If you were poised at the beginning of 2000 and had to pick the two countries that would go through the decade with over five percent GDP growth, would you have picked India and China? Now, I’m asking the same question at the beginning of 2010—what countries would you predict are likely to grow the most over the next decade? Personally, I would bet on Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. My reasoning behind this is that the biggest predictor of international acceptance and growth is the ability of a country to be chosen by the International Olympic Committee or FIFA to host the next Olympic Games or World Cup. When it is given to the underdeveloped nations, they tend to go through...

A few weeks ago I asked a colleague, Duke Daehling, if he could give me a ride home from work. He sent back an e-mail with the simple, but resounding reply: YES! The power of his simple response evoked not only a smile from me, but left me feeling good the rest of the afternoon. The experience made me realize how readily we let negatives into our lives, yet tend to be much more cautious in how we promote the positive. Duke didn’t have to make such an emphatic response, but yet he did. As a result it broke through to me in a way that another positive, yet more restrained or more couched response couldn’t have. When I was an assistant head resident in college (or “My prec...

Every so often we will turn this blog over to guest advice columnist, Lexi Siegessicher, who will answer your questions about work life, organization behavior, and leadership. Dear Lexi: Over the last few years my department has had a lot of success with a particular approach to building sales and motivating the team. In the last year, however, when things got tough, we stepped up our efforts in applying these programs and got poor results. It was like everything that worked before suddenly stopped working no matter what we tried to do. It is maddening! It always seemed to work, so why stop now – especially when we most needed it. It is just the economy? Will things work again in the...

I recently read three different articles on leadership priorities and the themes struck me as odd and made me contemplate, “do organizations really like leaders?”   Here are the three quotes:   1)    Companies like to promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage – McKinsey Quarterly 2)    70% of respondents are seeking to do more coaching of line managers – Training Journal 3)    The development of middle managers is considered extremely important with 67% naming is as their first or second priority – HR Magazine   It could be very encouraging news to read th...

Several years ago I wrote an article for a business journal discussing the value of empathic customer service over just “service with a smile.” The gist of the piece was that although a smile is nice, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the kind of care and forward thinking that comes from empathic customer service. Recently, I was listening to my iPod when a song from Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” came up in the shuffle. I’ll save time and space on another day to weep for you if you don’t know who Stephen Sondheim is, and I could almost find a way to forgive you if you know who he is, but are not familiar with this particular show. You can...