As you think about your reasons for writing, realize there are good motives and not-so-good ones.  How can you tell if your motives are worthwhile?

Forgiveness may not sound like a typical business topic, but it actually plays a huge role in using positive expectation to create breakthrough success. When you think you’ve been treated unfairly—someone didn’t deliver on a key project element, backed out of a commitment, or unfairly criticized your work—forgiving the person frees up your time and your thought calories to once again see positive possibilities for the future and generate the emotional heat you need to create them.

Imagine you’ve worked hard to finish a report for one of your clients, and today, you’re meeting with the client team. The only item on the agenda: your report.

You’re confident the report is solid and excited about the chance to discuss it with the team. Your notepad is open to a fresh sheet of paper, and your pen is poised.

Everyone—whether they admit it or not—is hungry for positive feedback that lets them know they’re respected and trusted and that their work is appreciated. Some people need more of this type of feedback; others need less, but we all do need it.

Into every life some sandpaper people must fall.  These are the coworkers, employees, or customers who constantly test your patience, demand more from you than you’re willing to give, or just generally make you crazy.

Change happens. And as a leader, you’re often the person who’s announcing it, implementing it, or even causing it. But change, even positive change, isn’t easy for people, and they often fight it. It forces them out of comfort zones and pushes them off well-worn paths. It’s tough for people to scrap pet projects or leave behind comfortable processes, even when it’s clear they no longer work.

In every kind of business, new and unique ideas separate the winners from everyone else. The ability to innovate—to build a brand new product, solve a unique problem, or design a breakthrough process—often depends on creative tension between people who think in different ways, sometimes in opposite ways.  If everyone in the room thinks alike, there’s little chance of creative sparks flying.  No feathers get ruffled, but no innovation occurs either.

Dare to think differently about a challenge, to turn it upside down and backwards, and it will look different. Before you know it, new solutions will come into view.

What are the qualities of the people who reach the highest levels of success at work?  Three bags of chips and two pots of coffee later, we had our list:

They all seemed to fall into the category of human relations skills or people skills:  building positive  relationships, communicating well, motivating and inspiring other people.  We wrote our list of “people skills,” one to a card, and spread them out on the table so we could stare at them.  Then we shuffled them around, laid them out again, and stared at them some more.

For years, “trust your feelings” and “do what your heart tells you” were popular pieces of advice we heard from well-meaning friends and colleagues, and it was good advice—to a point.

Feelings can play a role in decisionmaking, prompting you to look further into an idea that feels right or exciting you about the possibilities of a new opportunity, but keep in mind that in themselves, feelings are a poor decision-making tool. They’re often wrong, and they almost always change.