1: Maria is mad.
She’s a copywriter at a mid-sized company. She and her co-worker Louis just reviewed the latest draft of a proposal with their boss.
“During the meeting, they were supposed to be jointly presenting their ideas,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory write in their classic book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.
“But … continue reading
1: It’s called the “Fools’ Choice.”
“Kevin, his peers, and their boss were deciding on a new location for their offices—would they move across town, across the state, or across the country?” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory in their classic book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.
Two of the company’s leaders presented their case for … continue reading
1: You know when the other guy is overstating his point.
You feel it when someone shuts down and stops participating in the conversation.
You sense when someone tightens their jaw and begins pointing their finger.
What do you fail to notice?
“Your eye roll. Your head shake. Your sneer,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory in their classic book Crucial … continue reading
Abraham Lincoln on understanding: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
1: Greta is two hours into an intense meeting with her top 200 leaders.
She is the CEO of a mid-sized company, and for the past 6 months, she’s been pushing to reduce costs.
The problem? Little has been accomplished to date.
“Surely people will tell her why they haven’t started cutting costs. After all, she has taken great pains to foster candor,” write Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, … continue reading
1: “What’s that?” Gabby asked.
She pointed to a small metal box that dangled from a hospital bed’s grab bar.
Jacob, who was in his early forties, had been confined to a hospital bed because of an aggressive brain tumor called a glioblastoma.
“He had been a very active man, a cyclist who loved the outdoors and lived an adventurous life, but this ‘glio’ robbed his body of the freedom … continue reading
1: When Phillip Jeffrey was 25 years old, he was diagnosed with a rare, incurable blood cancer. For the next six years, he underwent many rounds of chemotherapy.
Then, he had a stroke in the area of his brain responsible for vision.
“Losing vision is traumatic for anyone, but it was especially so for Phillip, whose greatest passion in life is photography,” Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The … continue reading
1: Why do you procrastinate? What can you do to procrastinate less?
Those were the questions a group of psychologists at DePaul University and Case Western University set out to answer.
So they set up an experiment. Half of the participants were invited to “take a math test.” The other half were invited to “play a math game.”
“In reality, the test and the game were the exact same activity,” … continue reading
1: Do you want to unlock untapped sources of motivation, energy, and willpower?
The answer is actually quite simple.
You start by identifying your values.
Then you take actions aligned with those values.
“Research shows that when action is guided by values, it’s vastly easier to accomplish feats that would seem impossible otherwise,” Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.
This holds true, Jane … continue reading
Abraham Lincoln on steadfastness: “Don’t swap horses while crossing a stream.”… continue reading
