Guy Rankin’s Blog – Full Story

We can’t prevent them. In many cases, we can’t even predict them. Natural disasters will happen; they inevitably kill, destroy and displace. Whether a struck nation faces staggering losses or mild, a disaster’s aftermath is something nations definitely can prepare for.

Japan’s plight following the March 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami begs the question: What can be done to minimize residual damage after nature wreaks its havoc? As crews work to recover more than 25,000 missing or dead, Japan also must tend to more than 320,000 evacuees who have fled ruined towns and unsafe levels of radiation.

Watching the post-disaster challenges unfold, other nations began to explore their own ability to recover from disaster. How would we shelter hundreds of thousands of displaced people? Where would we find the food and water to sustain them if local supply is contaminated or wiped out altogether? How do we get that food and water to them when the usual delivery methods have been compromised? How do we supply required medicine and medical attention?

“We have the know-how to address ‘the disaster after the disaster,’” says recovery expert Guy Rankin, who led large-scale disaster recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast after an unprecedented series of hurricanes displaced more than a quarter-million people. He emphasizes that although we can’t control nature, we can adopt a controlled, systematic approach to tackling follow-on disasters of displaced people, destroyed communities, food and water shortages, access to medicine and health care, and more.

“First comes the understanding that one disaster often follows another,” he advises. “Expect it. That way, you understand the need for a recovery plan that can roll out even as you tackle the second or third crisis that comes.”

Rankin, executive director of Harris County Housing Authority in Houston, Texas, speaks from experience. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina brought 250,000 evacuees to emergency shelters across Houston. As Rankin and his small staff hustled to place evacuees in temporary housing throughout the region, Hurricane Rita was predicted to travel up the Houston Ship Channel with wind speeds that threatened to bring down the Astrodome. “This horrifying picture began taking shape: our biggest emergency shelter potentially collapsing on 25,000 people that we’re trying desperately to house!” Rankin recalls. “We were sending people all over the country to clear out the Astrodome, and then we had to evacuate Houston – a region of four million people – at the same time,” Rankin says.

In September 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall near Houston, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage and leaving the fourth-largest U.S. city without power for 14 days (or 21 days, in some spots). Rankin’s team mobilized a points-of-distribution system that dispatched 3,000 18-wheelers from the Astrodome to deliver water, ice, and food throughout the three most severely affected counties. “We fed several hundred thousand people in the area, all while electricity was out,” Rankin says.

Moving a quarter-million evacuees from emergency shelter to transitional housing to rebuilt communities, Rankin recognized shortcomings in the United States’ approach to disaster recovery. “The way the system is set up – and you’ll find systems like this worldwide – our disaster experts are not really recovery experts. They are emergency experts. They’re the ‘firefighters’ coming to bring you water and food during a disaster, making sure you have medicine and kits. Now, those are crucial things that need to take place, but there is no office in America called the Disaster Recovery Office,” he points out.

Every administration, every president, every country, whether a democracy or a communist country, approaches disaster this way, he continues. “Take Haiti, for instance. When disaster happens [referring to the January 2010 earthquake that claimed 230,000 lives], we run out, we send a bunch of bulldozers, we move the bricks and debris out of the way, and then we let time fade … and nobody really addresses the problem after the disaster,” he says.

Rankin doesn’t downplay the heroism and good will shown by the governments, nonprofit organizations and volunteers who rushed to help in Haiti. Yet, examining the quake from a recovery standpoint, he says these forces often “show up in helicopters, do their thing, pull out, and then there is no coordination of strategy for step-by-step rebuilding. This creates disaster after disaster because some 400,000 people – orphaned children or evacuees who’ve fled to the Haitian hillsides – are still looking for help from someone. But who is that someone?” he asks.

