stress tagged posts

Those Awkward Emotions December 15, 2021 Affective Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Peer Powered Performance

We are settling in with my Mom and Dad who will be with us for the next four months while their house is being built. It is surprising the childhood triggers that surface in close proximity. As usual there are always great lessons. The most significant this morning is how difficult it is to embrace honesty in a culture (family) steeped in history...

Part 1: Solving Stress: The Inside Solution December 15, 2021 Affective Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Peer Powered Performance, Positive Deviance 3 comments

This is part four in a five part examination of the forces that keep individuals and institutions caught a cycle of stress trapped by unexamined assumptions and ill designed solutions. Part one examined the role of self in our illusory imprisonment, two the often subconscious part played by supervisors in the continuing incarceration and section three delves into the irresistible influence exerted on us by our peers. Chapter four introduces the value of using the Positive Peer Pull of...

Calm First, Customers Second December 15, 2021 Emotional Intelligence

The next time anyone in your life has a complaint consider it a gift. For every customer who does complain there are 26 other customers who will remain silent. Ignoring or avoiding customer (or employee) feedback not only pushes the conversations underground, but also escalates them to a higher level each time they repeat (and therefore re-experience) their dissatisfaction...

Don’t work harder reduce friction December 15, 2021 Emotional Intelligence No comments

I find the best ideas don’t always come from the typical mainstream business books. These are not lessons learned from any boardroom, or business, but from getting in the deep water with 800 of my closest rivals. If you are drowning in work, and you believe the only choice is to move faster work harder, “put in more laps”, these ideas are for you.

I have been a “competent” swimmer most of my life. When I was 35 I decided to enter my first triathlon...

The Most Dangerous Storms December 15, 2021 Affective Leadership, Astonishing Service, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Training

Despite all that I have done to learn the skills to improve my “Emotional Intelligence” my primitive chemistry doesn’t always want to stay in the cage where it belongs. This is true for all of us to some extent and is part of our evolution as a species. The limbic system which floods our bodies with Cortisol when confronted with a perceived threat responds in two hundredths of a second, while our thinking prefrontal cortex may take as long as two full seconds to respond.

If we are bein...