Tag Archives: accountability

How People Treat You Is Their Karma

“How people treat you is their Karma, how you react is yours.” – Wayne Dyer So often in life we find ourselves in situations where someone does something to us that is hurtful, unkind, ungrateful, unfair, unwarranted, dishonest, or a myriad of other mean things that hurt us or make us feel bad.  And often […]

It May Not Be Your Fault, But It Is Your Responsibility

You may not have caused this problem yourself, but it is your job to do something about it, especially when you hold any kind of a leadership or management position. Management means that you are responsible for everything – whether you personally made the mistake or not – you still have to own the responsibility […]

Stop Yourself From Making Bad Decisions: Wear The Comfortable Shoes!

I decided to start something called a flashback Friday where I will once in awhile on a Friday repost a blog from the past. You know, the oldies but goodies. So this blog below was one I wrote back in March of 2013: I have been walking for…well let’s see…yeah, about 40 years now.  And […]

The Worst Decision Is Indecision

Where do you want to go out to dinner tonight? Sounds like an easy question, yet when someone asks it to you it often feels like they’ve just presented you the most difficult question ever.  There are so many options you could choose, and what if you choose one and you would have liked the […]

History Has It’s Eyes On You…Don’t Throw Away Your Shot

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer of the Broadway play Hamilton.  You can imagine his surprise when I admitted to him I had not yet heard the Soundtrack from his play Hamilton but I shared how big a fan of it my husband is and how excited I was […]

Communicating Like That Isn’t Any More Effective In Getting What You Want As An Adult Then It Was When You Were A Child

“I’m gonna hold my breath until you give in and give me what I want!”  Now there’s a communication tactic we learned as children was never effective in getting us what we wanted. All it did was make our cheeks turn blue and give us a pounding headache. Never once did it actually get us […]

Stop and think of all the people to whom your actions have special significance

Tonight I was reading through some of my Grandmother’s old papers and I came across a talk she had written long ago. In this talk she discusses how people (especially young people) commonly say “What I do with my life is my own business and concerns no one else.” She points out that those who […]

“It Ain’t About How Hard You Hit, It’s About How Hard You Can Get Hit And Keep Moving Forward.”

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard […]

“You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid.”

Awww yes…we have entered the fabulous month of December and the fabulous season of Christmas (and Hanukkah, Ramadan , Kwanza, and all the other fabulous December holidays being celebrated). And as should be done every December, it’s time to whip out that classic movie from 1983, “A Christmas Story” to watch little Ralphie ask Santa […]

Have you cheated the man in the glass?

When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day, Just go to the mirror and look at yourself  And see what “the man” has to say. For it isn’t your father or mother or wife Whose judgment upon you must pass. The fellow whose […]

Stand up for what is right regardless of who is committing the wrong.

“Stand up for what is right regardless of who is committing the wrong.” -Suzy Kassam A dear friend sent me that quote today and it was a much appreciated reminder of the fact that being a person of integrity means you have to be willing to stand by your convictions at all times, and against […]

Without Accountability For Actions There Would Be No Progression

Without accountability for actions there would be no progression in our lives or in our organizations.  And as Tomas Paine expressed when he stated, “…men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” We ought not trust those who are unwilling to be accountable. Each of us has a moral and legal […]

Taking accountability does far more to restore credibility than attempting to cover things up

Last week I spent the week hosting a group of fabulous people on our houseboat at Lake Powell. It is always a ton of work to host a big group for a week but its also incredibly rewarding to spend quality time really getting to know people on a closer level without any technology distractions […]

A quiet conscience makes one strong

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve […]

The Lessons We Teach Our Children

I often have people tell me how impressed they are with the character of my son and daughter, and that compliment is often followed with the question – how did you do it? How did you raise those kids to be such great people? Well as much as I would love to take credit for […]

