My coaching advice on sustaining happiness is always short, sweet, and dual-pronged:

• Until you’re happy with who you are, you’ll never be happy with what you have. Happiness is a place — a conclusive state of mind — and it is hard to feel successful about the lives we’re living if we are looking through a grumpy, unhappy lens.
• Do more and want less. Do more for others and want less for yourself. Many of the people I coach earn excellent livings. When one moans or gripes I will stop and tell them to walk around outside and come back after they see someone in a worse predicament. Few need even five minutes.

Happiness and feeling successful are symbiotic. Each feeds off the other, thanks to the ingredient balance of four quadrants:

1. Physical
2. Emotional
3. Mental
4. Spiritual

Physical. One of my favorite surveys from years gone by I saw while reading a USA Today waiting for an airplane. The question was simple: “Do you consider yourself better looking than others?”

I loved the results. Eighty percent of people think they’re better looking than eighty percent of people. This, of course, explains why “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It also means that for most of us, we’re okay enough with our physical state to feel fortunate, at least compared with others.

Feeling good about yourself physically is one-fourth of the recipe to feeling successful.

Emotional. From an emotional fulfillment standpoint, how comfortable are you at this stage of life? Do you have good balance or are you out of balance?

Emotional strength comes in all packages. I have seen remarkably humble men and women deal with tremendous challenges with such a steadfast courage and even keel that I openly admire their fortitude.

And I’ve seen big, rich, powerful men crumble like cookies.

Emotional fortitude involves a cocktail of strength, courage, resilience, guts, staying power, grit, stamina, determination, and endurance. Some are deeply anchored within it, others are light.

I have a phrase taped to my computer and look at it from time to time. It reads, “Even the strong are broken in places.”

It’s true. But none of us need remain broken forever.

Mental. Where’s your head? Does your mind live in a good neighborhood or does it wander where you know it doesn’t belong?

It is hard to feel successful about the life you are living if your head frequents a bad place. Since we find in life what we look for, consistently looking for the good in situations (and others) helps us get and stay where we need to belong.

Years ago I decided to quit hanging around with negative influences and negative people. Some I kissed off were friends. I thought I’d miss them. I haven’t. All of those former “friends” have been upgraded and replaced by “true friends.” My life in infinitely richer because of the people in it.

Having been on both sides of this one, I can tell you from experience that there is only one place to be: the land of positivity. Get to that place, be grateful for that place, and stay in that place.

Spiritual. The greatest gift my occupation has bestowed is the eye-opening respect the planet has taught me about how all means of spirituality shapes cultures, values, goodness, kindness, meanness, and badness.

I have traveled the Earth ’round and ’round and witnessed religion in countless variations. I do not think there is one “right” religion, but I do think it’s important for each of us to reconcile, in our own way, what’s right for us.

Having a spiritual void is, I believe, less fulfilling than having a spiritual contentment. As such, I’ve come to believe it is important to encourage everyone to pursue his or her own truth, even if that truth is different than yours and mine.

Spirituality impacts feeling successful. As there is no right or wrong religion, the real question you need to feel comfortable answering is, “Are you comfortable and committed to your beliefs?”

Summary
A feeling of personal success is determined by our level of completeness with each of four categories: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. When you are happy with who and where you are relative to all four, you will feel successful.

When a gap exists in one or more and that gap needs to be closed, you will feel less successful. Close the gap and you’ll feel more successful. Guaranteed.

Being aware of these four separate, important domains, makes it easy to diagnose why we may slide into a funk and not feel successful.

Boost your physical state of mind. Grow stronger and more confident emotionally. Protect your mental health and take pride in its insulation. Attain and retain a spiritual comfort.

Achieve all four of these things and you will feel successful because you are; you are winning the game the way it was meant to be played.

Success comes from being better, not perfect. Perfect is too hard and none of us is. None of us needs to be whole with all four of these categories but we do need to be good with them.

So the day’s big question is, “How good am I entitled to have my life be?”

The answer, of course, is, “As good as it is right now.”

Today does not lie. Everything in life added together has brought you to today. If you are in a good place and feel your life is a success, keep cooking that recipe because a good today leads into a good tomorrow and a good tomorrow leads into a good day after.

But if today you are not in such a good place, study the four elements — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — and change your equation. How you look at any of those four is changeable. A change in thoughts, feelings, and actions will take you to a different place — a better place.

Once you are in that better place, coach others how to feel more successful, too. Life is a team game played by individuals. Success can come to us all.

One of my backbone principles in executive coaching stresses the importance of getting two things in alignment: the head and the heart.

I tell my executives, “It all works from the inside out. Until you’re happy with who you are, you’ll never be happy with what you have.

“When you’re in alignment, head and heart, everything gets easier. When you’re out of alignment, every day is a struggle.”

As the nation’s economic bandleader switched from the happy sheet music of a vibrant economy to the sad marches of the slog-on recession, the big money diversions to buy happiness disappeared. Happiness no longer hid behind the acquisition of things. Happiness made a one-eighty and headed inward, testing the strong but rocking the weak.

It is foolhardy and unhealthy to look outside yourself for contentment and happiness. These are not external pursuits. For those who think so, the eternal chase will last. Once something thinks they’ve caught it, chances are it’s in the same cul-de-sac as the rainbow’s pot of gold, two unicorns, and an eight-foot Easter Bunny.

While the secret to greater happiness is really quite simple — do more others and want less for yourself — misconceptions often get in the way. Misconceptions are mistaken ideas; and listed below are eleven common reasons these arise to cloud the mind.

