Winston Churchill is often credited with saying, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” You know people like that. We’ve elected way too many people like that. Actual or presumed expertise often results in confidence – certainty, but that certainty comes with a ...
read more →
Your trustworthiness and credibility will likely mean the difference between career success or failure. If you’re untrustworthy but lucky, you might wallow in abject mediocrity. Most people who get into public service in the first place do so because they are the good guys – they just don’t often know ...
read more →
It was pointed out recently that we seem to be a nation united on values and divided by politics. (Values unite, issues divide.) Almost all of us want to feel safe, secure and provide better futures for our kids. How we do those things is where things begin to deteriorate. ...
read more →
Normal people tend to avoid conflict like explosive diarrhea. It’s really difficult, messy, and makes your stomach hurt. So, most people do what they can to pretend it’s not that important or that bad or, failing to justify it away, they defer it to somebody else or they kick the ...
read more →
I’m not talking about your next set of wheels (although electric vehicles (EVs) are clearly in your present or future) – we’re talking about public engagement. Reach and effectiveness are two arguably valid measurements for authentic public engagement. In this age of ever increasing demands on people’s time and attention, ...
read more →
Clarity and Candor are the Batman and Robin, Lennon and McCartney, Bacon and Eggs or SpongeBob and Patrick of public engagement; the perfect pair and indispensable under the right circumstances. Clarity and candor are more often than not missing from much of the communication that organizations, both public and private, ...
read more →
Feels pretty good to hear that, doesn’t it? Validation is something that humans crave regardless of who they are. Not getting some level of validation slowly builds resentment, of which we seem to have an ample supply these days. In helping people understand and deal with emotional, angry, frightened people ...
read more →
May is typically a month when people make serious plans about what they’re going to do for fun the rest of this year. Wanna hear something really pathetic? Less than half of workers in the U.S. actually use all of their vacation days. And I’ll admit that for a long ...
read more →
Only 21% of employees trust their bosses, according to Gallup. That’s a lousy way to run an organization, but it’s consistent with the overall decline in trust in institutions and authority. However, Gallup found, when leaders implement three specific actions, 95% of their employees fully trust them. The answer isn’t ...
read more →
Can’t you apologize too much? Good question. It came from a client recently and it prompted a lengthy conversation starting with what constitutes a good apology. We all agreed that “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings ...
read more →