That someone doesn’t exist because there is no one person in charge to coordinate all the private relief donations, all the nonprofit funds and all the funds from federal and local agencies. Rankin points out a pressing need for a disaster recovery “czar,” a point person who coordinates the use of relief funds and oversees the disaster-torn area’s journey to put the community back together, step by step.

While arguing the need for a disaster recovery officer, Rankin also plans to advocate for laws to streamline recovery efforts, outlining the steps and timelines to be observed by those who receive money for recovery efforts. “We know what to do to put communities back together, and we know how long it should take,” he says. But often, delays come when those who carry out the recovery must wait on funds and approvals and bureaucracy.

The lessons Rankin has learned through Katrina and Ike recovery efforts extend beyond housing – even beyond U.S. borders. Any nation can plan for the known challenges to shelter, food, water, infrastructure and health care after a natural disaster. According to Rankin, the magnitude of recent disasters in Haiti and Japan must prompt them to do so, because “only then do nations become more agile in responding to the chaos and rebuilding from the rubble,” he says. “We have the engineers. We have the technology. We have the know-how. The question is do we have the will to set this kind of planning in motion?”

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Guy Rankin, IV is the Chief Executive Officer for the Harris County Housing Authority (HCHA), a governmental agency which serves more than two million people and a service area of approximately 1100 square miles. With over 20 years of housing and community development experience, Mr. Rankin has garnered an international reputation of excellence for planning, housing development and recovery through accomplished change and innovation. Under his visionary leadership, HCHA has grown from a troubled agency to one of the best housing authorities in the country as recognized by the U. S. Department of Housing & Urban Development. http://www.achatexas.org 

I think a great number of people have no idea how they appear to others. You could fill a large psychiatry office with all the books that have been written about how we perceive ourselves. But few books have any real impact in the area of how we are viewed by others. Taking a look at how others see us is not an easy thing to do. However, if we want to have enough personal influence to make all the communication skills and brilliant ideas we have succeed, willingness needs to raise its ugly head. For example, if you sit down to put on your rollerblades and your spouse calls out “Honey, please be careful,” it means you do not skate well! If people look at your artwork and say things like “Wow, you sure used a lot of paint!” or “This would look awesome in the garage,” it means you don’t have any talent.

Getting honest about who you really are to others is crucial to success. It’s a practice common among top businesspeople. In our 10-year survey of 5,000 top professionals, Wynn Solutions found that the most successful – the top 1% – had a realistic view of how others perceived them. This dose of realism serves them well because they can influence others only as far as those others will allow. So if the great self-portrait I’ve painted in my mind far exceeds the exhibit I’ve put on display to the public, I’ll struggle to convince anyone of my genius.

Believing in yourself is great, but you need others also to believe in you if you hope to motivate or lead people in the direction you want. It’s good to have confidence, and certainly self-esteem is important … but if I believed I was OK regardless of society’s opinions, I would be at the grocery store in my underwear.

We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that something’s true if we just believe strongly enough. I believe the speed limit on toll roads should be 100 mph. That’s slower than the no-speed-limit autobahn, so it seems fair to me. But the cop who pulled me over last week believed I should go to jail. So what I believe is often not only irrelevant; it’s illegal!

Is it possible that some things you believe about yourself may not be true? Can you ask a very close, give-it-to-you-straight friend how you come across to others? This may sound to some like an invitation to developing a slight case of paranoia. But spending your life obliviously unaware of what is preventing you from being seen as valuable is much worse. Being worried about not being OK makes you human and relevant. Showing up to the big board meeting in an ’80s dress with shoulder pads could make you (literally) history – especially if you are a man!

Hire  Guest Speaker Garrison Wynn

Content + Humor: A Full-on Fusion Boosts Your Meeting’s Success

You know your organization’s objectives for the meeting. You spend time and effort to create the perfect event to support those goals. And then a dry, boring speaker single-handedly makes sure that attendees carry away nothing of value … except maybe a few bottled waters.

