Listen.

More than you talk.

Understand that, even if you think you know everything or a lot, you don’t know it all, and to succeed, you have to open yourself up and listen. Open those ears. Pay attention to what other people are saying. What they’re needing. What they’re feeling. What they want and what they don’t.

Listening is so simple, yet so difficult.

You can make change, on many levels, if you hear the people and things around you.

In addition to the two that I have previously mentioned (here) and (here), here’s another thing I’ve taken away:

Be human, but balance emotion.

As humans, we are filled with emotion. Emotion can be a wonderful thing, something to be used to everyone’s advantage, and it can also be a bad thing, particularly when important decisions need to be made. And aren’t all decisions important?

I’m a big proponent of being real with people. With your staff, with your team, with your boss, with your clients, with yourself. People need to see the real you. They need to see you happy and sad and upset. These are very real emotions and to me, it’s natural to be real.

But it has to be kept in check. It can’t be too much of any extreme. In any and all times, you have to be in control of those emotions. This is probably most important – yes, be real, but be in control. Even if you don’t know how to handle the situation(s) and/or are overwhelmed. Most especially, when decisions need to be made.

In any given day, we have to make thousands of decisions, all of which have an impact on something (or someone) greater than ourselves. They’re flying at us left and right. To make any of those decisions based on the (high) emotions that we are experiencing at any given moment is an easy thing to do. But it clouds our rational and it could have a negative (and drastic) impact on everything and everyone around us.

Emotion can be dangerous when decisions need to be made. So, you have to learn how to balance this. And that is something that everyone has to learn to do in their own way.

Be cool. Stay calm. Breathe.

Fires rare up all the time. Problems are flying in your face every time you look up. Decisions need to be made at top speed. This person is yelling about this and that person did something wrong. It goes on and on and on and on and on. This is the way of life, though. Something would be wrong if it weren’t this way. So, you’ve got to know this going into any situation. Any day. Any moment. It’s just going to be crazy on multiple levels.

You can either get caught up in all of it or rise above it. Keep your cool. Don’t over-react. Breathe. Like really breathe. Purposefully. Don’t focus on anything other than taking a few breaths. Being purposeful about these things in all of those situations really makes a difference. Sometimes you have to slow everything down around you. And these are 3 ways that you can do that.

I think reflection, be it one that yields positive outcomes or negative (or a combination), is healthy. If you’re truly honest with yourself and you strive to get/do better, to build upon everything you’ve done in the previous year, then self-reflection could be a different maker.

So, I’m going to share my reflections here, one per day, until I don’t have anymore to share.

For me, this year has been transformative in every sense of the word. It’s been profoundly transformative, in fact. Everything that I expected at the beginning of 2012 and everything I could have anticipated and everything that I wanted it to be…well, it just didn’t happen. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. I am humbled by everything that I had the opportunity to face, but if there was ever a year full of moments and decisions that would prompt reflection, it was this one.

One of my biggest takeaways from this past year was – don’t stop being yourself. With so much newness – more responsibility and authority and less time to spend with people/your team, it can be easy to lose a little bit (or a lot) of yourself and the very things that got you here – investing in those people, taking time to listen, taking time to teach, thinking through scenarios/decisions, being nice and considerate. These are some of the things that are at my core, and whatever those are for you, just don’t shy away from them. No matter what you’re faced with, just be yourself.

I know that this is quite elementary. Basic. Fundamental. But if we don’t start with ourselves, we can’t be great for others around us.

More to come…

Rather than focus on how well you can get content to as many screens as possible, it will be a much better use of focus to get to the bottom of how you can engage as many people as possible.

This is the new trick.

I remember a few short years ago (not even 3?) that it was great to see digital signage in a restaurant or interactive signage in a hotel. Those types of installations and establishments were at the forefront of what technology could do, how they could turn the settings around us into digital & interactive experiences.

But not now. Those same once-potential-fulfilling installations are now ho-hum. I see them all the time. In fact, I expect to see them all the time in these types of establishments. When I don’t, I don’t necessarily think it a bad thing or even a missed opportunity. Not to the level of when I do see them and see them in their 2010 form – then all I can see is a missed opportunity.

We are now in the time where connections are expected. All around.

Not digital. Or technology.

This might have been great 2-3 years ago. But now, it’s just not enough.

That’s right. Dynamite.

As in, applying it to yourself. As in, are you being the best, dynamic self you can be? The best steward of goodness and energy at all times?

To me, this is more than being “on.” On gets you by. On is, by nature, something you turn can turn off.

Dynamite begins in your soul. It is a way of being. And in this way, very much unlike dynamite, it’s not a one-second blast.

Now, cemeteries will be another place to whip out your phone and start pointing & shooting & watching to gain an “experience.” Maybe I’m too cynical on this one, but the cemetery is no place for an emerging experience.

Neat(ish) idea. Just seems too insensitive for me.

“Let’s look at the memories” vs. “Let’s remember the memories.” This is how I interpret this move and I suppose, this is the crux of my uneasiness of this – technology makes things too easy, to the point of enabling laziness. We don’t put half of our brain to use because we can rely on technology to do it for us. This fundamental notion of storing things away in our brain to call back on in times of despair or joy – these memories – is being dulled by technology that enables us to store it and ignore it.

Who knows? This might be the way of the future, even in cemeteries. I wouldn’t be surprised. But it sure doesn’t make me feel good.

Both me and my wife looked at each other like, “did you tell her that?”

And I said, “what do you mean?”

Daughter said, “you need your smartphone for this sticker.”

And I said, “what makes you think that?”

She said, “this little box is for your smartphone.”

“You’re exactly right,” I said.

Hmmm. Again, me and my wife look at each other, kind of amazed. Then, my wife says, to me, “I didn’t even know that until a few months ago.”

This teaches me a couple of things:

1. Children inherently get technology.

2. Children understand what technology, specifically mobile technology (in this case), is needed for. My daughter didn’t know it was a QR code or what necessarily happened with it, but she knew that you need your smartphone to do something with it.

3. There could easily be an expectation with younger generations that real-world stuff just won’t work without technology.

And that’s the point that I don’t think we can lose sight of. Are QR codes a useful enabling technology for marketers and consumers? Likely not. But this is a great case of the reverberation effect of technologies like this whereby the association of what they are and what they are used with has a great impact.

My daughter might not ever use a QR code, but she knows more and more that technology is needed to turn something physical (sticker) into something that makes it “work.”