Archive for December, 2009

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Presents or Presence?

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

I think I am start­ing to fall into the social net­work­ing groove.  I tweeted ear­lier today ask­ing those who fol­low my posts this Lead­er­ship and Life Ques­tion: What is the most impor­tant thing for you to expe­ri­ence or accom­plish between now and the year end?  I was really ask­ing myself this ques­tion, and I thought I would throw it out there for all of you to pon­der as well.

So, here is my response:  I want to expe­ri­ence pure and com­plete pres­ence dur­ing this Christ­mas and New Years’ break.

Presents

What I want most is to cel­e­brate this very spe­cial sea­son by being absolutely present in each and every con­ver­sa­tion, and in each and every moment.  I am a total men­tal spaz so this can be very challenging.

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Posted in Communication | 9 Comments »

I Don’t Speak Teenager

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

My bride and I have been mar­ried for 21 years, and she is my best friend and life part­ner.  We have four teenagers, ages 19, 17, 15 and 6. My 6 year-old is being raised a bit dif­fer­ent than our first three were: she is grow­ing up in a house full of teenagers.  This means we’ve replaced Bar­ney and Veg­gie Tales with Napoleon Dyna­mite and Nacho Libre.

Harkavy KidsWe are so very grate­ful for the dynam­ics in our home.  Our three teens are truly each other’s best friends, and they all run in one big pack of kids who range in age from 14 to 20.  As a result, our house has become base camp for many of our kids’ friends.

Over the years, Sheri and I have been asked numer­ous times about how we talk to teenagers.  Now, I want to give one dis­claimer right from the start:  we DON’T have it all fig­ured out.  But what we do have are some incred­i­ble kids who are pretty open and com­fort­able talk­ing to us about every­thing from their dreams and fears to the entire range of peer pressures.

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Posted in Family | 4 Comments »

You Have to See the Whole Picture

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

If you were to call me and ask if I could fly out and meet with you on March 11th, the old me would pull up my CRM to see if that date was open.  If so, I would say sure, see you then! 

But what I could miss is that I was sched­uled to be at my daughter’s bal­let per­for­mance on the evening of the 10th, and that the fol­low­ing week, I am to make two major pre­sen­ta­tions.  Not to men­tion, this all comes after three very full weeks of meetings. 

The old me would have made a com­mit­ment to that date with­out assess­ing how it would impact me and those around me dur­ing that larger period of time.  Out­look was not good enough.

The solu­tion was to go back to a paper tool. 

Daniel's Yearly Fold-Out Calendar

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Posted in Priority Management | 4 Comments »

Sorry is Not Good Enough

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Here is the sit­u­a­tion:  a team­mate, spouse, friend or child has wronged you.  They failed to meet an expec­ta­tion or — worse yet — they were inten­tion­ally uncar­ing or rude to you.  This painful wound causes you to be vis­i­bly upset as you con­front them on their insen­si­tive or self­ish action.

This moment could be a beau­ti­ful learn­ing and grow­ing oppor­tu­nity for you and the culprit….or it could lead to a bat­tle of enor­mous pro­por­tions.  You, the vic­tim, con­front the offender. 

They respond like this: 

 “Sorry!” 

Sorry resize

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Posted in Communication | 4 Comments »

A Tip From a Beginning Blogger

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

My first post was all about how I went from a social net­work­ing naysayer to an all-in, Face­book­ing Twit of a Blog­ger.  Now that I am very sea­soned, with a grand total of 8 posts, I think I am qual­i­fied to give just one tip.  So here it is, a tip from a begin­ning blogger…

How to Over­come the Fear That You Have Noth­ing of Value to Say

Daniel's Blog Topic ListWhen I con­sid­ered start­ing my blog, my biggest hes­i­ta­tion was the dif­fi­culty of com­ing up with some­thing of value to write about each and every week.  What in the heck could I have to say that would mat­ter to people? 

I decided to sit down and write out a list of pos­si­ble top­ics to get me started.  In my first hour of doing this, I came up with 57 top­ics.  Then I asked two of my team mem­bers to help me add to the list.  I asked them to help me rec­ol­lect some of the things that I have repeated often, trained oth­ers on, strug­gled with and cel­e­brated.  Within 30 min­utes my list climbed to 97 topics. 

This really helped me to jump into blog­ging.  No more fear of hav­ing to sit there and con­trive some­thing insight­ful and valu­able to say each and every week.  I had a list of top­ics to keep me busy for a year! 

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Posted in Communication | 6 Comments »

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