In today’s work world, a humorous keynote speaker is crucial to your meeting’s success. Studies show that people acquire more information and are more likely to retain and implement what they hear if they laugh along the way.  In recent years, advertisers, newscasters and educators have infused humor into their efforts to persuade, inform and instruct. They’ve realized that without original humor (not old, stale jokes), people just won’t tune in or pay close attention. Nothing against Walter Cronkite, but he just wasn’t funny – “and that’s the way it is!”

As we get busier and more distracted, it takes humor to grab an audience’s attention so the message can be delivered. Studies of college lecturers who use humor in the classroom indicate that humor positively affects attention, motivation and comprehension. 1 Done right, humor also improves recall of the subject or idea being communicated .2
Combining good content with original humor is a must at today’s meetings. Who hasn’t listened to some high-cost motivational speaker who wrote a fantastic book but who’s only halfway through the presentation before you realize the information would be really valuable if you could just stay awake for it?  Who hasn’t checked the watch or phone as boredom sets in and been surprised to realize that 10 minutes was all the speaker needed to completely lose the audience?

Subjected to speakers like that, attendees who provide conference feedback will comment “I thought the information was good,” which is code for “The speaker was not!” When association members under age 45 are asked why they no longer attend the annual meeting in their industry, they often say, “Well, the speakers are boring and I can get that information online.” The speaker you choose for your event creates the impact and memorable experience you desire for your attendees. If studies show that effective teaching in college classrooms revolves around the connection established between the instructor and the student,3 then your event should be built around speakers who establish that connection and make the content memorable. Humor is key to both.

And yet, the combination of real business content and original humor is not always easy to find. Some speakers are mainly humorists who tell loads of funny stories with little relevance; other speakers who offer rock-solid content can really struggle to include humor that produces a laugh. Your best results will come from a speaker who understands that it’s not so much a balance of content and humor; it’s a full-on fusion of the two.

This kind of speaker uses funny stories that are on point; in fact, the humor exists to make the point. This kind of speaker makes sure that anecdotes and jokes provide a memorable context for information recall.4 There’s little comparison to speakers who rely on clownish humor that undercuts their authority. Frankly, silly doesn’t fly among VP types. Silly might attract attention but it doesn’t sell the message. It makes your event memorable for the wrong reasons.

It’s worth the search to find that speaker whose expert use of humor keeps your group engaged and taking notes on information they can use to forward their success. When your aim is to have people leave your event feeling informed and energized, forgoing the humor is no laughing matter.

“Comedy is truth – only faster. Things are funny because they’re true. If people relate, they retain.”

— Garrison Wynn, on the power of comedy to cement lessons in an audience’s mind

1 Studies from Bandes (1988), Bryant et al. (1979), Wandersee (1982), and Gorham & Christophel (1990), cited in Kher N, Molstad S, Donahue R, 1999: “Using humor in the college classroom to enhance teaching effectiveness in ‘dread courses,’” College Student Journal 33(3): 400. Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCR/is_3_33/ai_62839448/, accessed April 22, 2011.

2 Conclusion reached in study by Hill (1988), cited in Kher, Molstad & Donahue (1999).

3 Pollio HR and Humphreys WL (1996): “What award-winning lecturers say about their teaching: It’s all about connection.” College Teaching 44, 101-106.

4 Kher, Molstad & Donahue (1999), citing study by Hill (1988).

This extremely informative, entertaining, solutions-based session explores why younger and older people don’t see eye to eye. From dealing with coworkers and parents of a different generation, to handling the entitled behavior of the students without losing your mind, this research-based program shows it’s possible for baby boomers and Gen X and Y individuals to work well together in an educational environment.

