You have decided to kick a bad habit. You are excited and you make a plan. You believe you can do it! You start but you soon discover that something does not work. What happened? Often you are the victim of what is called Positive Illusion! This week I was in Xiamen running a leadership [...]

When I was a young man, I started smoking because it was a cool thing to do, and it made me feel good. Smoking was widely accepted then, and many of my role models including teachers, rock stars and athletes smoked. The Danish royal family smoked and so did my own doctor! The Marlboro Man [...]

Two months ago I ran a leadership development workshop for a group of young corporate managers. Towards the end of the workshop, they all got to develop their individual action plans. We talked about focus and the importance of only working on ONE thing at a time. Most people ‘try’ to work on too many [...]

The last post generated some fantastic feedback and support. Thank you! There was also a couple of people responding to my anger suggesting other and more appropriate emotions. Let me say this: I am beyond appropriate! I can smile, be nice and appropriate like many other people, or I can acknowledge what I feel, be authentic [...]

Last week I lost a very close friend, and I am angry. In late 1999, I was posted to Hong Kong to take up the position as managing director for a subsidiary of a large multinational company. The following year, we got a new head of IT. His name was Michael. We quickly became friends [...]