Choosing Your Lessons
I’ve always played sports — never particularly well, mind you — but I’ve always played something. In elementary school and junior high, I was all about football — that is, until the game graduated from flags to tackle, I stopped growing and everyone else started to loom over me. In high school, I took up […]
Running on Empty
Trudging up the modest incline yesterday towards Spring Lake – huffing and puffing, chest tight, legs heavy as stones — I feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this run is going to be a momentous struggle. To my utter dismay, this 50-year-old body of mine just isn’t responding the way […]
James Bond, 007: Licensed to Improvise
Last Friday, I had a chance to watch the new James Bond film, “Skyfall”, with Daniel Craig reprising his role as the world’s smoothest super-spy. Don’t worry, 007 fans — I won’t give away the story! What I do want to share with you is my observations regarding the personality contrast between Bond and his […]
Choosing Clients the Old-Fashioned Way: Interview Them!
Scan the Web and you’ll find countless articles providing tips for fool-proof employee interviews, guaranteed to separate the wheat from the chaff, the gold nuggets from the pail of sand. Although fine for companies and organizations looking to bring on new staff (or new vendors), these articles fail to serve trainers and training companies, struggling […]
The 2012 Giants: World Champion Team- Building
Two days after my local baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, won the World Series (in a 4-game sweep over the Detroit Tigers), I’m still sitting at my desk, asking myself: How did they do it? I mean, we’re not talking about the 1927 New York Yankees here. As a team competing for a championship, […]
A Face in the Crowd
The other day while looking up something on Wikipedia, I was greeted by a prominent note at the top of the page asking me for a mere $3.00 donation to fund the website’s ongoing efforts. Wikipedia is an amazing, volunteer service, right – the modern equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary? What’s $3.00 to me, […]
Going, Going… Lagaan
When thinking about fun ways to spend an evening, I’m guessing very few people say to themselves, “You know, tonight I’d sure like to watch a 4-hour historical epic about cricket—with lots of Bollywood dancing.” And yet, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting, especially if we’re talking about Aamir Khan’s lavish 2001 spectacle, Lagaan: Once Upon […]
“I’ve Got Your Back”
I watch a lot of action and sci-fi movies, and inevitably there’s a scene where the hero, preparing to rush into a gun fight, turns to his right-hand man (or woman, or Droid) and says, “You cover me”. On the silver screen, this is a great “trust moment” for the protagonist — yes, they’re the […]
What is Success?
If you’ve ever watched “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (and who hasn’t?), you know that Indiana Jones doesn’t really have a choice; he must find the Ark of the Covenant (with all its mysterious power) before the bad guys or leave the entire world at dire risk. For Indy, it’s all or nothing, a one-way […]
“The Way” to Build Team Trust
A few days back I watched a fascinating movie on dvd, called The Way. Have you seen it? One of my go-to online resources, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com), describes the film’s plot as follows: “A father heads overseas to recover the body of his estranged son who died while traveling the “El Camino de […]