During the month of February we’re bombarded with messages about Valentine’s Day. It’s hard to avoid thinking about love – or at least what advertisers want us to think about love.

As we approach the New Year, in challenging times, many of us are searching for ways to be more hopeful. That quest is even shared by the company that sets standards for the use of color: Pantone says its 2019 pick for color of the year “Living Coral” represents optimism.

Finding the appropriate level of assertiveness is a bit of a Goldilocks predicament: How much is too little? How much is too much? And where is the “just right” sweet spot of asserting yourself, in business and in your personal life?

With the boom of corporate social responsibility programs in companies, and the ever-growing number of expansive political movements making headlines, one might think that social responsibility has to have massive impact and result in huge transformation.

Sitting in front of your computer, just back from a relaxing holiday, you scroll through the volumes of emails which have accumulated while you were away.  You open one up from your boss and you read the words, “How come you and your team can’t seem to get this right?”

Mark, a former client of mine, was a 35-year-old marketing director on the fast track. Being type-A personality, he was driven for success. But Mark was not winning much favor from his employees — they found that his feedback was often given in a drive-by, “hit-and-run” manner and left them feeling like roadkill.

So often when I ask a client this question, the response is an automatic “good” or “bad.” Then, when I share a list of over 200 emotions with them, they will say “wow, I had no idea there were SO MANY!”

I’m curious how all of us can stay connected to our own Emotional Intelligence while our political leaders seem to be lacking it. With many politicians showing extremely low empathy, too much self-regard, lack of impulse control or sense of social responsibility, who out there in society is modeling for us high levels of emotional intelligence and achieving greater levels of success and happiness?

George Washington said, “I cannot tell a lie.” A popular nursery rhyme said that you can identify a liar by their pants on fire. And of course, who doesn’t remember the earworm from the 1980s, "Lies, Lies, Lies" by the Thompson Twins? No matter what the time or place, it seems that there is always some kind […]