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Make time for positive performance conversations

At many of my talks on creating a positive culture, I ask the group this question: “When you receive a text from your supervisor to call or see them, what is your first thought? Is it, Here comes more positive feedback. This positive feedback I am getting is really cutting into my productivity?” The group always chuckles. It is common for an employee to feel anxiety when they hear their leader wants to see them. However, changing this does take intention on the part of the leader. Leaders are so busy, pulled in so many directions, and so consumed with putting out fires that it ...

Dangerous distractions

Suffice it to say, President Donald Trump loves golf, particularly on courses he owns, playing most recently on the one in Scotland. When he actually needed to transact business, he appeared petulant and annoyed. “I am not in a good mood,” maybe because the Jeffrey Epstein affair followed him to the Scottish Highlands. He also bristled at the European Union representative, Ursula von der Leyen, who proved less than pliable over heavy Trump tariff demands. The President should be careful expressing his every thought. Trump appears bored when confronted and expects friends and foes to ...

Laws, not the whims of men

I have no blood connection with John Adams, one of our nation’s founding fathers and the second president of the United States. But I’ve read enough of his letters to find a real kinship with the underappreciated man. One of his famous quotes is often paraphrased, but below is a direct quote from an Adams letter to fellow Continental Congress delegate John Penn. “…The true Idea of a Republic, is ‘An Empire of Laws and not of Men’: and therefore as a Republic is the best of Governments so, that particular Combination of Power, which is best contrived for a faithfull ...

Is the investigation about revenge or justice?

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow. The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors — purportedly along with former President Barack Obama himself — in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency. The released documents add some new details to what ...

Grade after six months

Over the course of four years’ banishment to America’s political wilderness while subjected to both a would-be assassin’s bullets and the humiliating and unprecedented spectacle of criminal prosecution by his political opponents, Donald Trump seems to have intuited a key life lesson: Time is of the essence. Carpe diem, seize the day. And so it has been. Like a thoroughbred bursting out of the Kentucky Derby starting gate, the second Trump administration has been racing full speed ahead ever since Trump was inaugurated once again as president of the United States. If the Derby is ...

Barbour County preparing for Lurch Fest excitement

Hello from Barbour County! I hope that you are all having a good summer! On Wednesday, July 30, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at 17 North Event Center, there will be music by The Derailers and Son of Lurch. Rod’s Burgers will be serving up some creepy, kooky, delicious Lurch-inspired burgers for a weird and wonderful night. Don’t miss out. Lurch Fest will be celebrating it’s fifth year soon! On Aug. 1, Ted Cassidy’s son, Sean, will be at 17 North for a special proclamation and answering session meet and greet. While there, have dinner at Ted’s Taco Stand and spend the evening ...