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 ...
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You’ve probably noticed that we’re in a hard-to-explain business. I’ve largely given up trying to describe what I do for a living if the person asking isn’t already connected to it in some way. As Run DMC said, “It’s tricky.” There’s no simple soundbite answer, but one accurate ...
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Dale Carnegie, the incredibly influential How to Win Friends & Influence People book guy said, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” He said this ...
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I’ve thrown around the term “tribal” pretty liberally for a long time. You find it referenced all the time when someone is describing how groups of people tend to think, act and function alike – usually in less than flattering terms. We’ve used it a lot in descriptions of group ...
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Most of us would agree that Santa Claus is a pretty righteous dude. He’s not only in touch with himself, Mrs. Claus and the reindeer, he’s got a general handle on the emotional needs of every child on Earth. He never takes a Christmas Eve off or just phones it ...
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For the past several weeks, for a variety of reasons, I just happened to have had the personal opportunity to experience more than my fair share of customer service. I’ve been dealing with phone automation and front line script readers in utilities, health care, real estate, government and an assortment ...
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Television advertising salespeople are having a spectacular summer! One major marketing analytics firm projects 2022 mid-term political ad spending to exceed $8.8 billion. To put that in perspective, the 2018 midterms generated only $3.9 billion, and $9.5 billion was spent during the much higher profile 2020 presidential election. If you’ve ...
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We spend so much time worrying about the content and process of the projects and initiatives that we’re involved with that we lose sight of what’s right in front of our eyes. Never forget that ultimately we’re in the people business – the relationship business. That means building rapport by ...
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We work with very smart and very caring people doing very complex public sector jobs who do their darndest to make great decisions that benefit all of us – the public. And at the end of the day, often the hardest part of their job is getting us to ...
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When you do the kind of important, greater good work that you do, talking about first impressions or last impressions might sound pretty superficial – not worthy of consideration by serious professional people. But I expect that you realize that public engagement and conflict resolution is at its essence … ...
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