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I receive a lot of interesting and entertaining emails from friends of mine. Some I delete, and others I pass along. Every now and then, I get one that contains important public service information that should be passed along to everyone.

“Adjust your approach.” As a coach, you’re probably familiar with this concept, as different clients need different tools – and different types of communication – to achieve the results they’re looking for. But most often, these adjustments are based purely on intuition; sometimes they make a difference in the client relationship, and sometimes they don’t.

What do you do when you’re confronted with something you’re not good at?  Some people get discouraged and quit. Others keep doggedly working to get better at it, and in the process become more “well-rounded” human beings.  Conventional wisdom says that the second response is the healthy one. But the empirical evidence suggests that it’s people who specialize in an area of aptitude who are successful and happy, not those who focus their energies on becoming “well rounded.”

He said his name was Craig and he sounded very distraught because his business partners were having a meltdown. After 12 years of getting along well in a successful business, they were blindsided when they lost their biggest client.  Worse was that the 4 of them, usually friends, were blaming each other, getting into yelling matches and behaving in ways that until now had been totally foreign to this "ideal partnership".  Could they be rescued?

As one of the originators of a psychological assessment program (Your Talent Advantage), I’m often asked this question: How can an assessment that fits people into a finite number of “types” claim to reveal what’s truly unique about us?

Have you ever had the experience of being so deeply immersed in a project that you lost track of time? Research shows that those are the times when we’re happiest- when we’re engaging our natural skills and abilities. As a business coach with over thirty years of experience, I’ve seen it in action, over and over again: people succeed when they put themselves in a position to truly use their natural skills and abilities.

Why did you get into coaching? One of the most likely reasons is that you wanted to have a real, positive and lasting impact on the lives of your clients.  Unfortunately, many of the approaches that coaches currently use in their work don’t have this kind of lasting effect, for the simple reason that they focus on what clients currently don’t do well, as opposed to what they do.

When you were a kid, what did you dream of growing up to be?

It may sound obvious but before you can find the job you really want you have to know what you’re looking for.

Why do so many people go through life feeling unhappy, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled? I believe that, in many cases, it’s because they’ve been taught to suppress their core being – the unique traits that combine to make them who they really are.

If you are like most people, every January you make a few New Year’s Resolutions: “This is the year I am going to. . . lose that extra 10 pounds, finally get organized, stop watching so much television, etc., etc.” But if you are like most people, by the time you get to mid-February (or even earlier) all of your good intentions, dedication, and will power have succumbed to the relentless force of your daily routine.