Joe Contrera is the Founder and President of ALIVE @ WORK LLC, a leadership development company dedicated to helping Extraordinary Leaders Achieve Extraordinary Results. He is the author of three books. His latest, Extraordinary Results: Mastering the Art of Leading, Coaching, & Influencing Others, is quickly becoming a must-have resource for leaders in organizations across the country. It will not only change what you believe about leading, it will help you build your leadership skills so that you can successfully influence others.
Talents, Skills, and Being Extraordinary! People often use the words talents and skills interchangeably, as if they had the exact same meaning. I believe that talents and skills are different. Talents encompass your strengths, your brilliance, and your genius. By genius, I mean in its original form found in the word – genie which means…
My Worldview: It’s What I Make It Mean! Sometimes a quote comes along and just smacks me upside the head. That happened recently when I read this quote from Richard Rohr, “Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” I think this is profound, because it quickly…
Is It Manipulation or Praise? There is a tremendous amount of articles written on the importance of praise and its positive effect on a person. Whether it’s an employee, coworker, or your children, healthy praise can both motivate and inspire. It can also cause others to feel good about themselves and their work. That said,…
Judging Others & Projection Have you ever been in a situation involving another person where you thought to yourself… “You know if they would only: apply themselves, work harder, smarter, do what I do, take my advice, be more like me, etc. they would be so much better off?” Maybe you exited the highway, and…
Finding Balance: The Pendulum Effect When we speak of balance, many times it is in the context of work-life balance. Trying to find balance in any area of our lives can be difficult. As with all things, there is always two sides of the coin. Pushing too far towards either end of the spectrums can…
Perfection, Projection, & Integrity Many of us we’re taught to pursue perfection. We were imprinted with the belief that perfection was achievable. We just had to try hard enough, work long enough, or be good enough. Please don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying we should not always strive to do or to…
Time: Past, Present, or Future? Our ability to leverage time is one of the most powerful tools we have if we want to accomplish anything in life. One of the biggest factors impacting our ability to leverage time, depends on which dimension of time we choose to spend the majority of our time in. Here’s…
Gratitude…Relatively Speaking! One of the things I love most about Albert Einstein is that, at times, he was able to to simplify some of the most complex questions or dilemmas we face in our lives. He said this about how our worldview, “One of the most important decisions we make is whether we believe we…
Are You in Alignment With Your Core Values? There are times in life when we must lose something or someone in order to help us gain clarity on what we value most in life. One way to prevent this from happening is to periodically do a core values realignment. A core values realignment is when…
Clarity: You Headed in the Right Direction? With all the craziness happening in the airline business right now, it reminded me of an incident from a few years ago. I was in Cleveland tending to some family business over the Thanksgiving Holiday. While there, I decided to make a reservation to return to Cleveland for…