Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You’ve spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?
In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.
Exercise integrity in the moment of truth.
Studies have identified a significant ‘skills gap’ between what students are currently being taught and the skills employers are seeking in today’s global economy. Our children must be better prepared than they are now to meet the future challenges of our ever-changing world.
Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.
Employees are given the chance to help shape their company by participating in a company-wide communications program making suggestions on waste reduction, environmental improvement, customer satisfaction, quality improvement, and safety issues.
Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.
If you don’t choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road.
We’re often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don’t even realise we’re in the wrong jungle.
Nevertheless, the only way we can move from where we are now to where we would like to be is to accept where we are now.
Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal “comfort zone”. Then, when you get into the situation, it isn’t foreign. It doesn’t scare you.
Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It’s more of an art it’s based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you’re dealing with personal leadership issues.
There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
Organize and execute around priorities.
Some people achieve the top of the ladder and only then realise it was standing against the wrong wall.
Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.
Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.
The world has entered an era of the most profound and challenging change in human history.
Patience is emotional diligence.
Remember that our reactions are a product of our perceptions, and our perceptions are a result of what is at the center of our life.