Wikipedia describes Empathy as the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings, and is characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". This connection to others is both an honorable and natural feeling, but can also often drive us to do something that, is the completely wrong thing to do. Since joining the Fire Service I've seen many situations where peoples empathy for another has not only caused them to be unable to render help, but on occasions has actually put everyone in danger. In a blog post the other day Seth Godin talked about empathy and asked To View More >>

Derek Sivers did a talk at TED about this crazy dancing guy and what we can learn from him in terms of leadership, and more importantly about the importance of the first few followers. "If you want a movement, a leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous". What you really need however is the first few followers, you need to nurture these people as they indicate to the masses that following is ok. Because they help to establish momentum, we need to love and embrace our followers as equals. In the video watch a movement happen in under 3 minutes as Derek dissects some lessons To View More >>

I'm a believer in education, I really am, and my children's eduction is very important to me. I've pursued high-level tertiary education myself, and I regularly attend business and personal development courses. But I'm also a believer in determination, passion and experience. A huge believer in fact, and sitting next to a guy in the Wool business one evening  after speaking at an Icehouse event, I was reminded of why... His story went something like this: He was sacked from his first job packing shelves at K-Mart when he was young. I believe he left school early as he suffered with dyslexia and To View More >>

Yesterday I let you know that I was going to take the "31 Days To A Better Blog" challenge and I am getting more and more excited. Day 1 The task for today was to write an "elevator pitch for my blog". This was something that had been on my mind for a while, as I felt I didn't have a strong focus around what I wrote. I genuinely think I could go "toe to toe" and hold my own in a discussion on most of the issues I write about, but I wasn't providing any depth of information. We have deep experience and knowledge in HR, IT, Marketing, Relationships, Leadership, Strategy etc but I didn't want to To View More >>

I'd like to think that I am more of a Greenie than some of the Greenies I know, so here is the good business stuff you can learn from the environmental movement. Only a little is about being green, and for some this might be only about the profit baby :-) I don't believe it's right to assume business is anti-environment, although our track track record could be better. But what we can learn from our environmental friends is that our environment is a reflection of us ... a reflection of our choices ... a reflection of our behavior and most importantly a reflection of our values and focus. Not the To View More >>