Your EQ is a Hot Topic
A colleague is having a rough day and looks upset and is being argumentative. How you deal with it says a lot about your emotional intelligence. Are you pretending that it's not happening or do you tell them to cut it out? Perhaps you have a workplace where people are comfortable
Open Letter to Myself as Thinkspace Turns 9!
Nine years ago today on May 1, 2008, I started Thinkspace. As I reflect back on my nine-year journey of running thinkspace, there are things that I wish I knew then that I know now. So I'm about to step back and look at some of the mistakes made it
The Ugly Truth Behind Delegation
I’m stepping into a new executive role at work, and read the classic book by Peter Drucker - The Effective Executive. In it, he argues against delegation saying that it makes little sense. “‘Delegation’ as the term is customarily used, is a misunderstanding - is indeed misdirection. But getting rid of
Success Unshared Is Failure
“Success unshared is failure” was one of the ending statements given by Robert Herjavec, CEO of the Herjavec Group and an investor on Shark Tank, as the Iconic Conference was coming to a close yesterday. After a day filled with raw and genuine lessons given by some of the most remarkable entrepreneurs, I couldn’t stop
How to Satisfy Millennials’ Hunger for Collaboration
Whether good news or bad news, we’ve all heard everyone talking about millennials. There’s really no way to avoid them since there are 80 million in the U.S. and more entering the workforce day after day — almost 50% of millennials plan to actively look for a new job in 2015, according to
My Mental Time Travel Trip Landed Me in Austin
As an entrepreneur it's important to be forward thinking. One of my main goals was to do mental time travel for the future of thinkspace. That's hard to do when you're constantly working inside the business, knee deep in day-to-day activities, and can't see the forest for the trees. Get out
Re-hiring an Employee That Quit Your Startup
What I'm about to write is NOT going to resonate with the millennial Gen-Y crowd and that's ok. This post is written for the startup founder, entrepreneur, and small company CEO. This topic is looking through the lens of the person that created the company, started the company with their
A Roadmap to Develop Leaders With Both Heart & Horsepower
I’ve been running my company for six years and it still feels like a startup. I’ve had bits and parts of a leadership team in the past but it never matured into a leadership team that was able to scale and grow to reach the next level. We’re already in
A post-Super Bowl-post: Stop trying to have a better past.
Handling loss. A fitting topic for this dreary-raining-post-Super-Bowl-Monday morning. Especially if you’re a Seahawks fan. Especially if you're a Seahawks fan that wore her wedding dress+jersey only because that's what you wore on February 1st, 2014 (thinking, superstitiously, "This better work
The Power of Positive Constraints
In his CreativeMornings presentation in Seattle this morning, Lee LeFever, founder of Common Craft and author of The Art of Explanation, broached the subject of constraints. Constraints generally have a negative connotation. For champions of free thinking and unbridled creativity, constraints appear to be the things holding you back, the things