Each of the eleven is self-governed. As you read and reflect through each, remember that everything works from the inside out. Any of these eleven can jeopardize your head and heart alignment.

1. Faulty perceptions of reality. Look no further than the carnival barking of zealots banging pots and pans in this year’s presidential primaries. Figures lie, liars figure and never let the facts get in the way of a good sound bite. Many of my friends are doing fine; if not for wicked and biased slants spewed by talking heads, they wouldn’t know they were doing was so bad. Other friends are in a tough spot. They can dwell on it and see hopelessness, or they can believe in themselves and see hope. Faulty perceptions jade reality and spawn misconceptions. Do not fall victim to this one.
   
   
2. Self-defeating beliefs. Throughout my career and around the world I have seen more great talent stopped by their mirror than their skill sets. Too often I have to say, “If you don’t believe in you, why should anyone else?” Ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things on stages grand and small. Step one is believing. Step two is persevering. Don’t doubt yourself. Eliminate the words “can’t because” from your lexicon. Live in a world of “how can we,” not “can’t because.”
3. Delusions. Stars don’t become stars by accident. They become stars by design and thanks to a whole lot of money spent on agents, managers, and press agents — whose work does not come cheap. There is a range of buoyant practicality each of us operates most effectively within. Respect it.
   
4. Limiting concepts. Live in a world of “what if” and not a world of finite boxes. While I am quite willing to bang the next person who uses “Think out of the box” with a frying pan atop the noggin, I’ve seen a lot of good companies and salespeople think too small. Think bigger.
   
5. Unhealthy attitudes. The media — especially now — spawns negativity. Believe their rubbish and you’ll develop increasingly unhealthy attitudes. How you choose to look at things is up to you. You can look for the positive or  look for the negative. Either way, you will find what you’re looking for. Trust me: upbeat is a better place to be. The air is cleaner, the vibe better, the neighborhood happier.
   
6. Unrealistic thinking. If it’s true a dream is a goal with a deadline, it’s also true that people with written goals achieve more than those who stare at clouds for inspiration. Need a reality test? Follow this simple three-step process of self-determination. If you can’t see this simple plan as realistically attainable, you may be guilty of unrealistic thinking.
   

   a. Can you see your goal clearly enough to describe it in three words?
   b. Can you clearly describe the two things must you achieve in order to produce your goal? Those two, added together, must produce your end goal. Nothing else need be added.
   c. What three steps must you accomplish in order to position yourself to succeed? In other words, what three things will position you to succeed?

   Realistic planning is tested from the top down and executed from the bottom up. If the plan doesn’t test, you have unrealistic thinking.

7. Impaired judgment. In matters of the heart, we’ve all flunked this one. The important note here is to remember the huge and vital difference between dealing from a point of emotion versus a point of logic. Logic cannot overlay emotion. Emotion tends to distort things, so strive for a logic-based judgment with endorphins stripped away. A logic-based friend is a good resource, too.
8. Mistaken perspectives. Life and interactions are not always reciprocal. Allow this to be the truth. When we insist it’s not the case, misconceptions arise. (hint: Think men, women, and relationships!).
9. Distorted thoughts. Distortion is inaccurate reporting fathered by multiple inspirations. Each of us has a map of the world — life as we know it to be true — and that map is shaped by our environmental upbringing during our formative years. Maps cause distortion. Dwelling causes distortion. Conclusion-jumping causes distortion. “He said, she said” causes distortion. Blending fact with opinion does it, too. One of the first lessons of critical thinking is stripping away non-facts. It’s a handy tip we all should remember.
10. Fallacies. Among other things, I teach multi-generational workforce effectiveness. Each generation is rife with these. Races and religions are too, especially as they relate to the assumptions and beliefs of others. The Internet, as handy as it is sometimes, is loaded and reloaded every day with falsehoods and untruths. These are perhaps the easiest cause of misconceptions to identify. Sometimes the facts aren’t the facts at all. Sometimes they’re ten miles from truth.
11. “Stinkin’ thinkin’.” My late friend George Simmons used to preach against this one all the time: “No stinkin’ thinkin’!” George insisted that all of us in his friendship circle take a positive, high road view of life and each other. George taught me several wise things; and this was near the top of the list.

In the end, the rush-rush digital age causes a lot of knee-jerk reactions and because of it, misconceptions abound. The quickest way to limit the number you make is to learn what causes them in the first place.

I hope the list helps.

I first met Angelo Dundee in 1977. I last saw him in Florida the day before Thanksgiving. I drove my wife and daughter to Clearwater to meet Angelo and a friend. The five of us had breakfast.

Angelo was a man who filled my soul with all good things. We laughed for ninety minutes, swapping stories and teasing each other. He was impossible to be around and not grow to love.

My daughter called me early this morning with the news that Angelo had died. I was saddened but not surprised. He was beset by medical challenges in the three years since his beloved wife Helen passed away but lived his life with passion and joy. I last heard from him a month ago via email. He was proud to be 90 and emailing. I got a kick out of that, too.

Our first meeting came the year after I graduated from college. I had no clue what to do and was knocking around living paycheck to paycheck in the newspaper business, working for a small daily in Annapolis, Maryland. I covered several of Sugar Ray Leonard’s early pro fights, and it was there — in the dressing room before a fight broadcast on ABC’s Wide World of Sports — that I met Ray, Angelo, and Howard Cosell. Cosell was bigger than life, a legendary figure in American broadcasting. He was imposing, intimidating, and brilliant at what he did. Ray was the main event but make no mistake: Howard was the show.

The fights were my favorite sport to cover — there are a thousand stories at every fight, all you have to do is pick one — but I soon grew tired of being broke and spun out of the newspaper business. I moved back to Florida, got a corporate job, and traded printer’s ink for neckties.

