One of the key aspects of being a good leader is determining the road forward and figuring out how to stay on that road despite the sometimes unfavorable conditions. We often meet individuals who turn off the road to success for what appears to be an immediate gain without considering how this short-term diversion will impact their long-term goal. Each of these distractions puts them on the road to nowhere. We’ve been working with a lot of organizations of late…
Do you remember that feeling of simple childhood joy, like you could do anything you dreamed? Do you remember the many times you were asked as a kid what you wanted to be when you grew up? Without even knowing it, that question probably shaped your current work satisfaction, and it may be limiting your success today. Many of us have chosen life and work based on childhood dreams and/or the values that someone else held for us when…
Linda was recently describing the experience of doing her PhD dissertation research. She said that although she was interested in the question she was studying, she felt fearful and incompetent about taking on such a large project knowing that it would require her to do a fair amount of work that simply didn’t interest her. So, instead of tackling her dissertation she cleaned the back of the refrigerator—literally! As she scrubbed, she realized that in the face of…
Last summer there was an article by Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker called “The Really Big One” about the scientifically based prediction of a devastating earthquake that is overdue in the northwest. Living in Portland, OR, we took notice. At this point, over one year later, there is considerable effort going into preparing for this potential disaster. Most people understand the need to prepare for disaster even if they don’t do it. What most of us forget is that…
As you may have noticed, we love helping people succeed! While we often help people succeed at the intersection of their life and their work, we believe these skills are of value to anyone trying to choose happiness and overcome overwhelm. And, we know you’ll get closer to happiness and more effectively be able to manage all that’s on your plate if you get the right people on your team. For some of you, your team is the group of…
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had conversations with executive leadership teams, parents, soccer coaches, and midlevel managers that have focused on how to help others succeed. To a person, they were struggling with how to know when to be hands on and when to be hands off. At one of those meetings, an executive said that they use the what, what and how, and how continuum—which looks like this: When deciding how hands on to be, a good…
You may look at the title of today’s post and think to yourself, “Of course people matter! Why would they write about that?” And, while we know that you know that people matter, it’s not often we see evidence of it in a compelling way. So when we saw this snippet of video from the Olympics, we thought to ourselves: This is what it means to say people matter. As you will see when you watch the video, a pack…
We were recently in a meeting talking about some of the work by Roger Fisher and William Ury on the Harvard Negotiating team. Many of you will know them from their 1991 book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. In that groundbreaking book, the authors introduced a new way to think about negotiations and difficulties. Where we once thought of winners and losers, they proposed identifying options for mutual gain, separating the people from the problems, and…
Thank you all for your wonderful stories and comments during our five-week Choosing Happiness series! They were truly touching and we love that you shared your stories with us. Many of you wrote and told us that you personally are working on choosing happiness, but have a close friend or loved one who can’t quite get there. No matter what you do or say, you can’t seem to make that person happy, and you’re frustrated. Some of you feel a…
This is our final post in our series on Choosing Happiness. If you haven’t had an opportunity to read the last few posts, please do! They can, in fact, help you to choose happiness. We began with an overview of the research, taught you to Notice Your Life, explored two core practices, Gratitude and Forgiveness, spent some time helping you get to Know What You Want and last week we talked about the power of Kindness and Service. This week we want…
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Carpenter Smith Consulting is a Women Business Enterprise, Oregon Cert ID 7047.
