Someone I really respect and admire threw out this quote from Brené Brown today: “Empathy drives connection. Sympathy drives disconnection… Empathy is I’m feeling with you. Sympathy, I’m feeling for you.” That raised my hackles. Because I’ve studied this extensively, over and over. And I’m sorry to inform the Zeitgeist, but you’ve got this one […]

After I posted an article on LinkedIn yesterday about the current virus-driven obsession with hygiene being a threat to our cherished American freedoms, my LI pal Phil Rink commented that we should dial back the extreme language (though later saying he agreed some of what’s going on looks like fascism, but that it wasn’t helpful […]

I’ve had an interesting dust-up the past few days over a comment I made about a LinkedIn post. Now I’ve been challenged with a follow-up question that I believe warrants an extended answer, so I decided to write it up here. It all started when a female VP at a large financial services firm posted […]

I’m slowly working my way through the online course from Hillsdale College An Introduction to C.S. Lewis. Do check it out – it’s more than worth the time. One of the instructors is Visiting Professor Michael Ward, a Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. In addition to other skills that make him a […]

As I’ve increasingly published my thoughts about the proper way, the moral way, to treat the people we’re privileged to lead, I’ve seen an interesting phenomenon among some of those who agree with me. They’re waiting for someone else to do something about it. Look at the comments to this LinkedIn post by Caroline Fairchild, […]

We could use a whole lot more people pointing out to folks that repeating business-trendy malapropisms not only doesn’t make you seem smart, but makes you appear at once idiotic and unoriginal. Tim Phillips does his part with this article.  Well done, sir. My latest object of corporate-speak hatred is the use of ask as […]

I have to admit I felt a bit funny traveling to my hometown for the funeral of a friend I knew for over thirty years, Mark “Biff” Fitting.  After all, it’s not like we were an everyday part of each other’s lives.  I worked for him for a couple summers in the early ’80s, and […]

Why do people think using ask as a noun (“The ask from the executives is for us to do our freakin’ jobs”) makes them look smart?  Because it doesn’t.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Please help.

I’ve had a long hate affair with the brutalization of English that takes place daily in our corporate environs. Today was an extreme.  It started innocently enough, with the word breakthrough showing up in a presentation as a verb.  Folks, when two words are combined into one like that, it’s never a verb — it’s […]