"If you honor and serve the people who work for you,they will honor and serve you." - Mary Kay Ash
Honor and Serve
Category: Personal Leadership
The Cost of Making Assumptions
I proposed to Julie during our first trip to Paris, 38 years ago. The following day we walked up 430 feet to the hilltop of Montmartre, known for its beautiful vistas and abundance of street artists. We lingered amongst the local artists, many of them portrait artists, and all of them aggressive salespeople. We buckled…
Peace
My father was an artist, so we never purchased holiday cards. Instead, he painted this Dove of Peace. At the bottom right, he added in elegant, white script, "PEACE from The Colan Family." It became our family's signature holiday card for many years. So today I wish you peace in your heart, peace in your…
The Gift of The Present
The holiday season is hectic, so we will keep this post even shorter than usual. Here is our favorite poem that keeps things in perspective for us. We hope it does the same for you . . . Yesterday is History,Tomorrow is a Mystery,Today is a Gift,That’s why they call it the Present. May you…
The Art of the Gift
What is a gift? My family has a long tradition of thoughtful gift giving dating back to my Grandma Minnie. With legs too thin to hold up panty hose (she had to put rubber bands at the top to hold them up), Grandma Minnie would go out and personally Christmas shop for her eight children…
4 Holiday Stress-Busters
The holiday season rush, year-end crunch, New Year's expectations—they all place heavy demands on our minds and bodies. This acronym can help proactively manage your stress during the holidays or any other time: H.A.L.T. Avoid getting too: Hungry. This might sound goofy around the holidays, when you make good use of the extra hole in your belt, but being too…
Give It Away to Keep It
Margie Blanchard is Co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies. She also used to lead their Office of the Future. She is brilliant, compassionate, and insightful. During this discussion with Margie, she shared her reaction to losing their beloved home in San Diego to a fire. Her perspective can be a lesson for each of…
Your Leadership Legacy: Live it Now
Inheritance is what we leave to others. Legacy is what we leave in them. Here is my favorite true story of living and leaving a legacy. In the early 1900s, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for entangling the Windy City in everything from bootlegged booze and…
The Power of Passion: Lessons from a Famous Pez Collector
Researchers who study high achievers now consider passion to be the "missing link." It is the intangible component that explains why some people and teams are better able to stick to their plans and achieve greater levels of success—success like Pierre Omidyar has achieved. After earning his degree in computer science, Pierre Omidyar joined a…
Two Words to Motivate
How do I motivate my team, my kids, my spouse, my anyone? It’s an age-old question with a myriad of different answers ... too many to even summarize here. So, in our information-overloaded world, let me boil it down to this. If you want to motivate, then appreciate. We do more for those who appreciate us. The…