It was there, in south Florida in the late 1980s, that I was making sales calls in a nondescript office building when a door opened and Angelo blew by. I recognized him instantly and greeted him by name.

Without breaking stride in an obvious hurry he called out, “Meet me in my office!” Then he disappeared inside the men’s room.

The door he’d emerged from had his name on it, so I walked inside. Betty Mitchell, his longtime assistant, greeted me warmly, even though Betty and I had never met. Good to his word, Angelo soon returned. For the next three hours we talked about anything and everything. The time flew and we covered a lot, some of it fight related but a lot of it not. Because of that chance meeting, Angelo soon became a vital part of my life.

He didn’t remember me from the last I’d seen him a decade before but pretended he did. Memories flooded back when I spoke of covering Ray’s early fights against tomato cans like short-armed Rocky Ramon and New York house painter Hector “Chinito” Diaz. Angelo laughed. He remembered those early fights, as well he should. He handpicked Ray’s opponents.

I walked into Angelo’s office that afternoon as a young man harboring too much anger. I left overloaded with things to think about. If you’re going to be lectured by someone, I thought on the way home, it might as well be someone famous. But why is he pounding on me about being nice — not just some of the time, but all the time?

From that day on we stayed in touch. I’d visit from time to time, meeting fighters and watching workouts at the gym. He didn’t like boomboxes and he didn’t like entourages. If you wanted to work with Angelo Dundee, you showed up on time and ready to work. He had rules those were some but so was being nice. When you left, you were expected to be nice. Nice was his brand; you did not compromise the brand.

Through the hours, the visits, the letters, phone calls, and years we spent as friends, and especially thanks to the non-boxing talks we had, I was able to jettison my anger and grow into a better man. It was not an easy adaptation; my anger was deep-rooted. It couldn’t be pulled out, it had to be dug out.

Through the decades I thanked Angelo often for his patience coaching me through a tough and troubled time. He’d wave off the plaudits but I think he appreciated hearing how deeply I took his guidance to heart. He helped a guy outside the ring become a better person, just as he stressed to his fighters. Because of that, I was one of his boys. And as one of his boys, I tried to make him proud.

Angelo had a unique gift in that he could make champions inside the ring and better people outside it. It would take forever to explain all the reasons why, but I saw it so often I came to realize that what he had done for me was not an accident. He knew what to do and how to cut through. His  communication style was simple and straightforward. He could cheerlead his way directly to your heart and soul.

It is no secret how much Angelo loved Muhammad Ali — theirs is one of the great American “bromances” of all time. “At the core of Muhammad,” Angelo often said, “is kindness.”

Every time we talked Angelo reminded me to be nice, that being nice was free. Even when I popped a cork, I’d quickly feel bad about it because I heard instant echoes chiding me. Being nice was a choice that didn’t cost a dime. All of us, he said, can afford it.

In 1999 Angelo got his own trading card, #76 in the Brown’s Boxing Series. The card celebrated Angelo’s fifty years in boxing. He loved being on a trading card and would mail me one from time to time inscribed to remind me he was still out there. Two are in plastic sleeves held by magnets on my filing cabinet, a foot or so from my office computer.

One is inscribed, “Thanks for being nice!”

Another is his advice on how to stay positive through the sometimes cross-eyed tribulations of middle age. It reads simply, “Keep slipping punches.”

I saved his letters throughout the years because whenever I re-read one I can hear his distinctive south Philadelphia voice flow from his pen, whether he is telling stories of champions past or working with Russell Crowe on Russell’s farm in Australia to prep for Ron Howard’s movie “Cinderella Man” or helping Will Smith get ready to star in Michael Mann’s $100 million biopic “Ali.”

“Cinderella Man” is my favorite for a simple, selfish reason. At the end of the film’s final fight scene, “RC” (as Angelo called Crowe) goes off script. In the hectic action teeming around James J. Braddock’s victorious corner, RC grabs Angelo and kisses him on top of the head. To me it’s the best scene is a wonderful film. The gesture was Crowe’s thank you to Angelo, a shot that director Ron Howard kept in the final cut.

Many of us did that, at spurious times for similar reasons — hugged this wonderful man and kissed him on top of his balding head — and many of us will miss being able to do it again. I am in RC’s fraternity; I kissed Angelo at Thanksgiving as we hugged goodbye.

I live and teach by an unyielding mantra, one that entered my life after Angelo helped point me toward true north and I found myself ready, willing, and able to embrace it: None of our lives means anything, except for the impact it has on others.

Angelo was like a surrogate grandfather. I miss him already and guess I always will.

My business classes are the most fun and effective when classes are small and interactive. This is by design, for reasons way beyond my allergic aversion to PowerPoint.

It’s not that I despise the tool. Like all delivery channels, PowerPoint has its pluses and minuses. It is fine to supplement a big room presentation but a lazy way to serve a smaller group. At its core, PowerPoint is a tool of convenience for the presenter, not one tailored out of respect for the audience.

Because of that—presenter convenience—PowerPoint is overused and abused. May those of us who have not been tortured by it since it fell from the heavens in 1987, please rise and bow toward Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington .

In a small room, for a skilled and confident presenter, nothing beats being in the mosh pit with the students. No slide show to hide behind and no Death-by-PowerPoint to eat the clock and numb-butt the chairs. Just handouts, discussion, pairs exercises, and role-plays.  Everybody’s involved and motion is relentless. Orchestrated and supervised well, time flies. Time flying is the reward of skilled execution.

