On a winter day in my early thirties, a few years less than twenty years ago, I had the misfortune of slipping and falling on an icy sidewalk. The next day, the pain had become almost unbearable and I noticed some numbness in one of my legs. I checked myself into a local hospital, where after an MRI and some other tests, I was told that I had, unequivocally, ruptured a disc in my lower back.
How often have you found yourself on a street or in a building named after some once important person, and realized that you didn’t have the faintest idea who this person was and what he or she had accomplished?
I recently had a difference of opinion with a colleague at work regarding a business decision. My colleague and I could not resolve the issue at our level so it was escalated one level up.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been preoccupied with the very vexing issue of trust in the workplace. I say “vexing” because fostering genuine trust in the workplace has to be one of the most difficult nuts to crack of any that I can think of.
You might find this strange for somebody in my line of work but if you were to look at a list of the books I read over the past year, you would not find a single business book.
OK. So you’ve been put in charge of something – a business, a department, a project or a team. If you’ve been appointed from above, as most of us tend to be, you’re vested with some prima facie legitimacy: There’s an announcement somewhere, an appointment notice or a directive, whether formal or informal, that puts you in charge of that team or endeavor that you must now lead.
Are negative emotions sapping your ability to detect the ripples large and small that emanate from all around you, and undermining your ability to carry out your responsibilities in the most effective way you can?
I live in Toronto, a predominantly English-speaking city, and have worked in English most of my professional life, but English is actually my second language. I grew up in Quebec and completed all my schooling in French, from grade school to high school, to college, to law school.
I can feel all the psychology majors cringing at the title of this article, never mind those who hold Ph.D.’s in this field. “Bernard, there’s no such thing as an introvert or an extrovert.
I’m a big, big fan of the idea that you have to make some time in your life to just stop and think. Not only is this important in order to maintain your sanity, but it also allows you to be more effective, as well as more creative in every aspect of your life.
We can’t always agree on everything. Nor, frankly, would it be desirable that we do.
Debate and disagreements are cornerstones of progress and innovation in all aspects of life and if it wasn’t for people disagreeing with each other from time to time — lone voices as well as groups of individuals large and small standing up against generally accepted views — many of the good and great things that we now take for granted — victories of reason such as human rights and modern science, for instance — would never have seen the light of day.
Role models are people that others, rightly or wrongly, look up to and strive to emulate. They come in many shades and range from the truly great to the unspeakably bad. You can’t always pick your leaders, but you can choose your role models.
