Buddy up

One of the most common refrains I hear as a corporate coach is: I’m just too busy. What used to be called overworked is now crazybusy, slammed, swamped, jammed, maxed-out – or God help us – no more “bandwidth”. Anyone who owns a car understands that it takes regular maintenance to keep it on the road. You don’t ignore warning …

Please consider sponsoring me: On April 18th I will be running the Boston Marathon in honor of Joseph Timperley, with the Run for Research team. More information on Joe’s story and my mission can be found at: http://go.liverfoundation.org/goto/annmehl It would mean a lot to have your support. My personal goal is to grant $3,250 to help fight liver disease. I …

I recently had the privilege of hearing Dr. Ned Hallowell speak. He is a child and adult psychiatrist and the founder of The Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, MA. Dr. Hallowell is considered one of the foremost experts on the topic of ADD and ADHD. He is the co-author, with Dr. John Ratey, of Driven to …

Somewhere over North Dakota, on a flight bound for Seattle, I finally mustered up the courage to ask my seat companion where he was headed. “Nick” told me that he was a pilot from Seattle, working out of New York. As we swapped stories, it turned out that Nick lived in an apartment just one block away from me on …

This month, I am meeting up with a group of coaches to share notes on our respective practices and to collaborate. And it got me thinking about “community” and what it means to have a support group. In the early 1960’s researchers found that a small town in Pennsylvania, called Roseto, had a rate of heart disease much lower than …

David Rock, author of Your Brain At Work, believes that there are five particular qualities that we as human beings crave – Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness – the absence of which tends to make people crazy. In the case of someone being laid off, all of these qualities are under attack at once. These five qualities seem to …

When I work with my clients, I often refer to myself as their “accountability” or “sparring” partner. As a coach, I connect on a weekly basis with individuals as a means to ensure that they have acted on their good intentions as they plot a course toward future goals. Holding them responsible for the completion of an action step is …

In his wonderful book The Element, Sir Ken Robinson tells a story that I’m sure many people can relate to. In it, a young girl named Gillian is having trouble concentrating at school. The school – suspecting a learning disability – asks her mother to take 8-year-old Gillian to see a psychiatrist for evaluation. After hearing from the girl’s mother …

The more you want to accomplish, the more help you’ll need. Successful people don’t get there all by themselves. If you are doing something big, it requires loads of support, advice and encouragement. More and more, young innovative businesses get this. They are moving away from a personal accomplishments mentality to a new collaborative paradigm. Donna Fenn highlights this trend …

“Make new friends, but keep the old…one is silver, the other gold.” If you’ve ever pledged Scouts, you will recognize this little ditty. I have certainly committed it to memory. It came up for me recently when I reminded a client about the importance of maintaining positive references. As a former executive search agent, I sometimes marvel at how often …