Dear Steve, How do I convince a colleague that her preconceived assumptions are producing the negative responses she expects? When we travel together, she assumes people in the travel and service industries are incompetent and unmotivated. She believes that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and that airlines, taxi companies, restaurants, etc., are …
We’re excited to announce that Steve Willis, a Senior Master Trainer as well the VP of Professional Services at VitalSmarts, will become a regular contributor to the Crucial Skills Newsletter. Dear Steve, I’m a newlywed and my in-laws are very involved in our lives; we see them frequently each month. Although I dated my husband …
Years ago I joined an organization and discovered a character who worked there. He was an interesting blend of wisdom, mischief, creativity, and crazy. You know that type. I’d find him engaged in some strange activity, or distilling some semi-absurd piece of advice, and think, “What in the world??!!?!” I’d walk away and invariably the …
Oh, the Vegas Rule. What a simple little phrase: “What happens here, stays here!” Being raised in Nevada, I always enjoy a solid reference to the state of my heart (feel free to join me in the first verse of “Home Means Nevada” if you’re a Nevadan at heart, or take a short Google field …
When people outside of work find out that I spend a lot of time teaching groups, they often ask about the more challenging situations I encounter. “What are the biggest pitfalls? And how do you recover when you run into these problems?” I tell them, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Some time ago, …
I don’t know about you, but I love the Olympics. So these last two weeks have been great as my family and I watched so many different events that we don’t get to see on a regular basis. This year I’ve been especially fascinated by how many of the events involve difficult to execute tricks.
It’s a new year and with it comes so many “news”—new opportunities, new resolutions, new beginnings, new goals, new mindsets (or would it be new minds set??). It’s a whole new year! Indeed, it seems like with every breath I draw in a huge mouthful of newness. It’s invigorating and energizing! It definitely erases the bitter taste of all those “should haves” I was chewing on at the end of 2013.
It all started with what seemed like an innocuous question. And since then I’ve been wondering about a personal training practice to which I hadn’t given much thought recently—specifically the questions I use. My current practice was called into questions (here used as figure of speech rather than a reference to the specific training practice mentioned in the second sentence, or the actual inciting question referenced in the first sentence) during our annual REACH conference in August.
My experience with “why” has been an interesting one. In fact, I’ve been able to identify several distinct phases that I’ve experienced.
ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE I was recently reviewing a training industry report for 2012. There were all kinds of bar, pie, and other hunger inducing graphs serving up all kinds of information. It highlighted overall spending (≅ $55.8 billion), the …
