Thinking Out Loud

I remember reading about self-actualization back in the 1960s when I was first aware that I needed to understand more about people and life—meaning me and how I was in the world!  Abraham Maslow, among others, wrote about self-actualization and the hierarchy of human needs. He outlined an adult developmental process, what was important at each stage, and what we are striving for in our self-development.

We all struggle to understand what our lives are about and what we should be striving for as we question our own happiness. Frequently, there is a new article in the popular media describing a new study about happiness: who is happy, when are they happiest, to what degree, and why? Much serious research is done on this topic, which gets linked to other concepts like resilience. The Positive Psychology movement is studying people who are doing well, whereas most psychological research is and has been focused on those not doing so well.  Read More

Co-worker conflict is not uncommon and sometimes it escalates with tension running high. Now what? An article I had published in Fast Company (click here) offers some guidelines on how to repair broken communication. Navigating conflict is never easy and learning how to revisit difficult conversations is a necessity, not just in the workplace but in our personal lives, too.

We learn to make good decisions through practice. With young children, we start by giving them two choices, then gradually widen the possibilities and provide more choices. There is no formula to learning to make good decisions but using this child development model provides a basic guideline: start small and add choices if and when needed.

Much new information about how our brains process information has become available in recent years with many psychologists and behavioral economists studying the decision-making process. Read More

My son, Noah, and I developed a new communication tool. It’s versatile, has many applications and is straightforward. Fast Company just published an article about it (click here). We’ve used it to:

• Guide leadership communication
• Focus professional development conversations
• Structure difficult conversations
• Plan communication strategies
• Diagnose communication breakdowns

This tool can also be used in your personal life and in conjunction with the Communication Styles Framework, which gives it even more strength. After you read the article at Fast Company, if you’d like to know more I can send you the original article which has more detail.