SmikleSpeaks

Try wandering around Rome in the dark after a couple of glasses of really good Italian wine looking for your hotel with your sister and what may be a faulty GPS… It wasn’t dark when we started out on this 20-minute trek that turned into an hour and a half adventure but it was very dark by the time we stumbled across our hotel...we discovered that we both have explorer's hearts!

What’s stopping you from reaching your goals? You can start if you know what’s stopping you! And I mean you can start anything if you can figure out what’s stopping you.

It's possible to misuse the concept of 'gratitude'. In this episode author Linda Roszak Burton explores the concept of weaponizing gratitude.

This podcast is a short mental tune-up for me and for you. My premise is simple: if we can change what we’re giving, we can change what we’re getting. The Law of Attraction says that positive thoughts bring positive results and negative thoughts bring negative results. We know it's not that simple, so let's go a little deeper.

We need tools to spark behavioral change. That’s what this podcast is all about. It’s about sparking the behavioral change that will help you lead people to excellence in every area of their work.

This podcast is all about habits of excellence of individual leaders and their organizations. This is a never-ending, transformational process that is not to be confused with perfectionism. Excellence is a realistic, attainable goal. Perfection is not.

If I’m not careful, I fall into the trap of only noticing the worst leaders, the worst organizations, the worst situations. That’s perhaps because people often wait until crises to call on a consultant so when I get there, I see them at their worst. In reality, there is a tremendous amount of compassion and kindness demonstrated by leaders everywhere. If you’re slipping into cynicism or apathy, pa...

A friend, her name is Dot, and I were discussing a problem shared with us by a mutual friend, whose name I won’t mention. She had bravely extricated herself from an unfulfilling, unhappy situation. But, she decided to return. My friend, a very wise woman said, “She’s going to be the grass and he’s going to be the lawnmower.” Dot and I talked about it she said some important things. She said that w...

I interviewed for a faculty position and I didn’t get it. I made it down to the final two and they picked someone else. I was really disappointed. I really miss being in the classroom. I love working with grad students. I love helping people explore their intellectual curiosity. I'm going to talk about the interview experience and the mistakes I made.

I’m going to quickly share my understanding of and thoughts on self-leadership. I think of it as a tool for what Parker Palmer calls 'letting your life speak.' If you haven’t read that book, Let Your Life Speak , you really should!

I want to talk about how we can accept the fact that we are perfectly imperfect. It is impossible to be physically, mentally or spiritually perfect, so don’t waste energy trying. Life is good as it is. We are good as we are. Can you take a moment and absorb that thought? You are good just as you are…amazing, contemplate that.

If we continue to live we will continue to have stressors in some shape, form or fashion. My Mom used to say the only people without stress were in the cemetery. And she wasn’t talking about the grave diggers. Recognizing that we’re all going to have some stress or another. I want to give a few tips for living joyfully with the realities of stress.

The list of possible career setbacks goes on and on. The setbacks are real. They’re hurtful. They’re damaging. They can have lasting, lingering effects on our careers, on our psyches, on our confidence, on our self-esteem. This podcast gives you twelve steps for dealing with the setback. None of it is new information. Consider it a reminder if you already know. If you don’t know it, take notes.

I had surgery this summer and had to spend a lot of time on my back. I’ve got a comfortable mattress and lots of pillows so time on my back was pleasant. But it’s not the creature comforts that made time on my back worthwhile. It’s the things money can’t buy, the real riches of life. I have a lot of those riches and am going to try to cover all of them.

There are times when I can dredge up every mistake I ever made. I can find every failure, every misstep. I try not to fall into this trap often, but I certainly fall in. This podcast is all about ways that we can move from regret to resolve. It doesn’t pay to keep our head or our hearts in the past. That just creates a cycle of negative emotions that keep us from leveraging our learnings. As hard...

I don’t believe there really is any such thing as life balance. I think the best we can do is to blend the components of our life. The first thing required to create that blend is an assessment of our core values. What really matters most to us? Do we have a core value around our Faith? Do we have a core value around personal accomplishment? Or, is one of our core values based on health and wellne...

I was in yoga class and one of the teachers started the class by saying she read something that said Finish what you start, Do more than you think you can, Do it better than you think you can. At first that sounded really good and I was nodding in agreement. And I kept repeating it to myself. I was pumping myself up with a new mantra. But then, a few days later I started thinking about it. I mean...

Thanks to so many listeners for your positive feedback on the "What would you do?" scenarios that I did a couple of months ago. Who knew they’d be so popular? I didn’t! Since so many people like them, I am going to do another one. It’s all about perceptions of support.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to ensure that DEI efforts are impactful. Progressing in this are requires a clear strategy. If you’re a regular listener you know that I am almost a zealot about strategy. Part of the reason that so many DEI efforts fail is because they lack strategy. A lot fail because they lack real commitment. I’m going to briefly review 12 practices that I think...

Collaborative efforts, face obstacles. Some of the obstacles are related to individual behavior, others to organizational structures, and still others to organizational practices. We can strengthen collaborative efforts by identifying the obstacles. Once obstacles are identified, the work can start to remove them. Organizations that are unwilling to address their unique obstacles cannot move forwa...

Lately I’ve been working with a lot of leaders on how they can build teams and strengthen collaboration. This is important because so many projects require cross functional cooperation. We all know how counterproductive it is to have silos and turf lines. I’m going to share some of the competencies that I think are important for anyone who is leading collaborative efforts. These competencies are e...

This is the third episode in this series on resilience. Dr. Neel provides tools for using resilience to live whole, satisfying lives.

We're going to explore the relationship between good mental health and resilience. Dr. Neel is back to help us delve into this topic.

This episode is a deep-dive into resilience. What does it mean? How does it play out? Do we all have it? Dr. Kathryn Neel is the founder of Cornerstone Psychological Services. She's going to help us come to clear understanding of resilience.

This is the fourth of the podcasts that focus on scenarios that are drawn from my consulting life. Here’s another one on DEI for your consideration. This is a sticky situation...an all-too-common occurrence. I’ll be asking you to think about your approach to analyzing the issue and then taking action.