Consoling a Loved One

What to Say to Someone When Their Loved One Dies

Three times in the past year, I’ve had the sad occasion to have a friend lose a spouse through death: car accident, heart attack, and cancer....

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Handling Dominant Personalities

How to Control Dominators in Meetings

Meetings often unfold similar to encounters on the playground: Passive and dominating attendees annoy each other and complicate things. So why...

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Running Efficient Staff Meetings

8 Ways to Improve the ROI of Staff Meetings

Ray, our COO many years ago, used to start meetings with 10-15 minutes of chit-chat. While his intention was to promote socializing, the effect was...

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Meeting with a Colleague

Start an Elevator Conversation; Forget the Elevator Speech

The elevator speech is dead. That was my pronouncement in last week’s blog. The reasons: Elevator speeches are too vague, too canned, too...

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Making Great First Impressions

10 Tiny Things That Create Big First Impressions

Whether it takes 7 seconds or 17 minutes to make a first impression, people always seem astonished at what idiosyncrasy causes the gut reaction. That...

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Managing Small Talk Conversations

How to Skip Small Talk and Get to Know Someone

Noticing the time on a text message (3:04 a.m.) that came in from a Millennial one morning, I asked if he had been working that late. “No, I...

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