Additional programs by motivational educational speaker Garrison Wynn

The Real Truth About Success: What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! debunks common myths about success, replacing them with new insight into what makes some of the world’s top businesspeople so successful. As a motivational speaker and corporate trainer, author Garrison Wynn has gained unique access to industry leaders and top producers. After 10 years of surveying 5,000 top performers from 23 industries, Wynn compiled research and anecdotes to reveal the truth about success, including some surprising challenges to conventional thinking:

• The best product or service doesn’t always win. People choose what makes them comfortable, whether it’s the best or not.
• Genius is not the foundation of success. The smartest person in the room has little influence if no one understands him.
• Many standout businesspeople cite hard work as the reason for their tremendous success, but lots of people work just as hard for little payoff. Hard work isn’t the whole story.
• Top performers do not often divulge the real basis of their success because the truth might not sound sexy enough.

Published by McGraw-Hill in late 2009, The Real Truth About Success’s current climb shows the book has growing appeal in a challenging economy. “Readers seem intrigued to learn that the most successful people earned their place not by being the smartest, the hardest working, or the best at what they do but by knowing what advantages they have and using them fully,” Wynn says. “This book reveals that there’s not some elusive, rare quality that brings success; it’s something that any person can replicate if he or she is willing to find an advantage and use it to create an unfair fight – not a dirty fight, but a fight where the odds are stacked in one’s favor.”

Readers often approach Wynn at his speaking engagements or training sessions to comment on the unconventional ideas advanced in the book. “They usually mention how true (and occasionally disturbing) they found the conclusions from my research to be: Being smart or having great ideas is just not enough to succeed,” says Wynn. “But most often, people remark that the ideas in the book made them look at themselves in new ways and showed them how life not being fair can actually become an advantage.”

Although both book formats sell well, The Real Truth About Success in Kindle format has established a solid hold in the Top 20. Social media expert Brian Carter attributes this success on Kindle to the fact that the book’s content and humor reflect the way that tech-savvy, socially networked professionals like to receive information. “Garrison Wynn’s Real Truth is laugh-out-loud funny all the way through. It serves up valuable information laced with irreverent humor, keeping the pace fast and the points memorable. Content like this on Kindle appeals to the growing social media set because it feeds them an insider’s look at success in the portable, on-the-go format they prefer. It fits the lifestyle and feeds the desire to do more and achieve more with what they’ve got,” Carter says.

From the research compiled for The Real Truth About Success, Wynn has developed keynote speeches and professional training designed to help individuals and organizations identify their strengths and put their advantages to full use. Keynotes and training are delivered through Wynn Solutions, a Houston-based firm founded by Wynn in 1996 to help individuals and organizations boost their influence and improve their leadership, management and communication skills.

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AboutGarrison Wynn

As a motivational speaker, advisor, author and entertainer, Garrison Wynn has worked with some of the world’s most effective corporate leaders, educators and business developers, from multibillion-dollar manufacturers and national associations to top New York Stock Exchange wire houses. He has a background in manufacturing, entertainment, telecommunications and financial services. By age 27 he became the youngest department head in a Fortune 500 company’s history. He researched and designed processes for 38 company locations nationwide and developed and marketed products still being sold in 30 countries. An experienced actor in films and a former professional stand-up comedian, Garrison has hosted national television and radio programs. He is the author of the book The REAL Truth About Success, contributes weekly columns to The Washington Post and has coauthored with Stephen Covey. His books, articles and award-winning success tools have received accolades, but his greatest strength is a magnetic live performance that keeps him in high demand, with more than 600 inquiries and 100 speaking dates per year.

About Wynn Solutions
Wynn Solutions helps individuals and organizations make the jump from being really good at what they do to being consistently chosen to do it. Through customized services, including keynote speakers, corporate training programs and employee assessments, Wynn Solutions provides its clients with the tools they need to create and sustain successful business relationships. FounderGarrison Wynn and his staff of experienced presenters offer keynote presentations, training, coaching and consulting in sales, marketing, leadership, management, communications and presentation skills. Wynn’s experience as a professional stand-up comedian and Fortune 500 dynamo ensures that every Wynn Solutions program and training session is impactful, entertaining, grounded in research and backed by action that generates results.

