Strategic Serendipity

Did you know that toddlers eat? A lot? All o the seasoned parents out there are laughing at my discovery and remembering the time that you learned that particular lesson. You could have all told me a week ago to be prepared for this and I would have laughed and said I've got it covered, after all, I handled infant growth spurts! But I didn't really get it until I spent sixty hours straight with him eating, sleeping in three hour chunks, and playing at full capacity in a continuous circle. So this morning I ran it by the expert at his daycare and she laughed and assured me that toddlers are bottomless pits. So absent proper sleep, I was able I go into work assured that I was doing the right things. Leadership lessons are a lot like that. You can read about different situations but until you actually experience them, you don't really get it. Sometimes it takes immersing yourself in the situation to really understand what is happening. And then nothing beats discussing i...

"When your monster wants to throw things and your monster wants to shout, there's a way to calm your monster, and chill your inner monster out."  We laugh when we play this for our young child and the cute little Elmo turns into a monster and we dance with our little one when Colbie Caillat melodically sings "Belly Breathe."   http://youtu.be/_mZbzDOpylA   Toddlers are notorious for meltdowns.  All the research says it is because they don't have the words to express their feelings and guide the parents to stay calm. But what about when you are at work and YOUR monster wants to throw things?  The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), a popular emotional intelligence assessment, includes Emotional Management and Regulation as one of composite scales with Stress Tolerance and Impulse Control as subscales.  In other words, how well can you chill your inner monster out? In his book  Emotional Intelligence , Daniel Goleman, posits that 20 percent of an in...