The journey we call the work. This work doesn't cause us to not have feelings of guilt, shame or blame. It's not like you go through a training and instantly never make another bad decision in your life. What is amazing about this work is the fact that we have tools to express our feelings, change our sunglasses and move on; if we choose to. If any person on the planet I cannot think of anyone that is more deserving of that experience than our youth. Do you remember what is w

Originally written by Brian Klemmer. Leaders operate from being responsible, even when they don't feel like it and it doesn't seem true A construction worker went to work every day with his black metal lunch pail under his arm. On Monday, he complained loudly about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had for lunch. His co-workers ignored his complaints, since it was his first day on the job. Tuesday at lunch this same worker was even louder about how much he hated peanut

If someone's intention doesn't match yours then you don't want to be doing business with them. Why? Mismatched intentions result in conflict. When the smallest obstacle arises, problems will occur, hindering performance. You can either find someone whose intention matches yours, or you can support someone in clarifying their intention. Let me give you an example. I once did a seminar and said to the participants, "Honestly rate your commitment to creating value today. A ten i

Few things are more helpful in our quest for excellence than constructive feedback, and few things are more harmful than destructive feedback. The difference between constructive and destructive feedback is simply the relevance, intent, and demeanor of the individual offering the feedback. In our instantaneous, online, connected world, it is easy for anyone anywhere to give you feedback for any reason. I often think that some of the harmful comments people make in social

We often speak of releasing physical weight, and are we as diligent about releasing our wait? I was on a coaching call with a group of Champion’s out of New Hampshire, and said I was releasing weight. A beautiful friend of mine said that what she heard is that she gets to release her wait. I thought this was such a profound conversation. How many times do we sit in indecision, and use it as a great excuse to not get what it is we say we want. We turn our unknowingness into a

Imagine two men in a village. Both have to walk a mile each way every day to a river to get water for their families. After a month, one man starts working on building a pipe underground to connect the river to his house. For an entire year he expends extra energy working on his pipeline. When he finishes, he has the resource of the water directly to his house, while the second man continues to walk to the river. Are there places in your life where you are living day to day?

Aetna Healthcare hired Klemmer because they were interested in hosting fewer meetings with their teams and the meetings they did conduct needed to be more effective. We delivered training with a primary focus on communication, trust, risk taking and honoring agreements. This training yielded an overall increase in open communication by 51% and a 39% increase in collaboration among team members which was credited with reducing meeting costs by $2 million dollars over 12 months

Hewlett Packard hired Klemmer because they were five weeks behind in developing the ink-jet printer (losing $10 million a week). They were having a teamwork problem between design departments in Barcelona, Spain and San Diego, California. For HP, we completed workshops in San Diego and Barcelona and they credit our workshops with making up all five weeks of their manufacturing delay. Since 1995, Klemmer Leadership Training is committed to creating bold, ethical leaders who wi

All of us have a choice in how we look at our circumstances. One choice is the victim viewpoint, the viewpoint that the events in my life are the result of something being done to me. The second is the responsible viewpoint: I am the cause for my experience because of choices I have made. A key distinction when discussing these two viewpoints is that neither victim nor responsible have anything to do with the truth. One way to understand the difference between victim and resp

Sometimes the key piece that we can forget is that resistance in most cases is not external. Most of the time our resistance is within ourselves, battling our own sunglasses. Have you ever thought that the worst things being said to you are the things you say to yourself? How do you overcome internal resistance? Quit resisting it! First, recognize that you are in resistance. Difficulties are part of the process. Keep your eyes open to the fact that resistance to any goal is n

There is a set of sunglasses we wear that colors our experiences in the context of right and wrong. When considering this, I am not speaking in terms of morality, but about a person's experience. More specifically, within this context one person is right and the other person is wrong. Over the years I have come to see that everyone wears this pair of sunglasses to some degree or another. I have also observed that this way of looking at the world is one of the most difficult p

The saying goes like this: the only way you can fail is to quit. In fact, I heard someone say just last week regarding his business that he was not giving up. I am now going to challenge this belief from the perspective that there is much more than merely not giving up and not quitting. You can apply this to your business, your health, your finances, your relationships – any and all of the important areas of your life where you have so much to gain by giving it all you've got

Do you yearn to live a life without fear and hesitation? In our last blog we introduced the secret to playing full out with a discussion about operating out of our beingness. Living from the place of knowing that we are whole, unique individuals — rather than from our egos and the perspective of having to fill up our lives with externals in order to be something — frees us to take risks and opens up our creativity. That shift in thinking allows us to play full out. What other

Think back. Why did you originally choose to attend Klemmer & Associates workshops in the first place? Were you looking for something more in your life, perhaps in the form of relationships, achieving goals, blasting past personal barriers that were hindering you? In a previous blog we talked about a graduate, who had achieved a lot of his goals, yet still felt unfulfilled. Maybe you can relate to him, having also tried to remedy that feeling by reaching for higher and higher

Do you know your purpose? If not, you're in the company of a lot of other people. Like those other people, you might share a feeling of aimlessness and dissatisfaction with life. Something seems to be missing, and you know there's got to be more. But how does someone go about finding their purpose? Is there a course you can take? A book you can read? Someone you can talk to who can tell you what it is? There is no magic bullet, no step-by-step formula which you can follow to

In Brian Klemmer's book, The Compassionate Samurai, he addresses ways that you can become the person you want to be. If you visualized the ideal you, how would you look, feel, and behave? It can be helpful to write the details on paper. For instance, how much do you weigh, what is your waist size, what color clothes do you wear? Do you feel confident, joyful, energetic? As a parent, are you patient? As a spouse or partner are you loving and compassionate? Are you a thoughtful

We are all constantly faced with decisions. In many cases, these decisions are divided into two areas: Things that will make us happy now versus things that will make us happy later. If life were a three-day weekend, it would be easy to make the right choices, but we have to balance getting the most we can out of today while planting seeds that will make us happy tomorrow. Recently, I read about an incident involving my late friend and mentor, the legendary basketball coac

Right now we are nearing the full swing of summer. Trees are lush, flowers are in full bloom, and stores and farmer's markets are starting to burst with fresh produce. The tendency may be to focus on the product of summer, the fruit. But summer is a time of growth. If you garden, then you know that there's a lot that goes into growing vegetables and fruits such as tomatoes and raspberries. First comes the soil prep, then the planting of seeds or root stock, and then the conti

Commitment is freedom. Most people see commitment as the opposite. Thus the reason many people are afraid of marriage, a steady relationship, or even giving the company they work for all they have to offer. People with this mindset are always looking for something better and searching for more while they settle forwhat they have. They see commitment as giving up what might be or could have been. They view commitment as a thing to avoid because it is best to "keep their option