Priorities
Your Greatest Gift as a Leader
At 71 years old, I don’t need many gifts at Christmas. I have a good home, a good family, a good team, and my life has never been more fulfilling than it is right now. The opportunities I’m seeing for partnerships and transformation are greater now than at any other time in my life. Now,…
Read MoreMark Cole: Busy is a Four-Letter Word
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right? That time of year when people are busier than ever preparing for family visits, fighting crowds at the mall, wrapping presents, finishing projects, and setting goals, all while trying to bake fruitcakes for neighbors. Our lives are busy with so much still to be done. And…
Read MoreDon’t try to manage your time – manage yourself!
Here’s an important announcement: There is no such thing as time management. Think about it; the term is an oxymoron. Time cannot be managed. It cannot be controlled in any way. Everyone gets the same number of hours and minutes every day. Nobody—no matter how shrewd—can save minutes from one day to spend on another.…
Read MorePriorities Prevent Your Leadership from Crashing
Look both ways before crossing the street, check the rearview mirror before backing up, put your blinker on before turning—these simple matters of prioritization keep people safe on the roadways. Yet as rudimentary as they are, people still get them backward. According to the National Safety Council, one-fourth of automobile accidents are caused by drivers…
Read MoreWhen a ball has to drop, make sure it’s the right one
Have you ever felt like you spend your life juggling? Family, work, friendships, health, and simple daily commitments all demand our attention. It seems that the only way to satisfy all the demands is to frantically juggle them, hoping that nothing important gets dropped. But how do you determine what’s important? How do you prioritize?…
Read MoreThink You’re Ready for Success? Prepare To Be Disappointing
Leaders who transform their neighborhoods, businesses, and communities have an unshakable sense of purpose. They are motivated by a bold and compelling vision that consumes their thoughts and fills them with passion. Such a vision demands sacrifices, unconventional choices, and tradeoffs that won’t always make sense to the leaders’ biggest fans: their friends and family.…
Read MoreOVERCOMING RESISTANCE INSTEAD OF BEING OVERWHELMED BY IT
Parents of toddlers and teenagers understand a simple truth about being a leader: sooner or later you encounter fierce resistance. Leadership feels a lot like peddling uphill, swimming upstream, or running into a stiff headwind. The challenge is to overcome the resistance instead of being overwhelmed by it. 1) Be Aware that Motion Creates Friction…
Read MoreHow to Think Straight and Concentrate
We train our brain by the things we do. For example, experienced taxicab drivers have an abnormally large hippocampus, the portion of the brain responsible for navigation. Veteran violinists or keyboardists have an expanded motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with fine motor skills. Our brain is literally shaped by what we repeatedly…
Read MoreThe value of bottom-line thinking
How do you figure out the bottom line for your organization, business, department, team, or group? In many businesses, the bottom line is literally the bottom line. Profit determines whether you are succeeding. But dollars should not always be the primary measure of success. Would you measure the ultimate success of your family by how…
Read MoreFrom my Files: Priorities
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I try to post a quote for every day on something related to leadership or personal growth. I love sharing those quotes from my personal files, but I don’t always like the 140-character limit. Lately I’ve been sharing about priorities on Twitter. But I’ve had to…
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