The Hard Work of Making Good Requests: Part I

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Help people give you what you really want by making complete requests that use all 6 “journalist questions”.

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The Power of Promising: Listener + Do + Due 

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How to get yourself to Do something you don’t want to Do? Add a Listener and a Due date. Here’s how.

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Integrity and Reliability – They’re Related

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A local college teacher called last night and asked if I had another recommendation for a technical support person to help with his Public Speaking class, because the first guy I recommended wasn’t working out. Here’s how that dialogue went… Me: “What happened to Ed? I thought he was your guy for that?” Teacher: “Ed […]

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Want Something? Get Specific.

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Wishing is a waste of time. Invest some brainpower in getting clear about what matters.

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Give Your Goals a Little “Infrastructure” for Success

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You can make a resolution to reach a goal – just include a communication plan to support your successful change.

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Productive Meetings Don’t Just Happen

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The meeting didn’t go well. In fact, one executive walked out before it was formally ended. Several people were annoyed or impatient while others, looking bored, simply didn’t participate. It was ultimately a waste of people’s time and energy, and left a few bad feelings to be cleaned up later. What was the purpose of […]

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Time to Talk? Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

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Improve both efficiency and effectiveness with a clear and complete request.

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No Closure, No Accomplishment

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A normally upbeat and productive guy was suddenly downcast and discouraged yesterday morning. I went in to see Chuck and talk about progress on his most important project – implementing an employee development program – and he wasn’t even interested anymore. Wow. “This project doesn’t matter,” he said. “I thought it would make a huge […]

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