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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.

What does it take for 800 people to work together on a project with a minimum of friction? Back in 1983, that’s exactly what my partner Lynda-Ross and I were aiming to figure out.  When I fist met Lynda-Ross, she was managing a very large multi-year systems development project for a major corporation and she was searching for tools to help the people working on the project stay motivated, reduce conflict, and perform to the best of their capability.

Why do some people thrive in the work they do while others seem miserable? Throughout my years as a business coach and a consultant, this question always fascinated me. On a practical level, I always tried to place people in the “right” job for them. But uncovering “right” was a trial and error process of soliciting input from people about what they wanted and then observing their performances.  It wasn’t until my partner Gary and I developed the Perceptual Style Assessment that I discovered a reliable way to help people match their talents with the tasks at hand.

It sounds easy – knowing who you are. It should be a given, right? Knowing and understanding who you are is a lifetime process that begins in childhood, on the playground, when you begin the process of learning just where you fit in.  But where you fit in as an entrepreneur is a whole different question!  Most people start a business because they have an area of expertise. If they’re in tune with who they really are and what makes them happy, chances are, this area of expertise is also an area of deep personal passion.