Five Ways to Support a Partner in Professional Trouble
It happens from time to time. Your partner comes home from work defeated. A project went off the rails, they failed to hit their annual target, or were fired after making a big mistake that cost their organization big bucks….
Seven Strategies for Creating an Awesome Vision
Sharing a compelling vision for your organization’s year ahead, your team’s work priorities or your family’s vacation is a differentiator. When a community clearly understands why something is happening and how it will unfold, shit gets done and people have…
Five More Tips For Asking Great Questions
Great questions inspire better conversations. My book club recently read Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano, which seeks to ask and answer approximately 33 questions about, you guessed it, basketball and other topics, such as action movies and anthropomorphism. …
Six Ways to Support a Spouse Running for Public Office
This fall my partner ran for public office. It was a first time for us both. While she was unsuccessful, losing by a mere 300 votes, the experience was very instructive for both of us. Running for public office requires…
Three Ways to Sustain Thanksgiving Gratitude
Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday and it just happened. In addition to the spectacular food and drink (thanks, Auntie Sharon and Uncle John!), I love spending time reflecting with my community about what makes us thankful. Expressing gratitude enhances human…
How to Give Feedback
A focus of this blog is to help you have better conversations. Enhancing dialogue at work, in classrooms and throughout neighbourhoods makes our communities more engaged, diverse and healthier. Accepting and offering feedback are essential elements of great conversations. Giving…
How to Ask for Feedback
A focus of this blog is to help you have better conversations. Enhancing dialogue makes our communities more engaged, diverse and healthier. Accepting and offering feedback are essential elements of great conversations. Giving and receiving praise or criticism isn’t easy,…
Five Professional Lessons from a Negative Customer Experience
For my family, 2016 ended with a less-than-pleasant travel experience with BC Ferries to my family home in Merville on Vancouver Island. We encountered poor customer service a lot and, as we consider the service that we deliver in our…
Four Tips for Dealing with Awkward Holiday Conversations
Holidays bring families from all over the country and world together. This can sometimes be recipes for awkwardness when your gun-toting, freedom loving, conservative uncle breaks bread with your gay, socialist brother. The inevitable train wreck of a conversation…
How to Compromise
Meaningful dialogue is an elusive thing in our communities. Having a respectful conversation with someone about something on which we do not agree isn’t common. Yelling opinions over someone else or building a newsfeed that reinforces your worldview are common…