Media Inquires:
Liana Eakins
Wynn Solutions
Houston, Texas
p: (888) 833-2902
e: liana@wynnsolutions.com

If you have trouble discovering an innate advantage—or if what you find doesn’t seem advantageous enough—you create an advantage. The top 1 percent we surveyed and studied did not always have size, beauty, or remarkable demeanors (some were downright obnoxious and a bit hard on the eye), but they all had advantages they used to help them be successful. These advantages were often not innate but things a lot of people might have. The top performers just identified the potential advantages and, if they did not have what they needed to create them, went out and got it.

Creating an advantage is not easy, especially if you have no talent, but it is always possible. Just think about people you’ve worked with over the years: unimpressive, untalented, and eventually in charge.  As you read this, look around you. What does success look like? What do those successful people have that you don’t (other than success, obviously)? Chances are they have more than innate advantages. Try to discover some learnable behaviors or positioning strategies that you could duplicate. Is there an education level that can’t be maneuvered around? Is there training or certification needed?

As you look around, remember that it’s important to know the business culture you’re operating in. You must see business for what it really is: a place where fairness falters, where even the seemingly undeserving win. The terms “fair fight” and “level playing field” have little business in the business world. The bottom line in the real business world is that fairness rarely raises its ugly head. A fair fight means you are unprepared. Heck, I could lose a fair fight. I personally like my fights lopsided in my favor and my opponents minimally skilled and easily defeated.

Let’s be really honest: You want a fair fight only if you believe that equality is more important than personal success or if you are bored with how easily you’ve been winning your fights. When I first started to hear the advantages of the most successful, it did not seem right that they were successful regardless of talent, skill, or education. But I realized that the people who are willing to overcome everything in their path (like a giant lack of talent) because of their desire for their goal were as deserving as anyone else.

Viewing business this way requires a willingness to step away from traditional norms of fairness—to understand that “unfair” fighting does not mean unscrupulous or dishonorable. It means thinking critically about some business practice, personality trait, or personal strategy and then methodically employing it to your advantage so you stand out from others and win. Creating a phony Facebook account for a person who is competing with you for a promotion that clearly states his dedication to Hitler is definitely unscrupulous. However, making sure you discuss your love of the History Channel in the interview with your Nazi-crazed future boss is not. You knew what he valued and got excited about his favorite subject. And you used your thought-to-be-useless knowledge of World War II to get the promotion.

Read more from motivational guest speaker Garrison Wynn’s best selling book: “The Real Truth about Success: What the top 1% do differently”

We like to think that these unstable conditions around the world are new and shocking events never before seen. But the truth is that the Japanese invented the word tsunami, which means clearly this is not their first rodeo. (I’ve actually seen a Japanese rodeo, and it definitely appeared to be their first.)
Likewise, rebelling against governments is absolutely nothing new; it’s the foundation of the United States. Those of us who think our economy is really bad have never ridden the chicken bus in Mexico. (You know, that bus you’re on when you realize all the native riders are holding farm animals … and somehow you get the idea their economy is a little different from yours.)

The reason a series of unfavorable current events can intrigue us so much is simply this: We like bad news. As a culture, Americans tend to fan the flames of panic. From the post-earthquake and -tsunami videos, you might conclude that the Japanese don’t seem to be panicking. Don’t be fooled; they’re panicking – their panic just looks different from ours. Their panic does not give the appearance that Godzilla has come to town. That image of panic is one that the Japanese created for us, an American film audience that enjoys that stuff. We feed off it.

But sometimes we also let it bog us down. No matter how bad things get, circumstances do not create the quality of our life. We do. How we think and feel about what goes on and the belief systems that we hold create what we think of the future.

Worry is not the symptom of a problematic life. It is, in fact, the problem. Worry that does not create an action pretty quickly is useless. As you may have heard before, action creates opportunity. Fear creates action that we probably should have thought through a little better first.

