Blog & Articles

She would be better off to start smoking again, because the interaction with other smokers in the designated break area would do her more good than the smoking would do her harm. — Doctor to the son of an 85 year-old resident at an Alzheimer facility.

In this New Year, ours is a society that could use a hug. It is hard to deny the importance of relationships. By any objective measure, the most compelling priority for this New Year […]

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Russia’s agency responsible for the Kremlin security is buying typewriters – a move reportedly prompted by recent leaks by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. — BBC News  — Europe, July 11, 2013

A key assumption behind Big Data is that more information and knowledge about our customers will translate into greater customer engagement, stronger relationships, and increased sales. What if the assumption is not fully true — and larger organizations with larger stores of data unleash forces of distrust […]

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…relationship itself is the real thing. We used to think all the energy was in the particles of the atom; now it seems that energy is, in fact, in the space between the particles.  Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Much of the focus on strategic leadership either ignores or looks too narrowly at the importance of key relationships.

The latest leadership maxim to take a hit is maximizing shareholder value which focuses narrowly on the shareholder relationship. Steve Dunning at Forbes […]

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We are a society drowning in text and starving for touch. The onslaught of electronic interactions and transactions has structurally changed how we relate. Email, texts, tweets, on-line purchases and kiosks that dispense everything from cash to gasoline have made unspoken words and icons the center of our universe.

What we are losing is nonverbal touch — a look that encourages, a hand that warms, a tone that soothes, a smile that greets, a wink that acknowledges, a lean-in that reinforces. […]

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Our fight over same-sex marriage is a battle about relationships that is increasingly eroding relationships. Our diverse and entrenched beliefs about how to be together are driving us apart. What would be useful at this stage is a more relationship-centric approach to disagreement.

Judging from the volume and tone of the debate, our relationships matter a lot, yet, ironically, the depth, duration and number of close relationships continue to decline. My Flight From Relationships (FFR) Index, which charts the rate of […]

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At some point, the strategy is to execute.

While the CEO role as chief strategy decider gets much of the hype, it is the challenge of business execution that so often drives results – or not. And, sustained execution is a relationship game. It is a matter of building relational commitment that leads stakeholders – subordinate managers, employees, customers, shareholders, and suppliers – to perform unnatural acts. Acts like reporting

bad news that no one wants to hear, committing fully […]

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Sign up now to see Robert Hall speak at socialmediabreakfastdallas.com and see what he has to say about relationships being our single most valuable resource and how technology is effecting us, April 25, 2013.

Be more intentional, build community and establish relationship leadership and succeed at home, at work, in politics, and in faith.

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The handsome, articulate young man sitting across from me looked hollow and slightly hopeless as he recounted that four years ago, everything looked great for him and his young bride. He had a good job with a top financial organization and was working on a master’s degree when cutbacks left him unemployed. Now four year later and still jobless, he confided that he and his wife are near divorce, mental health issues have surfaced, and isolation especially from work and […]

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St. Valentine was a third-century priest martyred for marrying soldiers at a time when Roman Emperor Claudius II had decreed single men made better fighters. Other lore suggests St. Valentine was killed for attempting to help Christians escape Roman prisons where they were tortured. Regardless of its exact roots, Valentine’s Day honors loving relationships — romantic, platonic, familial or collegial.

About those loving relationships … Even though our Valentine’s Day expressions keep growing — more than 150 million Valentine cards will […]

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One month later, the tragedy at Sandy Hook has caused us to reflect on what kind of society we have become. Increasingly it feels like we have become a land of strangers and estrangement that has lost our relational glue. The metrics of our growing relationship fight and flight are excruciating: over the past few decades divorce is up 50 percent, marriage is down 50 percent, single-parent children born to those under 30 are the new normal hovering at 50 percent in 2012, […]

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