Month: August 2018

Have You Taken Vacation?


What happened to summer? Do you realize that next weekend is Labor Day? Aside from most people enjoying a three-day weekend, Labor Day is bittersweet because it marks the unofficial end to summer.

So. Have you taken vacation?

Americans still leave millions of dollars of unclaimed vacation benefits on the table. According to Project Time Off’s State of the American Vacation, 52% of Americans had unused vacation at the end of 2017. This translates to 212 million days of forfeited vacation, or $62.2 billion in lost benefits.

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Prepping for Difficult Conversations


Have you ever dreaded having conversations with some of your employees? We’ve all had this experience and unless it happens frequently, you’re probably not an expert in handling these.

Challenging conversations run the gamut from delivering difficult feedback to firing someone. When you aren’t comfortable conveying a difficult message, it’s likely that your delivery of the message will reflect that discomfort.

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A Petulant Employee


Sometimes when you’re managing people it can seem like you’re speaking two different languages. One of my clients, Marcus*, experienced a classic example of this. His employee, Cyndy*, was working on a client-intense project and basically abandoned the rest of her work while this was occurring.

Cyndy felt that while she was tied up with this client, how could Marcus possibly expect her to do more? Marcus felt that he had made it clear that although she would put most of her effort towards that one client, the rest of her work needed to be done (whether directly by her or delegated).

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Brain Reawakening


When you do things the same way all the time, activities become automatic. You drive the same way to work and don’t think about the route. You know what you want to order in your favorite restaurant. You have a weekend routine that’s, well, routine.

By making some small changes in what you do habitually, you awaken your brain simply because you’re thinking consciously.

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