I build what I need to suit the client situation but whatever I build follows the Oriole Way, which I borrow from Cal and Billy Ripken’s fabulous baseball academy. Their dad, Cal Senior, was one of baseball’s legendary coaches and teachers. Senior had three rules to instruction. To me they are as relevant in business as baseball:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Make it fun.
3. Celebrate the individual.

Learning by coaching is harder to do than simply telling someone what to do. Pulling off effective skill practice demands a seamless blend of three disciplines:

• Design and preparation,
• Being “in the moment” from start to finish, and
• Adapting on the fly.

Do students retain and apply more from experiential learning than watching someone click through a slide show?  When I arrive rested, ready to go, and teach it right, there is no question.  For this I credit my stage training. You are only as good as your current show. Yesterday means nothing. The day before means even less.

Like Joe DiMaggio was fond of saying, “Some of these fans haven’t seen me before.”

If your ego is big enough to swallow that responsibility, trust me: you show up rested, ready, and do your best every single day. It is the professional’s daily motivational challenge.

Does this approach provide a better “value for money” for client companies paying a good nickel for their people to improve or be assessed? Certainly. It’s a better approach, a better learning experience, and produces  a higher “stick rate” than blah programs out of the can that focus on the tip of the iceberg.

Amateurs see the tip of the iceberg. Pros barely give it a glance. Trust me, the real action is down below.

Impactful, effective, and interactive learning sessions that truly enable positive change never happen by accident. They are the direct result of attention to the submerged mass of the iceberg, the 80 percent below the surface that students never see.

Much as children chase the rainbow for gold, great instructors strive to deliver the perfect class. Perfection is unattainable, which is why it is worth pursuing.  Success in teaching is not perfection, but something far more unusual that serves diametric needs: Successful classes teach the students something and the instructor something else.

I had this happen last week. I was in northern California with six students, my smallest class in a while, hammering home a topic I have taught umpteen times around the world: reflexive looping.

Looping is a behavioral principle based on someone’s conscious or unconscious insistence or aversion to predictable behavior. Some of us are creatures of habit, some aren’t.  Some of us like and seek change, while others despise and avoid it.

Looping is not an indictment. Whether you do it or not is not right or wrong.  The reflexive looping principle is an issue of awareness, not judgment. Most are not aware it even exists yet immediately recognize it in action.

Why reflexive looping awareness matters is simple. Those who do not operate on a reflexive loop best serve some jobs—such as advanced, strategic, big money conceptual selling—where no two deals are ever the same. Open minds that flourish in a cloud of  “what if” possibilities tend to innovate winning solutions and positive change.

Non-loopers have no fear of reinvention or challenging the status quo in the pursuit of something bigger, better, faster, or newer.

Other jobs—equally as important—require structure, process, and discipline. Loopers often excel here because they are process-driven (and often task oriented).

Well, last week in class I didn’t explain these differences as clearly as I should have. A student jumped on my lack of clarity, chewed on it, and wrestled me to the ground with a classroom debate about whether or not looping is conscious or unconscious, and whether it’s good or bad, and whether or not some people are better off being loopers because they crave order in their lives and must have it for their own well being.

After class we talked about it further and agreed on a win/win solution. She will embrace reflexive looping a learning point, and I will learn to teach it better.

Thus the pursuit of the perfect class—the great white whale among the icebergs—continues..

The more gadgets we invent to simplify our lives, the more complicated it gets. Since busy people beget crowded heads, here are ten suggestions for decongesting the space between your ears.

1. Live with a sense of purpose and urgency. Since time is a finite commodity, stay aware of how it passes: you waste it, spend it, invest it, or cherish it. Waste and spend less. Invest and cherish more. Smarter choices produce better results.
2. Build a fence between work and home. When you’re at work, work your butt off. The moment you leave, enter a different universe: your real life. Do not blur the two. Work is work and life is life and as my good friend Bob Spooner likes to say, “This ain’t no dress rehearsal.” Our jobs are what we do to pay the bills, our lives are what we do with the rest of the money. Live a full life rich with passion.
3. Watch less TV. According to the Nielsen Company, the average person watches the boob tube 34 hours per week. Consider yourself above average? Then watch less. To reinforce why this matters, keep a journal of the commercials you are forced to watch during one day’s viewing. List the ads and log the time. Multiply your number by 365. Then grimace. Each hour of commercial TV features 14 minutes of non-selected (by the viewer) advertisements, which means the average viewer watches eight hours of forced commercials each week — more than 400 hours per year! Feel free to grimace again.
4. Instead of wasting time watching excess television, redirect that time into hobbies and choices of fulfilling interest. When we re-channel time we know is wasted into things we really enjoy, two great things happen: we get more done and we feel better.
5. Downsize “stuff.” Several years ago I gave a speech about Stuff. To underscore the point, I researched the number of storage facilities in the town I was speaking and calculated capacity. Since I often work in San Francisco near Chinatown, I often walk by the shops and think, “The world has more stuff than it will ever possibly need.” De-cluttering not only makes things look nicer, a simplified space is easier to clean.
6. Use technology — do not let it enslave your behaviors. Limiting on-line social time (or taking a hiatus from it) teaches us a valuable lesson: A whole lot of quality time is instantly available for things that matter more.
7. Cut the tethering tentacles of your cell phone. Create private time by turning it off, leaving it on your desk, or in your glove compartment. Free yourself from being captive to gadgets. If you are addicted to it — and a growing number are — carve out two hours a day where you are separated from it. Want to know how bad it is? Padded lamp posts were installed in parts of London to help prevent texting injuries.
8. When you eliminate one time-waster from life, replace it with something more valuable — not another time-waster. Taking something dumb from our left pocket and stuffing a dumber one in our right gains zilch.
9. Do not oversubscribe to obligations. While the world is full of busy people, it’s short on productive ones. Extensive behavioral research on the subject of “multitasking” draws an ominous conclusion: Multitaskers accomplish less than those who methodically undertake one chore at a time. Starting, stopping, restarting, redoing — all have wasted time tied to reconnections. Highly productive people focus on linear progress. Do what they do: Work uninterrupted from start to finish and you will produce better work quicker. The big concern to behavioralists — and managers and business leaders, for that matter — is managing the perception of the multi-taskers, who justify their actions in order to feed their stimulus addiction. The best thing to do? Create a calendar that’s filled only to the extent that whatever earns the right to be on it is done to the very best of your ability.
10. Remember the Dalai Lama’s secret to happiness: “Do more, want less.” By doing more for others, we feel better about ourselves, so our self-esteem grows. By being grateful for what we have and not stewing about what we don’t, we all arrive at a common conclusion: We already have more than most people in the world can even fathom.

