reading →I’m a geek.
How much of a geek? I am a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM). Need I say more? IBM has a monthly magazine called The Linking Ring, and there’s a regular column that reviews magic tricks, books, and apparatus. In the most recent issue there is a product review that ends with this sentence:
[quote style=”boxed”]So if you are looking for a fake egg that compresses into a relatively small space and pops back into its ... Continue Reading →It doesn’t take fire and brimstone to be a leader. As my friend Jennifer Kahnweiler says in her new book, Quiet Influence, sometimes the quietest leaders can have the greatest influence!
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In the current (May 2013) issue of Harvard Business Review, there’s an article called Creating the Best Workplace on Earth. In it the authors talk about what employees really need to be their most productive. Among the six factors they identify is this one: employees need an environment where they can discover and magnify their strengths. In other ...
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I work with, and speak for, organizations that want their people to play a bigger game and produce unreasonable results. Because of this, I’m keenly interested in why people don’t do this. I mean, think about it. If you had the power to produce big results, audacious results, even unreasonable results, wouldn’t you do it?
Well, you do have the power. What’s more, you know you have the power. You don’t need me to tell you. You’ve been hearing it from ...
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Every now and then, we motivational speakers get what we in the trade call “a really good gig.” I just returned from one of these. For most of the past week, I was on a luxury cruise to Bermuda with the top dealers for Clopay Garage Doors. I did a keynote program, ...
With apologies to William Shakespeare: some create projects, some inherit projects, and some have projects thrust upon them. It happens to all of us. Sometimes they come in the form of assignments, sometimes in the form of opportunities (and the two are not mutually exclusive). But before we go any further, let’s define what we mean by “project.”
A “project” isn’t ...
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