Listening is a learned skill and sadly, most leaders are very poor listeners. According to Ernest Hemingway: “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” Malcom Forbes wisely observed that “The art of conversation begins with listening.”

As we mentioned in our Opportunity is Calling article, the New Year brings new opportunity to make genuine resolutions you can keep. First, ask yourself: Does your company have a ‘culture of discipline’? Specifically, do you and your teammates do the right thing when no one is looking? Do you and your team gravitate towards … Read more

The holiday season invariably leads to all kinds of resolutions for the coming year: lead a healthier lifestyle, go to church more often, spend money more wisely, lose weight and get in better shape, be a better parent, listen more to your partner/spouse, take some golf lessons, call Mom more often, etc., etc. If you’re like most of us, these resolutions decay as the New Year moves on, and after a couple of months we don’t even remember what we resolved to do. No surprise, then, that the resolutions never happen. For this New Year, we recommend taking a new approach.

Why change? If you consider that 50% of Fortune 500 companies of thirty years ago no longer exist today, the answer seems obvious. Yet, many company owners and senior executives shudder at the thought…because change is messy, hard, and difficult. According to the Harvard Business Review, 75% of corporate change initiatives fail. Business Week cites the fact that 88% of CEOs report change is their “biggest challenge.”