Jan, the owner of Simon the Jack Russell Terrier, trained Simon to touch a bell with his paw when he wanted to go outside.
 
One evening, Simon waited till she sat down to dinner, then rang the bell. When Jan left her plate of warm, delicious food to open the door, Simon ran past her, jumped onto [...]

The manager of a retail store told employees that their responsibility was to make transactions easy and quick for customers. However, if an item had no price or bar code, the cashier was required to call a manager. 
What’s wrong with this picture?  
We can do two things to make it easy and non-threatening for our team members to make decisions [...]

Can’t offer more money?
Can’t guarantee job security?
Can’t give promotions now?
What can a boss do during a tough economy to show how she values people?
1.  Ask their opinions. Close mouth and listen. Take notes. You don’t have to use all the ideas. Just save them. This demonstrates to that person that you take his ideas seriously. [...]

We speak without talking.
Our most powerful messages don’t come from our words.
They come from:
     – our eye movements
     – our facial expressions
     – our posture and gestures
As far back as 1959, anthropologist Edward T. Hall named these behaviors "The Silent Language."
Most telling today, though, is the blackberry or cell phone addict who says "I’m listening," even [...]

“Don’t allow more than five minutes to elapse in a meeting without writing something on a flip chart.” This is a gem from Russell Justice, international quality consultant for Eastman Chemical/Kodak (retired) and co-founder of The Transformation Network.
After five minutes in a meeting, Russell asks the question, “What are we saying here?” and writes down the [...]