Life is wonderful but time is short. Commit to yourself and take full advantage.

Over the next six weeks or so I am working with clients on opposite sides of the planet who aspire to increase effectiveness by narrowing gaps in their multi-generational workforces.

The reason this topic is mushrooming in importance — everywhere, not just in the USA — is that the the first time employee bases can includes workers from four generations: the Silents, the Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y.

Since each of those four gens look at life, work, careers, and success in radically different ways, it’s prudent to bring strategy to reality: You cannot win with a dysfunctional multi-gen workforce if you compete against companies that are thriving with theirs.

To gain a competitive edge and sustain profitability, companies and managers cannot use old school methods; they must harness and integrate the talents of all.

Each generation looks at work through a unique prescription lens, so it’s critical to examine differentiators relative to three big issues: communication, commitment, and results.

Silents are the Boomers’ preceding generation, those born between the mid-1920s and the close of World War II. Only about five percent still work full-time, but those who do have wisdom, clout, connections, and irreplaceable experience.

For the most part, Silents are financially set. They work because the want to, not because they have to, and enjoy what they do.

Silents constitute the deepest repository of wisdom for a very simple reason: Long before computers stored information, their heads and careers mandated the need. Silents relied on learning, experimentation, trial and error, strategic thinking, and business savvy — rather than technology — to sustain their long-term success.

Having thought through problems and worked through barriers, Silents nurtured the leadership transition for Boomers, affecting both methods and means. They greased the skids for Boomer success, management models, and affluence.

Having known hard times — depressions and bread lines, stock market crashes, and wars — Silents are unruffled. They have weathered mountains of mess the young can never fathom. Their perspectives on life and business are unsurpassed.

The Boomers followed the Silents and constitute the majority of today’s business leaders and managers. They paid their dues, marked their time, and hiked the career ladder one methodical step at a time. Many hoped to retire by now but cannot. Some have and the calendar will eventually force them all out; but many keep working because they are economic hostages. To fund retirement they must work longer than they expected.

Roughly 79 million Americans were born in the post-World War II period between 1946 and 1964. Since few hold traditional employer pensions, Boomers are more reliant than their parents (the Silents) on savings and home values in order to fund retirement.

Unfortunately for them, their collective wealth shrank by an estimated $7.8 trillion in our recent Great Recession. Between the market peak of 2007 and its plummeting low in 2009, Boomer savings portfolios evaporated by nearly $1 trillion .

Some of the losses suffered by the Early Boomers (born in the late 1940s through early 1950s) were regained last year. The news is not so good for Late Boomers born in the following twelve years.

Having missed the meteoric stock market run-ups of the 1980s and 1990s, most Late Boomers will need decades of strong returns to regain their former positions. Either that, or they will have to exert rigid discipline and save much more aggressively than Early Boomers.

This is a tough pill for Late Boomers to swallow. Their nickname, “The Me Generation,” tips off why. Lifetime workaholics who lived in rabid pursuit of material wealth and acquisitions find it difficult to reprogram behaviors and adopt conservative consumption behaviors late in their careers.

Used to having money come and go in significant chunks, it is tough to feel good about the need to hoard nickels and dimes.

Gen Xers are starting to ascend the management totem pole, as well they should. Although small in numbers by comparison (barely half as many as Boomers), Gen Xers use technology to their advantage.

These are the kings and queens of multi-tasking — latchkey kids and products of single parenting (or dual-working parents). Gen Xers bring to the workplace a stronger independent backbone than Boomers. They much prefer figuring out what to do than be told step-by-step how to do their jobs.

Consequently, old-school hierarchical management styles (common in Boomer cultures) struggle to inspire this talented younger generation. Xers will engage at work but not fully-engage. Their upbringings were those of forced independence, which made them problem-solve at early ages. Take that away and you deflate their passion, commitment, and motivation. You put a very worker-frustrating governor on what these men and women are capable of contributing.

Gen Y, the wired generation born between 1978 and 1989, presents an even more complicated challenge for HR professionals and management staffs.

The best-ever educated generation, Gen Y is behaviorally the total opposite of the ancient Silents — and yet relate to Silents better than they do the Boomers. Gen Y values the coaching and wisdom of the Silents; they do not like the “bossiness” of the Boomer leadership model and detest micromanagement — and act accordingly.

Raised in a cauldron of relentlessly evolving technology, capitalizing on strong education, and sharing a global awareness exemplified by its fabulous culture of strong social volunteerism, Gen Y is not long on one-job loyalty.

