Jim's Take

Last week we chatted accountability; this week is about creating a filter to make decisions. All decisions I make are based on the filter of: will I have to worry about this later?

Welcome to the final 100 days of the year. Let's dive into accountability and what we can accomplish before the year is out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RET1kiAMXcw If you know me, you know my favorite holiday is St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t celebrate just a day - I call it “the season,” and the events and celebrations can last for over a month. As a proud Irish American, the opportunity to celebrate the culture of my forebears brings happiness, pride and nostalgia. Many of my happiest memories revolve around somethin...

This week: I'm cheering you on. Let's chat unrealized dreams, the assumptions you make on why you can't do it, and how to get started.

There is lots of stress in this world right now: pandemics, politics, protests and more. It's manifesting into a dismissive anger that goes beyond just "frustration." I even got angry at spinach. Here's how I'm dealing.

There are lots of things to think about when picking an executive coach. Here are the things you should be looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itRWYxviWyE&feature=youtu.be Last week I interviewed Tom Rizzo on the show. Tom is a jazz guitarist turned financial advisor with a great story and a genuine concern to help freelancers find financial freedom. There was great advice in that show - I recommend, of course, that you listen to it.  But as I reflected on some of the conversations I’ve had with people who...

My background in the financial industry has provided me some interesting insight and views on how to think about money. I wasn’t a financial advisor, however, which is why I haven’t brought up the financial discussion on this show. That ends today.

As the tides of change come in, our ability to make effective decisions in a short time frame is becoming more important than ever.

Now is a time of learning, with businesses, society, communities and our own identities facing questions and change.

It's always a good time to learn. Now, especially, is a great time to learn. Sean Froudist-Walsh is an Irish neuroscientist in New York who shares how to tap your brain to learn more effectively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM33vFc8A9E&feature=youtu.be Happy Wednesday.  First - I want to thank everyone for the lovely notes and conversations over the past few weeks generated from the last two podcasts. They seem to have resonated with a lot of people, which is great. What I found in many of the conversations I had with people is that we all have different ways of looking at challenges....

https://youtu.be/B3IP3HCWg1o Last week I chatted about my dark place, and what I learned in dealing with it. I didn’t feel like I could really talk about my dark place, though, without talking about why I gave up drinking, so I’m covering that this week.  I’ve always admired people who could talk about their challenges “matter of factly.” I see a person with that ability as a person in control - o...

Isolation and solitude are the name of the game in a triathlon. That's never more evident than when you hit a "dark place" close to the finish.

This week’s podcast highlights a Bellwether of Irish American origin. Patrick Flynn is playwright, actor, professor, host of the Original Cast Podcast and casual vexillologist (look it up), among many other things.  What fascinates me, and what I love, about playwrights, actors and musicians is the fact that they all have one thing in common: they expend their energy creating something new that le...

Happy April!  I hope and trust that this post finds you well. Change has been the watchword of recent times; our ability to adapt has been strongly tested, and will continue to be tested in the coming weeks.  Today, I am continuing with my interviews of Irish Bellwethers. If you recall, my March podcasts were all set up to highlight Irish leaders in different industries, but then some kind of pand...

This week’s podcast is a focus on communication - and your responsibility as a communicator - in the “working from home” era.  As we pivot our lives to be almost exclusively behind a video screen, it’s important to remember that your reputation is driven by the way that you communicate through the medium.  We all have a multiple platforms to communicate - e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Link...

Happy Corona Week/Month/Quarter. Things seem to be changing faster than any of us can keep count. Life has been turned upside down, which was fun for a hot minute until things got even crazier.  We have a two year old. My wife is full time employed, I’m self employed. We are all working from home - Gabby on her work, me on mine, Isabelle on Frozen 2. I’m not balding - but if the next eight weeks g...

Sometimes I reflect on the massive amounts of ways that I have changed over the past 40 years, and it blows my mind.  30 years ago, I was jazzed by baseball. 20 years ago, I was jazzed by the pub. Now, I’m jazzed about learning and how people read books. I suppose the “coolness” of that journey is fairly subjective, and some might call it maturity, but whatever we call it - it’s quite the journey....

Few places have gone through the type of change that Belfast has experienced in the past 50 years. Former Mayor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir offers his perspective on the opportunities ahead for a great city.

We all talk about what we want a work environment to be - but psychological safety is the wrapper that makes it work.

Why can't anyone seem to get good feedback at the office? It's because we are so focused on "frameworks" and not a conversation ...

This week’s podcast is for “the people.”  Many organizations bring me in to work with their “high potential” employees (hi-po for short); those people who are seen as the future leadership of the firm with a lot of potential. I, along with my partners, offer coaching, individually and as a group, and put together leadership programs specific to them and their company’s needs. We accomplish a lot,...

Just hearing the term “micromanager” makes my skin crawl. I have flashbacks to late nights in the office, constant revisions of pointless e-mails, and lovely reminders of why I left the corporate life. In fact, while working on this week’s post and podcast, my two year old daughter happened to drop her first “F” bomb. I believe they may be related.  We hate micromanagement - no secret there. It’s...

We love helping people. The psychological benefits are well known; we feel rewarded and valued; we like being needed and being the hero, the savior and the champ. It’s … nice.  Unfortunately - all of those descriptions are about the benefits for YOU, not the person being helped. And there is a nuance to helping, where the reward, value and feelings of heroism need to be pushed to the back, and we...