Dear Crucial Skills, It’s my job to influence the people in our company to improve quality—both of incoming raw material and of our outgoing products—and it’s hard. We’ve got all the “head” stuff right—technical expertise and good quality tools—but we don’t have the heart. And to make it even more difficult, the people I need …
Dear Crucial Skills, Help! I am the wife of a hoarder. My husband buys and keeps everything. He has a hobby room, garage, and a rented storage unit full of stuff, including twenty-year-old key chains from vendor booths, console TVs from the 1970s, empty boxes, old magazines, plastic silverware, and anything others don’t want or …
Our research shows nine out of ten people who are skilled at holding crucial conversations enjoy their family gatherings—despite the unruly behavior of their relatives. So to kick off the festivities, our award-winning video team presents Holiday Spice: Relatively Speaking . . . Share with your friends: Follow these four recommendations for talking to unruly …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, After working as chair of a small committee in my department for more than a year, my boss told me I must step down because the committee finds my …
In this month’s Change Anything column, Patricia S. shares the specific strategies she used to save her marriage. My husband and I have been married for nearly twenty-seven years. However, it wasn’t until five years ago that I began to understand what it meant to be completely committed to another person. At the time, my …
Dear Crucial Skills, Our company is going through tough times in the midst of the current financial downturn. We are not downsizing but have been instructed to cut expenses, work more efficiently, and basically do more with less. We have implemented many initiatives—including staffing to workload, reducing overtime, and purchasing more efficiently. All of these …
In this month’s Change Anything column, Michael Emehiser shares the specific strategies he used to motivate weight loss. I knew something was wrong when I woke up in the middle of the night and felt a crushing pressure in my chest. I soon found myself in an ambulance on my way to the hospital where …
Dear Crucial Skills, I was recently asked to lead an effort to implement job rotation in our organization. The problem is that the team I’ve been asked to lead thinks it’s a dumb idea. They are focused on their own jobs and have no interest in cross-training and rotation. How am I supposed to lead …
In this month’s Change Anything column, Craig V. shares the specific strategies he used to change spending habits. My wife and I were in financial distress. We had $10,000 in credit card debt, lived month-to-month, and didn’t have any savings because every penny we earned went toward our large mortgage or to pay child support …
In last month’s Change Anything column, we published an inspiring story from Michael Vitali. This month, Michael shares the specific strategies he used to overcome his addictions. I started smoking cigarettes when I was eleven years old. Since then, I’ve abused every drug on the market: speed, heroine, meth, LSD, prescription drugs. You name it—I’ve …