The things we CAN do for others and the things we CANNOT do

One of the most difficult challenges a person can ever take on is the task of being a Parent. Being a parent is intimidating, it is heart wrenching, and some days it is downright terrifying. You do your best to teach your kids everything even though you are still learning yourself, you do your best […]

The Executive Team is the single greatest factor that determines Success or Failure for any Company

Earlier today I was looking through some documents and I found an outline I had written for a talk I was asked to give clear back in 2005 on How To Build And Operate A Successful Executive Team. As I sat reading it, some eleven years later, I can tell you that if I were asked to talk on that same subject today I […]

No Man Is Above Unconscious Gender Bias In The Workplace – It’s “Unconscious” (Forbes Article)

Imagine you are watching the following scenario take place: A small meeting is being held in a board room. At one end of the table sits a man (we will refer to him as man A) and across from him sitting side by side at the table is another man (man B) and a woman. […]

Choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong

Mistakes are going to happen in every organization because people aren’t perfect and making mistakes is often how people learn and grow. Some mistakes are small and insignificant, and others turn out to be far more serious, even bringing unpleasant consequences. What matters most when a mistake occurs is to own the fact that it […]

Choose a President “who will enforce the laws and administer the law in equity and justice”

“The great danger in any society is apathy and a failure to be alert to the issues of the day, when applied to principles or to the election of public officials. …Our civic responsibilities is to choose those to govern us as civil officers and magistrates who will enforce the laws and administer the law […]

How Delta CEO Ed Bastian Just Proved That Delta Airlines Is Awesome (Forbes Article)

Tuesday morning October 18, 2016 at around 2am I posted a blog titled “Companies don’t have to be perfect but they do need to fix it when they screw up!” In that blog I shared the story of a harrowing customer service nightmare I was going through with Delta Airlines. Toward the end of that […]

What It Takes To Be A Great Employee: The Parable Of The Oranges (Forbes Article)

Being a great employee pays off with better positions, higher pay, and more frequent promotions. But some workers struggle to know exactly what it takes to become a truly great employee. As an Entrepreneur and CEO one of the most important elements of having a successful company is having a workforce of great employees. That […]

We Need To Remember That We Are The “We” In “We The People”

Politics. It’s like the dirty word that everyone is sick of hearing, but there is no getting around the fact that politics are essential. Going through the political process is the only way to achieve the objective of promoting good government. We can’t throw our hands up in disgust and turn away from it, instead […]

They CAN DO Hard Things IF you will let them

I was watching something the other day where s a mother to a teenage boy was busy doing her son’s laundry while her son was busy playing on his Xbox. The more I observed the situation the more I wanted to scream out “If your child is capable of conquering level 15 of their video […]

Don’t Disappoint the Man (or Woman) in the Glass

If you had to choose just one virtue to uphold in your life – choose integrity. It will always be your most valuable asset. It is worth more than money or power or fame. You have complete control of this asset and no one else can ever take it away from you. It is yours […]

One Year Older, But Hopefully Wiser Too!

Happy Birthday to me! Okay, let’s get real…at my age birthdays are no longer quite the same feeling of happy that they were when you were a kid trying to grow up too fast. The older we get the more they tend to turn into a reminder that your sexy is a little less sexier […]

People Who Do Bad Things

There are people in this world who do bad things. Many, if not all of us, have been on the receiving end or dealt with people who have done bad things that have hurt us. The hope is that over time, as we get older and wiser, that we are far more careful in our […]

Value Yourself and Others Will Follow Suit

Imagine you are at a car lot looking at a car for sale. You ask the salesperson to tell you about the car.  They respond, “Its okay I guess. It could be shinier, and it could go faster, and the color isn’t great, and it doesn’t have the best radio, and it’s not the cleanest, […]

“I’m Grateful For All The Things My Parents Didn’t Do For Me”

Tonight I received a phone call from one of my dearest friends who is out of the country right now traveling.  He said he was thinking about me and my husband today because he realized I was probably saddened with my kids leaving off to college and he just wanted me to know he was […]

Do it Anyway

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do […]