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.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” ~J.K. Rowling One way to more powerfully influence others is to leverage your failures. People don’t realize the power of failure and…
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” ~ Dale Carnegie There is plenty of research on the role that emotions play in the decision-making process. Some folks believe that people make decisions based on rational analysis. And yet, research shows that emotions play a…
“We all have needs, and we will find a way to get those needs met in either a healthy or an unhealthy way” ~ Joe Contrera Studies have shown that you can boil human behavior down into 4 basic categories. People are either driven by a need to be right, to be liked, to…
“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that’s what makes you strong.” ~ Sarah Dessen Many years ago, Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company sponsored a show called The Wild Kingdom. It was a show hosted by Marlin Perkins along with his co-host, Jim Fowler. Each an every Sunday night they took…
“Training is something you do to animals, education is something you do for people.” ~ Joe Contrera Transactions & Exchanges When you go through the drive thru at McDonald’s, there’s a good chance you’re not going for a culinary experience. Going through the drive-thru there is a process that happens about 35 million times…
“What others say and do is a projection of their own reality” ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz Projection is a defense mechanism where we take a part of us that we don’t like (i.e. our arrogant-self, selfish-self, or our untrusting-self, etc.) and project it onto someone else. For example, if we look at someone and…
“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” ~ Napoleon Hill The other day I was having a conversation with a colleague, fellow coach, and an incredibly good friend, Barry Zweibel. We’ve been…
“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem” ~Theodore Isaac Rubin At any given time in life, all of us are faced with problems or challenges that at some point may feel insurmountable. Problems come in varying shapes and sizes. It’s…
“Sometimes you need to experience what you don’t want, before you can get clarity on what you do” ~Joe Contrera The gift of misalignment (experiencing what you don’t want) can be what leads you to gain clarity on what you do and help you achieve your goals. . Sometimes, we need to experience the…
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” ~ Mark Twain As we find ourselves embedded in the Holiday Season, rolling into the final 11 days of this year, I thought we needed to take a break from all the craziness this world wants to offer us. For many folks, the holidays can be a time of…