TAG: relationships

Strengths and Happiness Part I: How Strengths Help You Live Your Purpose

What are you good at? What energizes you? What motivates you to achieve your big goals? Welcome to strengths! Strengths are a major component of positive psychology, the science of what makes life worth living.  The strengths-based approach of positive psychology helps individuals to identify and focus on the positive aspects of their lives. In fact, research demonstrates that identifying …

Flow and SPIRE Model of Happiness: How Flow Boosts Your Happiness

Think back to the last time that you were doing something: that you love, where you were totally immersed in this activity and in the zone, totally confident, free of judgment, feeling tremendous joy and so absorbed in what you were doing that time was going by and you didn’t even notice it. How do you feel? Chances are that …

Happiness and Balance: How Leaders Use the SPIRE Model for Life Balance

Does life balance give rise to greater happiness? How can the science of happiness help to achieve happiness AND balance? These are the questions that I explored with the alumni of  OPERA America’s Leadership Intensive Program at the recent Leadership Intensive Alumni Forum in Los Angeles, California. These non-profit arts leaders have been through an incredibly demanding period starting with the …

How To Jumpstart Your Career Satisfaction: Take the Career Assessment

Wheel-of-Life-Career-Assessment

Happy New Year! I hope that you enjoyed the holiday season and are looking forward to great things in the coming year! I am not big on New Year’s resolutions since it’s too easy to set yourself up for failure by reaching for unrealistic goals. Instead, I encourage people to reflect on the important areas of their lives and assess …

How to Stay in Balance over the Summer: 5 Steps for Music Entrepreneurs

3179390917 404092bf73 z

Summer is officially here! For many of us, it means a change in routine and the opportunity to do things that we do not have time to do during the rest of the year. School is out, summer festivals are about to begin, you may be on tour and/or you may have more down time around home. How do you …

Dynamic Communication for Arts Leaders: How to Use Communication Styles for Influence and Buy-In

Communicationstyles

A major aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to build and manage your relationship and dynamic communication is an important component of relationship management. I recently had the opportunity to teach these skills to the members of the 2014 Opera America Leadership Intensive group. One of their favorite communication tools was learning how to spot and use the 4 …

Networking for Arts Leaders: Top 10 Tips for Creating a Life-Long Supportive Network

18088713 s

In my work with arts leaders, I emphasize the importance of networking and therefore consider networking to be an essential leadership skill. My definition of networking is very simple: Connect + Share + Remain Relevant This boils down to the art of creating successful relationships in a mutually-supportive community that can help you both personally and professionally, as well as …

Conflict Management Styles: The Start of Effective Conflict Management

Conflict is part of life. Conflict is any situation in which people have incompatible interests, goals, principles or feelings and experience.  In other words, conflict means that two people experience discomforting differences.

Despite our best efforts, we find ourselves in disagreements with other people in all aspects of our lives:  at work, in our relationships, in our volunteer activities.  How we respond to provocation can determine if conflict moves in a beneficial or a harmful direction.  The good news is that we can learn skills, strategies and processes to manage conflict.

So Percussion: The Entrepreneurial Ensemble Shares Its Model of Success

The Yale School of Music community recently had the pleasure of welcoming Adam Sliwinski and Josh Quillen, two members of the red-hot percussion quartet, So Percussion, who talked about the entrepreneurial model of creating and running a successful ensemble.  Here is their take on collaboration, blending art and commerce and expanding the audience for classical music. To get in the …

Declutter and Open Yourself Up for Success

Welcome to 2011!

Are you one of those folks who made a solemn New Year’s Resolution that this is the year that you will lose 10 pounds, start working out or learn French? 

How long has this been on your list?  And what’s your pattern? 

If you are like many people, you devote yourself to this new activity for the month of January and then, a month later, that life-changing resolution has fallen by the wayside.  Often, these new goal are “shoulds” or are motivated by fear rather than things that you genuinely want.  Another reason is that you may not have cleaned up your house enough to let in new habits.  Think about all the things that are sucking the energy out of you and do not leave you with enough time or energy to devote to your authentic self.  You may not even have the energy to contemplate your authentic self.  So instead of making a lofty New Year’s Resolution, maybe what you need to do is to declutter and get rid of that negative energy.