We are concerned about a younger generation that doesn’t seem to have a sense of urgency; they don’t seem to be worried about the things we think should cause them worry. But maybe these young people are proof of the latest evolution of the human condition. Maybe we’re evolving to the point we’ve finally realized that chronic dread is just not helpful enough. It’s like a 50-year-old person dealing with a technology problem. He’ll see it as an all-day problem, whereas the 25-year-old is just looking for one of many solutions that he actually knows exist. It’s easy to say that this new generation may lack the efficiency of the previous generation; after all, we worked hard to make sure they didn’t have to work as hard as we did. But the truth is, as usual, we all have a lot to learn from each other.

Concern (which is nothing more than worry conveyed with a more effective expression on your face) is important because it drives us to make plans and prepare ourselves for the future. For example, seeing a glass as half empty can help a lot of us to consistently keep our glass full. But critical thinking is not the same as a fatalistic outlook.

My ultimate point is to stop worrying so much about things we can’t do anything about and to take specific action on the things we can actually influence. To that end, here are six things we can do to be more effective about how we think.

1. Quit talking so much about how bad everything is, because ultimately you’re using your charismatic influence to lower the performance of the people around you.
2. Watch television news a little less and the History Channel a little more. (Don’t take this to mean that you should stay up until 4 a.m. watching Hitler documentaries.)
3. Focus on making the people around you feel valuable, because people who feel valued make fewer mistakes, are more loyal to you and have a better outlook on life. It’s why corporations and associations spend money on motivational speakers.
4. Adopt modern business practices. Communication has changed, and social media is having a dramatic effect on everything from brand awareness to customer service to generating big revenue. Social media is simply word of mouth on steroids; it’s the natural progression of technology-aided communication. First came tribal drums, then smoke signals, then the telegraph (although I think there may have been a few things in between smoke signals and the telegraph), then the telephone, then the computer/Internet, and now social media.
5. Remember that, when dealing with younger people, you need to let them know that “now” means now. With their
   With their lack of a sense of urgency, they sometimes don’t understand that “now” means “Stop what you’re doing and focus on this other thing pronto!”
6. Use all the effort that you put into worrying about the future into creating your own future.

The value of worry is that, in small, well-applied doses, it motivates us. The problem is we are not a culture known for our love of moderation!
Whatever hitches and hiccups we might experience right now, we are probably not the first ones to face them, nor are we the first ones to solve them. Frankly, it doesn’t take genius to succeed. Throughout history, we humans have achieved through persistence and resilience. In fact, our research shows that when a high percentage of top performers were asked about how their brilliance created success, they simply said that (1) they were not as smart as they were relentless, and (2) a more intelligent person would have quit long before they did.

Motivational Speaker – Author – Consultant –  Garrison Wynn

In the old sense, social networking to strike up some winning business prospects entailed spending time with a few losing prospects. Times have changed. I’m not saying there are fewer losing prospects out there… but nowadays we have the ability kind of “speed-date” our way past them to concentrate on the keepers.

That’s because these days, the term networking most often refers to online connecting, through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other electronic interfaces. Everyone is doing it – some companies to great effect, and some students to great detriment. (Is it really worth flunking out of school because you’re up until 5 a.m. responding to the 800 friends you have worldwide?)

Social Media: Productive or Destructive?

Without a doubt, social networking can strengthen your career and expand your possibilities. It’s a cheap, powerful way to connect. It generates relationships and situations you can capitalize on with face-to-face networking. You create connections with influencers and experts that would take years to achieve in person. Social networking builds brand awareness, enhances your company’s image, prevents reputation problems, increases customer loyalty, reveals new markets and business opportunities, and keeps your key employees on the cutting edge of innovation.

With the power and potential of social networking, will we soon forget how to deal with humans face to face? Will we lose our ability to interact? I have seen some young hotel clerks who have clearly lost contact with the “hospitality” part of the hospitality business.

