People seem to like to look off into the distance in stock photos, why? See it looks so weird! Stop using photos like this on your website please. Read more
Recently we’ve launched a new initiative called 4to40, in which our goal is to showcase employers who embrace a flexible working schedule for people experiencing disability. These individuals can be a wonderful asset to your team and are capable of working just as hard as anyone else. If you haven’t considered hiring anyone with a disability, it’s time you start.
Barbara Lee was a Congress Person when the September 11th attacks occurred in the United States. In the hours following the attacks the United States Congress drafted a 60 word sentence that would change the way the U.S. could use to military force from then on. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) was signed by George W.Bush on September 14th, 2001, and has been the legal foundation for the war on terror for the past thirteen years.
Of the 420 people in the United States Congress, 419 of them voted in favour of the Authorization to Use Military Force, only one person voted against it. Immediately after she began to receive hate mail, a tons of it, and for months on end. She had the courage to standup for what she believed in. She had to vote against an overwhelming majority because she knew she had to live with the repercussions of that vote.
Fast forward thirteen years and the United States has been evacuating troops for the past several years now admitting the “war on terror” wasn’t the success they hoped it would be. Looking back Barbra seems to be the smartest person in that room at the time. She’s truly an inspiration.
I first heard this story on the podcast titled “60 words” from Radiolab is an amazing listen. They interview many of the people who were there the day the vote went through and the backlash that followed.
Buzzfeed covered this story as well in a long article titled; The Untold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History.
Here’s a video of her explaining her position. She’s very smart and courageous.
We had this argument the other night.
My theory goes, at a gas station your job is very transactional. You want to pump gas, pay, and get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Making the working life of a gas station attendant one very lonely job where no one really wants to talk to you (not that it’s your fault).
At a fast food restaurant, McDonald’s till worker for argument sake, you have to interact with customers all day long. You can make people smile, make people laugh and also piss people off. But that’s a great lesson to learn at a young age, how to read and react to people.
It’s not just reading people and reacting to what they say and do, it’s being self-aware in those situations to know when to step out of what’s expected and do the unexpected. To provide a higher level of customer service is an incredibly valuable skill to learn. A skill that is highly underrated in our world.
It’s hard to over deliver at a gas station, unless you can pump the gas like 8 times as fast, then, ummm yup! You’re on to something big! How else could you over deliver at a gas station though? This is my justification that working at a service based job at a young age teaches you so much more than simple mathematics, punching buttons on a till and saying thank you, come again (not that there’s anything wrong with a friendly salutation).
Everyday we all have the chance to over deliver on something, to make someone smile, to make someone’s day. The easier your job allows you to help other people, the happier you’re going to be working for that company.
What do you think? What is a better job, working at a gas station or working at McDonald’s?
Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last from 99U on Vimeo.
I think Leaders Eat Last is one of the best books on leadership that has ever been written. Just the concept, putting others before yourself, is such a simple yet powerful principle to live by. Yet the majority of the worlds most inspiring leaders don’t see it as service, they see is as their destiny, they see it as what they were meant to do. Some people were meant to serve.
If you were born to lead that means you were born to serve others.
In every relationship on the planet, whether that be a strong or a week tie, there’s a power balance in each and every one.
By power I mean authority but not in the traditional sense. You can have contrived power, this is classic dictatorship. This power balance is highly skewed towards the dictator and the further down the line you get that less respect they have for the person in charge.
In the 1993 classic, Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler talking to Amon Goeth (a notorious Nazi Army Commander) about what real power is, Schindler defined it as “power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t”.
Power isn’t exercising your right to punish someone or do something negative. Power is realized or increased when one holds restraint and shows compassion. Read more
The scene was a sultry June evening in Regina’s third favourite frozen yogurt (froyo, or “FROYO” to which my my phone has grown accustomed to autocorrecting it) shop. After making plans to bike to TCBY, which is short for The Country’s (self-proclaimed) Best Yogurt, I’d ditched the idea at the last minute in order to take my car and get there five minutes earlier to avoid the awkward the-entire-staff-hates-me-for-walking-in-right-at-close scenario.
Success. I arrived at exactly 10:50pm.
Nobody likes a know-it-all. -Julien Smith
1. Stop trying to be ‘right’.
In 1936 Dale Carnegie wrote in one of the most widely read business books How to Win Friends and Influence People that you should never tell someone that “they are wrong”. When you prove someone wrong you may have convinced them of the facts but they don’t believe you. Do you like being proved wrong? The last time someone blatantly proved you wrong how did you feel? Did you feel you still had that same level of respect for them?
You may have proved them wrong but that doesn’t matter, they don’t like talking around you anymore because you’re a know-it-all who always has to be right. People don’t like associating with people who always have to be right. A willingness to be wrong makes you easy to talk to and makes the other person feel comfortable to share information with you.
I love the quote from Mark Twain:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
2. Stop trying to change people.
I hope you’re not one of these people, you know, whatever you tell them they instantly turn into Dr. Phil trying to assess where you went wrong and advice on how to fix yourself. The thing is, when we don’t want feedback we don’t listen to other people. You might think you’re helping but really you’re wasting your time. Don’t tell people they’re wrong, don’t try to change their habits. If you do want to help them ask them first if they’d be willing to take your feedback. If they say yes, then and only then are you allowed to give feedback.
3. If you need to quote yourself, your past wage, or anything that may build your credibility you’ve already lost.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people tell others how much money they make. Nothing makes you sound more insecure than having to tell others your salary. If it’s a credibility thing, think about it, you’re not gaining any credibility at all. If you’re telling others how amazing you were in the past (how much $$$ you made) they’re just going to think you’re some pompous asshole who has a big ego.
In a class this year I got in an argument with one fellow who was adamant his point was right and to support his opinion he quoted that he had made a six figure salary so by definition he would understand better. Riiiiiiiight. He would lose credibility when he talked about his past experience. Don’t let this happen to you.
Your salary doesn’t have much at all to do with your intelligence and the more you have to use the former to justify the later the less credible you seem.
You don’t always have to be right. Stop trying to change people. Stop trying to justify being more credible than you actually are. I guarantee you’ll be a much more enjoyable person to be around.
Remember, nobody like a know it all.
If you want something in life you have to work your ass off for it. Anything worth having is worth working for. So to be successful, to get what you want in life, you have to do an unhealthy amount of work for as long as humanly possible. Then you might have a fighting chance.
Whether it be your sports team, your health or your career, it’s difficult to see the results of hard work in the short term. But the only way to guarantee long-term success is to work unbelievably hard in the short-term. Sometimes it’ll feel like an endless upward climb going nowhere.
The harder the squeeze the better the juice.
Here’s the paradox.
When you’re done, when you ship, when it’s all over, no one will recognize the work you put in. No one cares about the amount of hours you’ve put in, the sleepless nights, the psychological battle, nobody cares about it. All we care about is the result.
It’s going to be up to you to determine if the juice is worth the squeeze.
Begin with the end in mind. You must shy away from busy work (this won’t get you anywhere). You can’t just do work for the sake of work and expect to get somewhere.
Doing the difficult work is a recipe for success, but when you get there don’t expect people to be patting you on the back and praising you for how long you’ve been working at it. All they care about is the result.
We never talk about our human resource strategy, HR’s never really top of mind, and we don’t attend many board meetings on specific outcomes of next years’ HR strategy. Why is that? HR has a bad wrap stemming from University, everyone joked about the crazy HR lady at companies. You know, the lady that had been there for 30 years and still hugged you on occasion but recognized it was “wrong” in the workplace? Read more
