Dan Erwin

5 Blog Posts That Add Up to 94,967 Views

On a regular basis I check google analytics to see what my viewers are paying the most attention to. Sometimes it helps me to plan further posts, but I find it difficult to clarify just why my readers are interested in certain posts. As a long-time executive coach, I have my own views on what are usually the most helpful for business success. Several of the following posts just wouldn't survive the first cut. So if you've got some ideas why these top five posts are really intriguing, I'd like to hear from you. To make it easier for you, I've linked each to the original posting on my blog site.

Here are the five posts, including a sentence or two of description on each of them. Note, I'm also including the exact numbers of views, as of Sunday, April 23. These have also been on three other sites, so the total figure for the five may well be in excess of 125,000 views. 

What patterns do you see in these postings?  

Can you really change your personality? (43,663 views.) Our personalities can grow and change over time. Though it's a slow process, the skills of deliberate practice are among a number of ways to change. (This is more than double the 2nd highest so it's obviously significant.)  

A New Approach to Human Assessment

Back in March 2014, I read a fascinating interview of Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, by the Times writer, Adam Bryant. Nadella’s orientation was so unique and rhetorically fascinating that I decided there was enough information provided for a verbal analysis. Using psycho-rhetoric, a new tool that makes assessments possible, I posted the results on my blog. 

I drew a number of conclusions growing out of Nadella’s consistent use of the rhetorical form of point/counterpoint. The form--a verbal pattern--stresses affinity to the past, and provides an alternative reading for the future. The use of the form made it possible to reap the positive and constructive legends surrounding Gates’ tenure without rejecting Steve Ballmer’s tenure. Significantly, the strategy limits the potential for rejection and blowback that many new CEOs face.

Using point/counterpoint, Nadella positioned the individual expertise as the real power of Microsoft’s teamwork. He also moved to confirm the present leadership team, strongly emphasizing their abilities, and securing the value of continuity. Finally, he used the Microsoft rhetoric of “formula,” but tweaked so that he can insert his own strategy. In effect, Nadella affirms the traditions of the past while adapting them to the new leadership and the present. Implicitly, my post suggested that Nadella was a superb CEO choice, a conversationalist and leader par excellence.

Well, was the analysis correct? Just three years later, a March issue of The Economist had a two page article on Nadella and...

When Life Is Beyond Your Control

I regularly enjoy conversations with seven or eight friends, retired university faculty and social workers. Recently, I’ve become aware that at least three of them are profoundly alarmed by Trump and Trumpism. They talk about Trump incessantly and seem personally frightened by his actions. I’ve intended to tell them just to take a good stiff drink and forget it. But I’ve come to realize that won’t work for them.

I certainly don’t disagree with their politics. It’s fairly obvious to me that our president is an evil, greedy bastard who, thus far, has evinced little interest in the common good. Yet human personal and political reality is never that clear cut. Most of us know that good people can do bad things. But my friends seem unaware that sometimes bad people do good things. The current trade talks seem to bode well for the middle class, just as Trump promised. So what’s really intriguing to me is . . .

Converse Like a Professional, But. . . .

. . . expect to revisit, restructure and revalue the conversation.

FYI: This is a response to a great number of interactions over more than thirty years of consulting. It grows out of two recurring questions: "How do I say that?" and"Can I say that?" They've been asked by entry-level employees and managers as well as senior executives. So here goes.

Conversely, don't merely talk. Conversation is about interaction and even dialog. It emphasizes shared, growing ideas. Talk tends to quickly become monologue or a presentation--as in, "my talk was about. . . " Talk is also very encompassing, whereas conversation refers to a specific kind of talk with definite parameters.

The term "professional" emphasizes a person who engages in a practice and has certain and unique kinds of competencies and skills. It can be used popularly to refer to any businessperson at any level: entry-level to executive. Although some academics don't think of business as a profession and some business people don't think of themselves as professional, clearly the term has cachet. The term is used both negatively and positively, as in "that's not very professional," and "you can count on her being very professional in her dealings." It's important to think about yourself in this manner. It implies a more careful consideration of your behaviors.

Ummm, yeah. Vocabulary is always important. The shift of a single word can automatically change one's perspective...