Taken to an extreme, the pervasiveness of social media networking among younger generations in particular leads some people to speculate that someday we might all be loner robots living in isolation and glued to our devices. Already, socializing electronically for middle school students means you can hook up, break up and develop teen angst with people you’ve never met! You’ve got to wonder what that looks like in the future. Will people be married through Facebook? Do you promise to stay together until … what? Some big server goes down?

Is it possible for social networking to cause antisocial behavior? I don’t mean that spending a lot of time on Facebook will make you a serial killer (although you might connect with people you could easily imagine strangling). It’s just that if you spend your Friday nights with online friends, isn’t that an indication that you don’t actually have any real friends?

Making Social Media Networking Work

The truth is that social networking actually creates great trust among people and brings them together, while also helping us to avoid getting together with people we should definitely deal with from a distance. Think about it: With certain coworkers, you know you’d function as a better team if you could just get information from them and not have to deal with their psychotic personalities. (A person can be only so annoying in text.)

The key is knowing how to use social networking to your own benefit or the benefit of your employer (not just for sending photos of yourself drunk to people you don’t know that well and twittering that you’re heading to the bathroom). Social networking is not just the future; it’s a good future if you do it effectively.

As you strive to manage all the information that this complex modern life requires you to deal with each day, consider whether you’re spending time with the right people. Think of that loser buddy from high school who just contacted you on Facebook – the one who still drives the same car from senior year… What’s he doing for you? On the flip side, consider what other people get from reconnecting with you. If you’re hanging out with people more successful than you, that might make you the loser buddy. But surely it’s better to be a loser pulled up by winners than to be a moderate success who gets dragged down by loser buddies.

Social networking allows you to explore – even exploit – those dynamics. You get to learn from those who are successful and not waste your time with people who have nothing to offer. Be advised, though, there are weirdoes out there. Quite a few people I knew in the ’80s have resurfaced to say hello and only one of them turned out to be a stalker.

Natural progression

Concern that the latest networking technology will jeopardize face-to-face connections is nothing new. In the late 1800s, people thought the telephone would destroy relationships when it actually ended up building them!

Social networking is yet another development in a steady progression toward better, clearer, faster communication and more fulfilling relationships. While early man once settled for one-on-one meetings and some cave art that seemed a bit vague, through the ages we have embraced written language, the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone to establish, expand and strengthen relationships. In our quest to strike up and cement relationships faster, aren’t social networking vehicles like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn the logical next step?

1. The seduction of power: Being the boss can cause some people to believe they are superior beings.  If you feel like you kind of own your people and they are lucky to be working for you, you have a problem. You may be power crazy if you refer to yourself in the 3rd person, you interrupt your employees in the middle of important business tasks to get them to do personal favors for you or people tend to bow and clasp their hands when they ask you questions.
2. Causing people to stop using common sense: People who are demanding cause their people to get distracted away from their priorities. Common sense is not always that common! You need to make sure you are not distracting your people away from thinking and you get people to think by asking good questions.
3. Indulging in favoritism: Do you have employees that you like more than others?   Do you think the other employees know that? This is a big deal because it can cause a good employee to lower their productivity.  If some employees feel less valuable than others they will stop giving their best effort.
4. Overreactions that create liars: You may act in a way that makes your people not want to tell you things (you end up the least informed person in the office). There is enough dishonesty in the world without us creating it in the people around us. Some of us have more control over our reactions that others. Overreactions are an acute awareness. If you have quick reflexes, you tend to be over reactive (a good pilot or Astronaut is the exception but they are hard to find). The key is to be accepting and tolerant or tell people you may overreact but you recover quickly.
5. Believing that it’s not what you say, it’s what you do:
   Your strategic thinking won’t help you enough.
   What comes out of your mouth creates the culture around you. It’s not what you do, it’s what you say in reality.

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