Voice is how you sound in your speech, your writing, your messaging and framing. Voice is the manifestation of Genuineness. Those behaviors and actions and idiosyncrasies that make you you and allow you to lead from a place of confidence, assurance and passion. Voice is weaving your stories and experience and view of the world into how you lead and how others perceive you. Your voice is uniquely, absolutely yours.

The strength of our relationships depends on the congruence between what we say that we believe and then how we act day-by-day. Trust, loyalty, and affection are strongest when the gap between espoused and lived values is minimal. Our values are more real when we make the choices that support those principles

So many successful people spend the majority of their time on one area of their life where they excel, but perpetually feel unfulfilled. With this in mind, Riley offers these 9 methods to help high achievers tap into the other 90% of “who they are,” beyond “what they do,” and realize greater life balance, joy and fulfillment in kind.

Firstly, I’d like to make clear that I’m not talking about ‘grafting’ as in ‘extortion’, but as in satisfying, productive, physical work. In our industrial growth society, I mourn the decrease in this activity with the advances in technology and automation. But it’s not just these mechanical innovations that have caused us to reduce how much of each day we spend on manual labour. If we valued this practice, then surely we would’ve made sure that it remained a sacred part of our everyday lives.

Over the past few months I've been thinking a lot about what truly matters. My mom's diagnosis, illness, and death have caused me to stop, question, and look more deeply at the things and people in my life that are important. Through the pain and challenge of this experience, I've also been grateful for the perspective and awareness it has opened up.

Dr. Pierre Mornell had a hunch that he’d hit a raw nerve when he gave a lecture on why he thought men and women were foundering in their relationships with each other. His hunch was confirmed the next day when he was deluged with excited calls and e-mails from journalists and others around the world. That was back in 1978, and the journalists still contact him about what he once called “modern man’s main secret.

Larry Ackerman leads the The Identity Circle, research, education and consulting company that helps individuals and organizations by clarifying their uniqueness and the potential it holds, and helping them put that potential to work in ways that dramatically enhance their performance, impact and reputations. Here is Larry Ackerman's keynote presentation to AARP, Washington DC June, 2006.

Henry's principles of design have a relevance to business leadership, today more than ever before. In his words he describes his approach and creativity as one of "deep articulate thinking," a beautiful expression that conveys the "mindfulness" and the magic that brings a concept to life. One only needs to think of "Apple" to appreciate how deep articulate thinking can make already innovative products appear magical and transform an entire industry.

All organizations have access to more or less the same resources. They draw from the same pool of people in their markets or geographic areas. And they can all learn about the latest tools and techniques. Yet not all organizations perform equally. There is a huge gap between high- and low-performing organizations. What accounts for this huge gap is leadership. Leaders develop and bring out the best in people. This dramatically expands the performance capacity of an organization. With a strong leadership foundation, management systems and processes, as well as technology and technical expertise, expand to their full potential.

If you are not relentlessly developing leadership talent from within, then, by implication, you are content to be sub-optimized. There is no way around it. If your people aren't stepping into leadership roles as circumstances dictate, if they aren't continuously improving as leaders, and if they aren't routinely making others better, then the organization is settling for "good enough" as opposed to "impressively better." Which outcome are you shooting for

Forget passive entertainment and learning. Would you like to live a more adventuresome life where you: Stumble across new ideas that dovetail with the life you want to lead yet didn’t realize it until you experienced “scenes” you want to repeat? Attract serendipitous opportunities?  Have meaningful conversations with acquaintances that sometimes become friends? Create your own fun with others? Here are some lessons I’m slow in learning yet that have made life more fascinating.

While I'll never make excuses for poor service, since I believe delivering Exquisite Customer Care is within anyone's reach, I can understand why some service givers react that way they do. Some customers are downright ornery! So in a turn of events in this Customer Care TIP, instead of teaching how to give good service I want to share with you how you can GET good service.

Since childhood, all of us, at one time or another, have thought about having a magic lamp and making our three wishes. Several years ago, I wrote a novel entitled The Lamp about adults making real-life wishes and then making them come true. Recently, my partner Tracy J. Trost and I have turned The Lamp book into a movie. Here’s a preview. (There is a link to the trailer, and this article includes Jim's Christopher Story - an absolutely wonderful video of Jim in action. ed.)

