We may not care to admit it, but we are heavily influenced by those who lead us every day. Employees reporting to managers, managers reporting to directors, directors reporting to vice presidents...
Ken was a mid-level manager with high-level ambitions. After receiving steady promotions at a media company, he had his eye on a corner office. So he was delighted when the "suits" on the 17th...
Leadership is about challenge not comfort, adventure not safety. That's why strong leaders often create some anxiety. Leadership moves a community to the place where answers are not easy to find....
"The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you, 'nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" (1 Cor. 12:21, NRSV) We've worked closely...
It all began with the woman whose lover would be coming after me, she announced, with a knife.And that was just opening...
I stand in line at the copy machine behind a secretary. He turns to me and says. "Oh, Dr. de Vinck, I didn't see you. Here. Let me give you the machine." I...
It was hard to watch my fifth-grade basketball team lose again. In nine years of volunteering to coach elementary- and middle-school teams, I've only had one other team lose so many times. A group...
For most of my adult life I have heard people use the phrase "he was his own worst enemy" without ever thinking it might be applied to me. ...
I like reading the acknowledgments page in a book. I enjoy seeing the names of friends, family members, mentors, and others who...
The Spalding company didn't create the baseball as we know it. A boy, the son of a shoemaker, first thought up that legendary stitch-and-curve pattern. Young Ellis Drake was doodling in the...
Imagine you entered a concert hall where a symphony orchestra sat ready to play, but half of the members had their hands tied behind their backs. You’d know something was terribly wrong. Surely...
Have you ever been fired? It's not fun. ...
Sometimes my work is ordinary. Boring tasks pile up like dusty, old field rocks. And it seems that somebody wants me to...
The apostle Paul understood what it meant to be on "the corporate fast track." Read his letter to the churches in Galatia. Before his encounter with the risen Christ, he was advancing in Judaism...
We know the story of the Prophet Deborah, the only woman judge mentioned in the Book of Judges. She administered justice in the scrubby foothills of Ephraim, listening to the complaints of the...
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When I was about six, my father built a small cabin for me in the woods behind our house. My memory of...
With the clanging of a bell, the children stream out of the classroom onto the playground for recess. Immediately clumps of kids start their playtime together. The class bully simultaneously...
I am like any other woman out there—I hate being wrong. That's probably true of many men, too. But being a woman, I will often be emotionally passionate about completely irrational things even...
How does the rest of the retail world win against Wal-Mart? What can Wal-Mart teach other companies—and individuals—about analysis and competition? For thinkers of every stripe, a new book by business author Bill...
