Harnessing Your Inner Animal Control Officer to Lead Your Team
Dogs are an important part of my life. Yours too? Growing up, my family always had a small dog and she (it was always a “she”) was a member of our family. The first was Bobbie, the one who sadly taught us the importance of not allowing puppies to dash out the door unrestrained. Next was Pixie, from an “oops” litter one of Dad’s co-workers had. Then came Buffy, the Pomeranian Mom always wanted, who joined the family after I moved out to chase my dreams. Who were the pets you grew up with, and are your memories as fond and bitter-sweet as mine?
Animals in general and dogs in specific are the launching pad for today’s newsletter. This week holds the dual, related designations of Dog Bite Prevention Week and Animal Control Officer Appreciation Week. Both are celebrated annually during the second full week of April, and both aim to educate, one about the responsibilities that come with dog ownership and one about the important role animal control...
How Can You Be as Happy as This Cat?
Happy Act Happy Week! And if you’re not happy and you know it, it’s OK to not be able to give an Oscar-winning performance. In this week’s newsletter I’ll help you find your way back to happy with a few mental wellbeing tools you can use any time, in the privacy of your own head. Or you can just watch funny cat videos - whatever works for you is good.
Have you ever thought about our amazing range of emotions and how quickly they can switch up, based on what’s happening around us? Research at UC Berkley identified 27 distinctly different emotional states of mind, and also showed that they are interconnected, allowing us to slide easily and quickly between them. What are the 27 emotions they identified through a research study with over 800 participants? Here you go: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear,...
How Comfortable are You Asking Questions?
I have a question for you – how comfortable are you asking questions? Questions are a fundamental learning tool, and yet many people spend a large part of their lives being uncomfortable about asking questions. It could stem from a desire to be or seem perfect, it could be because they don’t want to be nosy or pry, or it could be because they don’t even know how to formulate a question to get the information they need. Often, people don’t ask questions because they don’t know what they don’t know, so have no idea they even should be asking a question.
Today is Albert Einstein’s birthday and is also Ask a Question Day. It’s not a coincidence that they are the same day – Einstein is widely regarded as one of the most flexible-minded inventors largely because of his ability to continue to ask questions long after most people would have given up trying to make something work. A tenacious curiosity is a fundamental building block of...
Beefing Up Your Leadership Skills
Are you a team lead? The team can be a work team, a sports team or a family team – most people lead some sort of team, whether they know it or not. Some people enjoy the role of leader, helping people develop their full potential, while others are intimidated or uninterested in taking a leadership role. No matter where you fall on the leadership continuum or what sort of team you lead, it pays to know how to shape your words and actions to help your people understand and want to follow you.
In 1938, Sears Roebuck & Company began an ongoing survey of their employees, looking to understand important yet difficult to quantify concepts like loyalty, satisfaction and organizational behavior. Their longitudinal study attracted sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists, all of whom parsed the survey results in a myriad of different ways. In many respects, this was the beginning of a strong corporate human resources focus. Fast-forward to now, when the science of the brain...
Training Dogs and People
Even if you don’t have a dog, you just might learn something about leadership, your own self-development, and training humans from this newsletter, so please humor me on this one.
As a life-long dog person and someone who’s been deeply involved in dog sports all my adult life, you might guess that dog training is something I’ve done a lot of, and you’d be right. I’ve trained my own dogs, as well as worked with people to train their dogs to show in conformation competition, which is what you see when you watch the Westminster Kennel Club, the National Dog Show and the AKC National Championship dog shows on TV.
I’ve also worked with people and teams, coaching and consulting, teaching mental wellbeing, team dynamics, leadership, and communication skills. What I’ve discovered is that when training people and when training dogs, many of the same skills are needed.
Many people add a furry family member during the winter holidays, live with the...
