62: I'm Milwaukin' Here! with Lisa Gilroy

Have you ever attended a conference and couldn’t wait for it to end? Have you ever gone to a wedding and felt there was something missing?

Experiences like these inspired Priya Parker, an expert on gatherings, to write The Art of Gathering. Parker contends that pre-planned gatherings of all types—both business and personal—could be more meaningful experiences than they usually are. She presents a step-by-step guide to transforming your gathering into a meaningful event that people will talk about for years.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what to do before a gathering to set the stage for a potentially transformative experience. Then, we’ll talk about how to begin the gathering and dispel misconceptions—like the idea that hosts should relax—that result in boring or unpleasant gatherings. Finally, we’ll share how to end the gathering in a more meaningful way. We’ll also discuss what other experts say about gathering well and share ways to apply Parker’s tips to virtual or hybrid gatherings.

In this follow-up to Girl, Wash Your Face, blogger, motivational speaker, and author Rachel Hollis writes that she’s fed up with seeing women ignore their own dreams because of self-doubt, guilt, and society’s expectation that women put others first. Hollis offers the lessons she learned in growing from humble beginnings to becoming the founder of a multimillion-dollar media company to help her readers shed the weight of expectation and achieve their dreams.

Hollis’s advice consists of excuses to let go of, behaviors to adopt, and skills to acquire. In addition, she provides a step-by-step blueprint to take your dream from fantasy to realization. In this guide, we’ll compare Hollis’s advice to that of other popular self-help authors and expand on her messages through practical exercises.

Poorly handling crucial conversations — discussions with high stakes, different opinions, and strong emotions — is the cause of many of our most painful problems in work and home life. These stressful conversations can rapidly go awry, with people behaving at their worst - yelling at each other and sniping sarcastically, or on the other side going silent and withdrawing. When this happens, little progress is made, and resentment builds. Moreover, we often deliberately avoid having these conversations because we’re afraid we’ll make matters worse.

Crucial Conversations teaches you an array of dialogue principles and practical skills, explained and demonstrated through numerous examples. After this book, you’ll be able to talk to anyone about virtually any topic, no matter how sensitive. When you learn to handle crucial conversations effectively, the quality of your relationships and your effectiveness in your career will improve dramatically, and you’ll be able to help get everybody what they want.

When we’re in a relationship with someone who has broken a promise, violated a commitment, behaved badly, or otherwise failed to meet our expectations, we’re forced to decide whether to bring up the issue and risk making our relationship worse or suffer in silence and let the issue continue. Luckily, communication and management experts Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler explain that if we properly prepare for, execute, and follow up on our accountability conversation, we can solve our issues while improving our relationships.

This guide explores the steps necessary to effectively solve accountability issues and provides insights from other fundamental theories of interpersonal communication, management, and psychology. We’ll learn how to discuss the right issue, control our emotions, address sticky topics, and effectively follow up on our chosen solution, ultimately putting an end to accountability issues and steering our relationships in a positive and productive direction.

Do you feel helpless or angry when confronted with mean people? Do you wish you had better strategies for dealing with them? In The Asshole Survival Guide, Robert I. Sutton offers wisdom for dealing with jerks—rude and tyrannical people of all kinds. Focusing primarily on bad behavior in the workplace, he argues that with the right tools, you can take away a jerk’s power, lessen their effect on you, and keep them from harming others.

In this guide, we’ll cover Sutton’s advice for identifying jerk behavior and knowing when you need to take action against jerks. Additionally, we’ll discuss approaches for dealing with jerks. Within each approach, we’ll explore some of Sutton’s actionable strategies. In our commentary, we’ll touch on other authors’ strategies for dealing with unpleasant people. Furthermore, we’ll explore some of the psychology behind rude and mean behavior and how it affects our mental state.

In Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott argues that to achieve happiness and success in life, you must constantly have courageous conversations—honest and sometimes uncomfortable discussions about your thoughts, feelings, desires, and issues. These aspects are constantly changing, and if left unaddressed, Scott warns that you may grow out of touch with reality and become misaligned with your goals. Further, failing to have courageous conversations risks perpetuating issues and damaging relationships. Scott provides a model for courageous conversations that will effectively solve critical issues, enable learning, and improve relationships so you can achieve happiness and success in all aspects of your life.

This guide re-organizes Scott’s discussion into a step-by-step outline for having courageous conversations. First, we’ll explain how to uncover the most critical thoughts, feelings, issues, and desires that must be addressed. Next, we’ll discuss how to structure a courageous conversation. Finally, we’ll provide a few techniques to ensure effective dialogue. Our commentary will supplement Scott’s advice with recommendations from other communication guides such as Crucial Accountability and Difficult Conversations.

According to author and entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi, developing fulfilling and mutually beneficial professional relationships, or successfully networking is crucial to career success. Becoming a prolific networker will give you a reputation for having good people skills, making it easier for you to gain positions managing others. Likewise, if you already know and get on well with company leaders, they may choose to do business with you rather than people they don’t know.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi gives tips on building and maintaining a professional network. Learn how to network with people who can help you achieve your goals; how to use conferences to network; and how to use social media to get new contacts to come to you.

When we’re in a relationship with someone who has broken a promise, violated a commitment, behaved badly, or otherwise failed to meet our expectations, we’re forced to decide whether to bring up the issue and risk making our relationship worse or suffer in silence and let the issue continue. Luckily, communication and management experts Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler explain that if we properly prepare for, execute, and follow up on our accountability conversation, we can solve our issues while improving our relationships.

This guide explores the steps necessary to effectively solve accountability issues and provides insights from other fundamental theories of interpersonal communication, management, and psychology. We’ll learn how to discuss the right issue, control our emotions, address sticky topics, and effectively follow up on our chosen solution, ultimately putting an end to accountability issues and steering our relationships in a positive and productive direction.