Happy New Year! This is the one year anniversary of my Blog – my musings on an almost monthly basis, about books, articles, poems that have influenced me in some way. I hope that you have enjoyed them.

This Blog post focuses on the poem you have hopefully just read in my New Years e-card and animation: “Dreams” by Langston Hughes. If you didn’t read it, you might want to do so now……
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What happens when we don’t have any time to think? It seems that I periodically rush from one thing to another without a pause – not a moment to reflect on how I am or why I’m rushing. And I know that I am not alone. I hear this from my clients as well. What’s the virtue of knowing “how we are” in any given moment? Some people might call this “contemplating one’s navel,” meaning that it’s self-indulgent.
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Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—

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I was just reviewing a book about the Strengthsfinder Inventory, a tool I like very much and have been using for quite a while with my clients. (My blog post called Asking for Help also mentions Strengthsfinder.) This particular book is called “Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow”, by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (2008).
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After my post on Asking for help, someone who read it commented by asking, “Well, how do I know who my colleagues are?”

Hmmm… interesting question. And in thinking about it, I added other questions: Who can I talk to? Who can I trust? Who can I share ideas with? Who is my community? How do we know and how do we choose? Read more »

A friend suggested that I write a blog post about “making mistakes” and “failure.” Lo and behold, what should be the subject of the April issue of the Harvard Business Review, but “Failure”, or the “F Word” as Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief of HBR, calls it in his issue introduction.

The articles in this issue have helped me realize just how ill equipped we are, as a culture, to cope with being wrong, making an error, or failing in a bigger way. And they point out how that inability to cope makes it impossible for us to learn from our mistakes. Read more »

Asking for help is a confusing and difficult proposition for many of us. I notice it in my professional work with clients and in my personal life. What is that about? After all, we have different skills and strengths and different interests. We can easily provide help to one another because of these different strengths and skills. Read more »

“Incapable of being indifferent.” This is such an evocative phrase. I borrowed it from Kay Redfield Jamison, (Exuberance, the Passion for Life, 2004). It is the title of a chapter in which she describes the temperaments of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, to whom we owe the legacy of our national park system in this country: “…exuberant men. Infectiously enthusiastic, stupendously energetic, they left the country a wilder and more beautiful place because of their vision and action…Neither was capable of doing nothing when there was much to be done. Their joy in the wild was contagious to those around them” (p 20). Read more »

Ever since reading Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers, I have been thinking about the notion of “putting in the time.” He says that 10,000 hours are required to reach a master level of expertise. He gives some very compelling examples:

• The Beatles apparently performed in Germany more than 1,200 times over a period of 4 years (1960-1964). That’s a lot of time on stage – over 10,000 hours of playing time. Gladwell says that all of that performing time created their “brand” and accelerated their success.
• Bill Gates spent 10,000 hours programming on a mainframe computer in 1968, at age 13. Gladwell interviewed Gates, who said that early access to a computer contributed to his success.

So how do these examples translate to us in the everyday? Read more »

Greetings and Happy New Year! Welcome to my new Blog.

It seemed to make sense for my first Blog post to focus on my thoughts about the poem you may have just read in my New Years card. If you didn’t read it, you might want to now… Read more »