Reflections

Friday, July 16, 2010

Competition Doesn’t Work Without Collaboration

Huh?  This doesn’t make sense, you say. Let’s take a case study: the recent World Cup Soccer Tournament – THE  SINGLE BIGGEST SPORTING EVENT ON EARTH. All the focus, drama, and hype is built around the “clash of titans”,  the winners and losers, the competition and struggle. But what’s missing from the picture?  The structure [...]

Friday, June 25, 2010

Power vs. Force: In Negotiation, In Life

I remember participating in a course many years ago and hearing the course leader say this: If you are powerful, you don’t need to use force. and People often use force when they don’t feel powerful. This notion really resonated at the time, and since then I have seen this distinction play out again and [...]

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Living your best life

Two weekends ago I attended an AMAZING course led by a gentleman named Robin Sharma (www.robinsharma.com).  His specialty is leadership, but this course was about living the life you really want for yourself and awakening the best version of who you are: your authentic self. It was a most inspiring weekend and contained many pieces [...]

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Loyalty vs. Doing the Right Thing

Sometimes in a relationship, you have to make the choice between being loyal to that particular person, or doing something that they won’t be happy about but you know is “the right thing”. Likely, this will result in a conflict between you and them.  But, NOT doing the right thing will only result in a [...]

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Mother Nature Calls The Shots

I’m still in France as I write this – and the odds look very good now that I’ll actually get on a flight departing tomorrow.  Yippee!  I won’t count my chickens before they’re hatched, but I am indeed quite optimistic after reading the latest newspaper reports. I’m writing this quick entry to highlight a point [...]

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Volcanic Disruption: Travel Misery or Travel Fun?

I’m writing from France where I just spent the week teaching at an Executive Education organization.  It was very enjoyable and went very well. I am now “stranded” as a result of airport closures in the wake of the volcano’s eruption in Iceland.  If all went according to original plan, I would be in the air right [...]

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Live an Olympic Life

Yes, you can live a life that yields the same kind of outstanding, inspiring results achieved by the leading athletes at the recent Olympic games. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the recent winter Olympics in Vancouver, and have also taken time to see some events from the Paralympic Games under way currently (finishing March 21st). During [...]

Monday, March 1, 2010

We Are More

I come to you today as a proud Canadian. The Vancouver Olympic Winter Games have come to an end, and Canada has set a new record for the most Gold medals ever won by a nation in the history of the Winter games.  And, as far as I know, it was done with fairness, in [...]

Friday, February 5, 2010

ReCentre

This is the last of my “Three R’s” blog entries. It’s not “Reading, wRiting, and aRithmatic”, but I see them as equally essential.   As an aside, doesn’t it seem a little odd that these three words ever ended up being called “The Three R’s” – they must have been a little short on the [...]

Monday, February 1, 2010

Rebalance

February 1st.  1/12th of the year has already passed.  Can you believe it? On January 1st I wrote about the rebirth I said I would bring about in my career this year.  I’m happy to report that this rebirth is well underway. Today I’m writing about another important tenet for me this year: restoring balance. [...]