I try to understand people. I think doing so improves my relationships with them and my understanding of myself. I find feeling compassion for others helps me improve my relationships with them too. Same with empathy. I find taking responsibility for my emotions helps me improve my life and keeps me from blaming others. I see taking that responsibility as improving my life as much as anything. Taking responsibility for[…] Keep reading →

If you read this blog you know I write a lot about beliefs and mental models and how they filter how you perceive your environment and influence your motivations and behavior. If you’ve read my series on my Model or taken my leadership seminar, you know that models can diverge from what you perceive with your senses and still be more effective than one you consider more accurate. I often[…] Keep reading →

A couple years ago I wrote two posts on the emotional state where you get so lost in an activity you lose track of time, focused with all your attention. Hours pass without your noticing while minutes may seem like hours as you focus intently. We like this state. A researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied it and named the state “flow.” He wrote a book on it that improved my[…] Keep reading →

I didn’t mean to write yesterday’s post on starting with emotion on exercise, food, and habits. I meant to contrast how I like to exercise with how people who don’t exercise seem to and then to tell today’s story. People who don’t exercise seem to characterize it as torture and dislike it. I see it as fun and rewarding. Sometimes it feels like torture, but only when I know the feeling[…] Keep reading →

I find Americans try to get precise and scientific about food and exercise, in contrast to how incredibly unfit the country is. I write “try to” because I don’t think they succeed in being precise or scientific. The term carbohydrate, for example, used to have a specific scientific meaning. I think it still does, but I think in standard American usage it means “bad” or “evil,” like the term fat[…] Keep reading →

I wanted to share an example of effective leadership I once saw. When I was in graduate school, Columbia was considering its policy on allowing the military to have programs like ROTC on campus or not and held hearings anyone in the university could attend to speak their mind. I attended one. The President of the university, Lee Bolinger, ran the event. I had strong feelings about risking militarizing the campus[…] Keep reading →

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I know some people like working in big companies. They like the feeling of stability, the benefits, the uniformity, I guess. Regular readers know I prefer small companies, especially having co-founded one. Why? Because of big company culture. One incident cemented this perspective for me. I’ll tell you the story that made me not like big companies. You may feel I extrapolated too far. Maybe. What turned me off from[…] Keep reading →

You don’t have emotional intelligence, you were born with it, or you developed it. If you developed it you started sometime, like I did. If you don’t have it, you can start too. Here’s my start. I don’t pretend I’m the world master of emotional intelligence, but I’ve come a long way and I know anyone else can. I hope sharing the story motivates others. Context Before business school I[…] Keep reading →