They have seen, and learned from, the merciless corporate Boomer machine that chewed up its parents at the expense of work/life balance and job security. Gen Y cherishes the former and does not trust the establishment to provide the latter.

If they do not like what they see or are not treated as instant peers by older co-workers, they will walk. Talent has options, Gen Y knows it, and has zero fear of leaving.

Their willingness to do that — job hop — presents a perplexing Catch-22 for business leaders: We need to hire them to restock the workforce but who do we pick? How much do we invest? How do we nurture a future generation of talented leaders if we aren’t even sure they’ll stick around?

In many regards, this generation is turning the tables on old school management.

Commonalities & Communication

All four generations share certain commonalities: the desire for success, feeling valued, being recognized, being respected, not working in fearful environments, and several others. Smart companies bridge these commonalities. A rigid, inflexible “one size fits all” management model will not enable a company to flourish. In many ways, old hierarchical structures relentlessly obsolete themselves every week, every month, and every year.

Communication differences spotlight each generation in the most radical and obvious way. But at its core, effective communication remains timelessly brilliant. There are four vital components: sender, receiver, channel, and message.

Adapt and capitalize and you pull the workforce together. Ignore the four elements and watch cohesion fracture and drift apart.

A decade from today what seems normal to the young but Star Wars to the old will be ancient history. Technology is a loaded coal train racing downhill. No man, woman, company, or industry can stop it. Jump aboard and steer it — do not ignore it.

At the core of smart success is respect and trust — for each other and especially a company’s leadership teams.

In many wonderful ways, these are inspiring times. Delegate, empower, and hold people accountable for producing positive, ethical results.

Do that and your work force will strengthen.

The late George M. Steinbrenner III ruled the New York Yankees as managing partner for a club-record 37 years, during which his team won 11 American League pennants and seven World Series titles. Ultra hands-on, Steinbrenner’s most printable nickname was “The Boss.” He meddled in everything, which kept all his employees on yo-yos of nervous uncertainty.

On George’s desk at Yankee Stadium sat a foot-long engraved sign that read “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.” Since The Boss was an impetuous, impulsive sort, the message was clear: While the meek may indeed eventually inherit the earth, what they inherit will have been shaped, constructed, and governed by men consumed by the drive, will, and determination required to make things happen.

Make no bones about it, George was contemptuously allergic to seemingly meek people.

Although he paid his employees very well, the emotional squeeze of Steinbrenner’s roller-coastering leadership style exacted a heavy toll. Money could buy some of the people Steinbrenner wanted but not all. George’s iron-fisted leadership alienated cadres of skilled baseball players and executives who did not think his style and theirs was a very good fit, castles of dead presidents stacked before them notwithstanding.

Some could deal with George’s bombast, others could not. As a free agent, future Hall of Fame pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter left Oakland for New York for one reason: money. Jim wanted to buy a farm back home in North Carolina and Charlie Finley wouldn’t pay him enough to do it. George would, so Jim signed with the Yankees, took Steinbrenner’s cash, bought his vegetable farm, and did what he was hired to do: win big games and the World Series. Then he retired, went home to rural Hertford, and grew corn.

While Hunter knew how to play the Steinbrenner game, fellow Hall of Famer Dave Winfield did not. George paid big money for big names to do big things in big games. When Winfield struggled in the postseason, Steinbrenner derisively called him “Mr. May,” a public insult Winfield never got over. Winfield was not alone in Big Apple failures. Through the years buses leaving the Bronx were packed full of big money busts.

While it’s tempting for ego-driven business leaders to emulate Steinbrenner’s I-am-the-boss mandate, few who do dramatically overpay employees. Placing the “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way” sign on the desk and anchoring down behind it are easy. So is pounding the desk and beating the chest to announce full kingship. Far harder is inspiring the troops to care, especially when those troops are paid market rates, not a premium, and there are other, less taxing employers in search of good people.

In that regard, business and baseball are the same: talent has options.

Old school empirical management, which George’s style showcased, will not work over the long haul to sustain a vibrant business, unless the business is very small — because omnipotence works only when bandwidth is not exceeded.

While leadership — defined here as “inspiring results through others” — is scalable, “control freak” management is not. Omnipotence has boundaries and finite limits; and by its very nature is fraught with areas vulnerable to leaks, areas like communication, transparency, trust, and employee motivation.

As a company grows, a control freak manager tends to pull wider horizontally. Since time is a finite commodity, stretching has limits and tradeoffs: when you go wide, you cannot go deep. Go deep in one area, sacrifice in others. Control freaks stubbornly try to relentlessly do both — keep going wider and deeper — but cannot. The result is inevitable: sure as the world, tendons will snap.

It is common for an ego-driven monarch to define his identity by the power he or she exerts. Because he or she can become so wrapped up — even consumed — by work, and the business of work, lines blur between life inside the office and life at home.

When things go haywire inside the office, residual negativity radiates. Since radiation never stops at the door, and stress is never static nor goes on vacation, it mushrooms. Ubiquitous and omnipresent, if left unchecked stress will take down even the strongest of men and women. It will also affect others in the organization, many of whom are innocent victims.

As I often remind my executives, “The world is really heavy, if you decide to carry it around.” For the slow learners who insist on trying to prove they really are strong enough to carry it, it is quite okay to put Earth back down the moment the truth quote dawns true.

Once wrapped in our work as our identity, we are vulnerable to the negative effects of things beyond our control. At work we are, by the nature of what we do, orchestrators or contributors, impact players or role players. If we identify ourselves by the success of the organization, we are vulnerable to false judgment. We may have had a great year but the company had a bad one. Or the reverse can happen: We can have a bad year but others pull both their weight and ours. In either case, what are we — a success or a failure? What’s our identity now?