We know that it goes beyond feeling good about ourselves and actually has us live more powerfully, more responsibly, and more compassionately. Healthy self-esteem can grease the wheels of our lives enabling us to weather the ups and downs inherent in our life experience. But if we don’t have strong self-esteem, how can we get it?

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience, we take in 2 million pieces of information per second, yet we can only process 134 bits per second. How then do we determine which 134 bits of information to focus on? We choose those 134 bits of information based on our values, beliefs, attitudes, past experiences, memories and how we process information.

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control.

One critical element in a well-written novel is that the characters seldom do anything “out of character.” You are the central character in your own story and your life makes more sense when you stick with the script.

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

Unfortunately, the more we grow and learn, the more we seem to limit our futures. As small children, everything seems possible, but as we pursue our education and our career, we seem to narrow instead of broadening the future outcomes we are willing to consider. If anything is possible, we must realize that everything is possible. Both the limitations and the pathways to success exist in our mind and imagination.

You have no doubt noticed that technology is changing the ‘face’ of customer service. Traditional ways we used to interact with customers, win their trust, and keep them coming back are becoming irrelevant. Here are three of the most significant trends in customer service, and how you can position your business to capitalize rather than capsize in response.

I've seen more than a few examples of companies -- both the small, fast-growing entrepreneurial tech companies and the more mature, well-known 'brand name' technology companies -- that haven't yet matured enough to truly value the wisdom in their midst, or their deficit of it.

We know that happiness is not linearly related to material wealth. Above a certain level, the point where we personally feel we have ‘enough’, an increase in material wealth does not bring us more happiness. The pivotal point is this place where we have ‘enough’, whatever that might mean for each of us personally. Beyond that, joie de vivre seems to come about more readily from focusing our efforts more on the non-material aspects of our lives, for example our mental, emotional spiritual and physical wellbeing.

Now that corporations are closer to being people (at least in the eyes of our legal system) perhaps they will develop a conscience. This is where real leadership is called for - what I call "conscious leadership." This requires a strong sense of fair play, despite the pressures and ideologs backlash. This takes courage - spiritual courage - that takes stands for what's right and fair and sustainable.

Ever wonder why goals seem so impossible to reach at times? Here's what I learned about reaching goals while hiking the Inca Trail.

Companies that use the customer experience as a competitive advantage have leaders that put their focus on creating a great place to work as much as (if not more than) creating a great product or service at a great price. They know that an engaged and happy workforce is a prerequisite to having engaged and happy customers. But you knew that, didn't you? So what are you doing about it?

Like many people in business today, I spend a lot of my time on airplanes, flying from point A to point B. I generally am among the very first people to board so I get to sit and relax as I listen to all of the other people scrambling to get on the plane, find their seats, and stow their carryon luggage. For most of us, the high points and low points in life are inevitable. But the average routine days are within our control.

To create or sustain a healthy, adaptive organization a leader must be respected; be seen as authentic, reliable, and trustworthy. While the following list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, an authentic leader must engage in several activities if he or she is to be believed and followed.

Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing -- which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. A transporting 10 minutes of pure creativity.

Whenever we notice a specialist day or week that inspires us, we can use that as a wake up call – an opportunity to re- engage and re-commit with what makes us come alive. As I understand it, waking up is the process of unearthing our authenticity and uniqueness, of re-connecting to our truth about who we are and how we prefer to live and work.

What if we embraced change more consciously and learned how to not only "manage" it, but thrive through it. Whether you're someone who enjoys change and handles it quite well, or you hate it and get totally stressed out by it, all of us can benefit from embracing change more deliberately and supporting those around us as we all go through the big and small changes of life - especially these days.

The process of self-discovery can be a lifetime process. Examining oneself in earnest can be a never-ending path like hiking in the mountains. Just when you think you have reached the highest peak you see another even higher one off in the distance.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.” I believe one of the fastest and most efficient ways to gain new ideas is to read books. The most powerful, creative, influential, and interesting people who ever lived on this planet are waiting to share their best secrets with you in the pages of a book.