People Skills Decoded

I have a question for you: how often do you find yourself in a situation where: 1) you know you should change, 2) you even want to change, and yet 3) you don’t change? If you’re like the majority of us, I’m going to guess that your answer is: “Quite often, damn it!” Join the [...]

Do your work colleagues barely notice you when you enter the office? Does your boss hardly know your name? Do the people you hang out with have no clue what you’ve been doing lately? Do persons of the opposite sex pretty much ignore you? Chances are that you’re socially invisible. I am continually amazed by [...]

A few years ago, I was learning to be more spontaneous in social interactions and practicing saying whatever popped into my mind without thinking twice. I ended up saying a lot of witty and creative stuff, combined with even more goofy and retarded stuff. I remember that during that period, there was one condescending comment [...]

Let’s face it: we’re all social animals and we want to be liked by others. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you don’t become desperate for people’s approval and feel shitty when someone doesn’t like you. It’s cool to want to know how to make people like you. One of the central benefits of having [...]

This week I’m somewhere up in the mountains, delivering a communication and public speaking training. I can see snow and skiers out the window; it’s a pretty epic scenery. Today was speech delivery day. Each participant to the training delivered a speech and received feedback on it, from myself and from some of the other [...]

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that in the end, all of the things we aim for are ways to increase our happiness and that happiness is our ultimate goal as living, breathing human beings. It does take a bit of a genius though to achieve a high and sustainable level of happiness. Coaching [...]

“What do you do for a living?” – I ask him eager to do some chill networking. As I say this, my mind is automatically thinking: “Here comes another crappy answer I’ll have to work with”. You might say that’s pessimistic of me; I say it’s more of an educated guess. It’s not that they’re [...]

Take a moment to ask a person about their dreams and they’ll tell you about a fulfilling career, a great relationship, or their own island in the Pacific Ocean. Take a couple more moments, as I often do in coaching, to ask them what they’re planning to do in order to make their dreams come [...]

She calls me again. A business acquaintance of mine, who wants to partner up with me for this training, learning, changing the world project she has in mind. And again I say: “Thanks, but no thanks”. The project is not the problem. It seems like a good idea. The person is the problem. I know [...]

I remember a conversation I had with a female friend who was telling me upset about a comment her boyfriend made related to her appearance: Her: “He said I have thick thighs. I can believe it!” Me: “I thought you wanted people to be honest with you. And he’s being honest.” Her: “Yeah, but c’mon: [...]