Companies have life cycles, just like people. Earlier this week I was discussing the demise of titanic American brands during a repositioning discussion with an executive I like and admire. The names of the fallen are legendary to gray-haired executives: Kodak, Polaroid, Woolworth’s, Pontiac, Pan Am,  Eastern Airlines, Diner’s Club, Blockbuster, Tab (soda), Rustler Steak House, McCall’s Magazine, General Cinema, Chiclets, and, of course, a conga line of others. An ambitious snake charmer could call dozens more logos out of the basket.

In order for a company to maintain its good health, and live as long and vibrantly as possible, it’s not as important to put the “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way” sign on the desk as it is to have the courage to take its advice.

There are times to lead, times to listen and act upon advice (rather than defend our contrary opinion), and times to get the heck out of the way. Smart leaders seek new ideas with an open mind and have the courage to act, even if that means forking off to follow a guide down a road less traveled.

Better decisions rise from teamwork and better decisions deliver better results. None of us is irreplaceable, no matter how much we think we are. None of us is the smartest man or woman in every room we enter. None of us cannot benefit from the wisdom of others.

Over coffee yesterday I urged a talented young professional with inspiring ambition to embrace and never forget one of life’s greatest truisms that had nothing to do with absolute power.

“Your job is what you do to pay the bills,” I said, “your life is what you do with the rest of the money.”

Geese take turns leading the V-formation of the flock because it’s tiring to lead, and beneficial for each who’s taken a turn to rest from the stress and strain of relentless leadership. As such, leading, following, and knowing when to drop back and fly along is also smart for the collective flock.

Have the courage to lead, the humility to follow, and wisdom to know when to fly to the side. Do this as situations dictate, and we all will arrive safely — wherever it is we’re determined to go.

Stressful times spawn stressed-out people, and stressed-out people tend to lash out. Often the drama is played out in private. Sometimes it’s not; sometimes that conflict is played out for the entire world to see. Such is the case with today’s collapse of the National Basketball Association’s labor negotiation.

It is hard to debate that in a soft economy, short fuses and conflict are far more frequent than they were during the salad days of our nation’s boom-time economy. Longer and deeper are the roster of reasons why conflict is on the rise: worry, frustration, desperation, greed, selfish self-centeredness — the list is long as the band plays on.

I had lunch today with a longtime NBA veteran. He said simply, “I never thought it would get to this point.”

I could not argue. Both of us thought the owners and players would compromise in time to play a full season. Based on today’s collapse of negotiations, any season at all seems to be wishful thinking.

This year, all three major sports industries — the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA — needed to negotiate new multi-year labor agreements between owners and players. The NFL, whose average team is worth more than a billion dollars, grunted, groaned, postured, and cut a win-win deal that let them start the season on time. It was business, never personal or disrespectful, and culminated accordingly.

Major League Baseball is close to doing the same. Baseball has nothing to argue about, knows it, and will soon announce its new deal, the last during Bud Selig’s checkered reign as owner lapdog and ineffective puppeteer. Baseball will change next year, when Selig retires and is replaced as commissioner. I am a baseball man and hope those changes will enable America’s pastime to shove itself back to the forefront of American sports consciousness.

But the NBA, whose owners have been easily outpointed by the players throughout the dozen years of their recently-expired labor agreement, seem to be out for more than a settlement. Here’s why:

Managing conflict, or in this case working through it to get to an amenable solution both sides can live with, hinges on three things:

1. How insistent each participant is upon getting his or her own way.
2. How willing each participant is to help the other satisfy his or her (different) wants and needs.
3. How flexible each side is willing to be with regards to moving off his personal stance.

It is worth noting that labor agreements in sports are different than those in most other businesses due to the competitive nature of the combatants. The sports industry, by design, is populated with very competitive people. Their self-image, self-esteem, and perceived place in culture runs on competitive juice. Since negotiations are already stressful by their very nature — a high-stakes argument over money — ultra-competitive people who have been winners their entire lives do not sit comfortably on opposite sides of the table. To a competitor, it’s not always about the money; the ultimate goal is winning.

The NFL knew that and worked through it. Baseball isn’t as adrenaline dependent as football and worked around it. The NBA has a much bigger problem because the NBA is stuck in the crosshairs of its own machismo. Compounding the problem for the NBA is that half the owners in the game today were not in it when the previous deal was struck. They inherited a bad deal and lost hundreds of millions because of it.

Anyone involved in a dispute has four attitudes he or she can take. Two of those four pertain to satisfying themselves. The other two are tied to their willingness to satisfying others.

• Those interested in satisfying themselves have a range in which to do so, which spans from unassertive to very assertive.

• When it comes to a willingness to flex to the needs of others, people can range from uncooperative to accommodating.

The area between these extremes — between unassertive and assertive, and uncooperative and accommodating — is the room for compromise. It is here the NBA has tied its own shoelaces together and keeps falling down in its defiant rush to nowhere.

When a side with a selfish interest shows consistently assertive behaviors (i.e. NBA Commissioner David Stern), the other side (in this case the players) will be predictably uncooperative. They will fight or flee, seeking conflict or avoidance. When this happens (and it has) getting to Yes becomes extremely difficult. Today the players opted to disband their union and fight.

Now that talks have collapsed, Stern is willing to let his lawyers do his bullying for him. He can pause from kissing his mirror and issuing his irritating daily ultimatums and ponder, downstream, perhaps a more collaborative approach. If he eventually does so, he will find the players somewhat accommodating. And it is that range — between assertive collaboration and unassertive accommodation — that compromise can be reached.

