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It’s easier to land a job when you already have one.  This is not a cliché, it’s a clinically proven marketplace reality.  In a national survey of more than four thousand job seekers and human resources professionals worldwide, people with jobs have a better chance of being hired than unemployed job seekers.  It makes logical sense. They have social proof, confidence in their own abilities, greater negotiating power and, most importantly,…

Netflix once published an inspiring employee culture guide about freedom and responsibility.  There’s an entire chapter about setting the right context, rather than controlling people’s actions. According to their managers, high performance people will do better work if they understand the context and are turned loose to work within it.  Here’s the best passage:  When one of your talented employees does something dumb, don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context…

When we have number of different feelings, thoughts and emotions running simultaneously, it’s really difficult to manage them all.  Because our psychological bandwidth can only cope with so many components before the emotional malaise engulfs us and starts overloading our system.  And so, instead of trying to manage them all, we should manage them one by one. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to introduce my latest technology innovation.  Feelz is…

Who do you think you are?  We liked you better when you did everything we wanted you to do.  But then you just had to start growing and maturing and taking the time to care for your own needs. And now it’s just not the same between us. Ever since you decided to wake up and get off your treadmill of obligations, now you’re not a deluded as you used to…

One of the more common reactions people have towards my nametag is gratitude.  Specifically at a party or a gathering where there are lots of new faces, people will actually thank me for being the only guest whose name they don’t have to worry about remembering.  And so, it provides mental relief. A break for the brain. The nametag is an interpersonal totem that reassures people, hey, relax, the…

Assisi’s most famous prayer is as follows.  Divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be understood, as to understand.  Eight hundred years after its conception, his words are cornerstone of modern communication theory.  What’s interesting is when you invert the prayer. Approaching the interpersonal experience from the other person’s perspective.  This is a strategy our marriage counselor taught us. She said to enter into dialogue…

Stanford’s researchers used advanced linguistic tools to analyze nearly a million reviews of about six thousand restaurants and found a few interesting trends.  First, expensive food and sexual language often went together.  Next, cheaper food and drug language often went together.  But the trend that caught my attention was, poor customer service was described in very personal language.  Upset customers used words and word stems that included antagonize and heartbreakingly. And according to…

There is almost no work in life as hard as waiting.  No matter how much action you take to move the story forward, the windows of opportunity can seem dismayingly small and infrequent.  It sucks. The process can make you feel frustrated, depleted, hopeless and powerless.  But that’s okay. Those are the normal feelings anyone would feel in that situation.  The muscle we must learn to build, then, is…

We always assume things are going to be easier in the future.  And so, we hold out hope for the ideal situation and the right time and the perfect opportunity. Waiting until that magic day when things are simpler and slower and safer, at which point we can finally make our move.  This is a way of telling ourselves a disempowering story. Pretending that the craziness of the moment…

One of my favorite rules from the improv comedy world is, treat everybody like they’re a genius.  This idea goes far beyond saying yes and. Because at the most fundamental, treating everybody like a genius forces you to trust the communication process and believe that the other person has something valuable to say.  It activates the wheels of your own curiosity, making you a more engaged and respectful listener,…