The fix is cheaper than the price the players and owners will pay, so the real question is when both sides will decide to move closer together out of respect for the other’s fundamental protective needs. A new commissioner would help. So would a more solution-centric approach.

It is tough for fans, most of whom cannot afford a ticket — an average NBA ticket is $48 — but still loyally watch the NBA in record numbers on television (up 30 percent last year), to care about billionaires imparting their will upon millionaires.

It is a fool’s folly for the NBA to believe this public display of “negotiation” will not more deeply dent its already scratched and tarnished brand.

Stern does not seem to care. He appears hell-bent on breaking the union and winning the negotiation. This is his last labor deal; his ego is driving him to an impressively desperate march for a very personal win. Taking back $3 billion in union0-agreed concessions is not enough; Stern wants more. Much, much more.

The NBA brand has blown an ACL trying to take off its own warmups, and the sooner both sides decide to meet in the middle the better. Maybe that day is soon. But if not, we all know what must happen before tall acrobats can once again return to playing hoops: Eventually both sides need to respect each other as much or more than they respect themselves.

The question is when.

Two trees named Joe fell in the forest last week and hundred of millions were there to hear them. The first was Joe Frazier, former heavyweight champion of the world. Two days later fell the second, a football coach, Joe Paterno, who moonlighted for half a century as King of Pennsylvania.

I met Joe Frazier twice and liked him instantly. Like many childhood heroes I have come to know, our paths did not cross until hair was flecked with gray and muscles were easier to spot in photos than in person. The second time I spoke with Joe, he introduced me to his son Marvis. I liked Marvis too but wondered what the heck he was thinking when he agreed to fight Mike Tyson. Marvis was a good son and fine young man — but had no business mixing it up with Tyson and in 1986 both men proved it. Iron Mike took Marvis out in thirty seconds of the first round. I hope Marvis saved and invested his money.

Upon that first meeting with Joe, what struck me immediately was the former champion’s size. To me, Joe seemed a small man. I am 6-feet-2. Joe, at best, was 5-feet-10. Ali, who stood 6-feet-4, cast a much more imposing physical presence. Nor Joe have a treetop canopy for shoulders, as many great athletes do. Joe was slope-shouldered but thick. At first glance you size him up and think, “He’s not so big. Maybe I could’ve got lucky with a punch. Caught him.”

Then you go home, watch  footage of Joe’s fights, and realize what foolish folly such silly thoughts are. Smokin’ Joe had two things mere mortals do not: a whipsaw thunderbolt of a left hook — a devastating say-goodnight punch that was perhaps the best ever in the heavyweight division — coupled with the courage of a platoon of extraordinary men. He only knew one direction: forward. Once in the ring, Joe Frazier was never hard to find; he was the relentless buzzsaw bearing down on your face.

There was no quit in Joe Frazier. Not a drop. From the moment he decided to stop working at a Philadelphia meat packer in order to box for a living, Joe knew only one way: relentlessly forward. And when Joe and I talked that first day, I mentioned that of all the athletes in all the sports of my generation, one man stood alone in the courage department, and I was talking with him: Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

I told him, “You have more courage than any two man I’ve ever known.”

Joe beamed. There was no question how he wanted his legacy remembered. Joe was a simple yet singular man; he wanted to be known as a man of courage.

Since his death I have watched and read a score of eulogies for this minimally educated, self-made overachiever. Kind words and remembrances poured in from around the world from friends and admirers. In the area that meant the most to Joe  — courage — Joe Frazier died an undisputed champion.

The drive from Joe Frazier’s Philadelphia home to Joe Paterno’s in State College is a 3 1/2 hour highway cruise from the land of the have nots to the glory of the haves. Frazier was an inner city hero who rose from the streets. He returned there and died there, surrounded by an environment that would scare most in the middle class, along with a sparsity of material possessions that belied life’s earlier achievements.

Paterno lived a different life. His view was across a manicured lawn, a rock star on eternal scholarship at a respected college campus. Compared to Frazier, Paterno’s life was showered with gold, his driveway paved with it.

Until, of course, it mattered.

When it mattered — when it was time for a real man to have the courage to act like one — the wrong Joe was in State College. If Joe Frazier were at Penn State on those days the little boys were sexually assaulted, there would have been swift, immediate justice. Joe Frazier backed down from no man or situation.

Joe Paterno did back down. He backed down from men, responsibility, and, worst of all, from the dire needs of innocent little boys. Maybe that was the problem: Joe Frazier had all the courage, Joe Pa none at all.

Last week was a good one for all Americans in search of a hero. Mine was not a false god, nor a made-for-TV papier mache icon. Mine was an inner city overachiever with an iron will and the lifelong courage to persevere, to never give up, and always do what’s right.

I hope yours was, too.

Relationships strengthen and weaken based on interactions the brain catalogs into three buckets: non-verbal evaluations, voice and tone, and selected words. Therefore a strong first impression goes a heck of a long way toward launching a solid relationship. A weak first impression is very difficult to overcome

Researchers at NYU, Stanford, Tufts, and NYU have drawn several helpful connections to help us better understand how the brain makes 11 rapid-fire decisions within the first three to seven seconds of meeting someone new.

As technology evolves and exchanges become more digital and depersonalized, it’s more important than ever to know how to make a good first impression when we do meet someone in person. However convenient, technology can be more hindrance than help, because first impressions are most heavily influenced by non-verbal cues.

Those ultra-important non-verbal signals are four times as powerful as words, which means making a good impression is far easier in person than over the Internet.

The formation of first impressions comes from flashpoint conclusions drawn from two areas of the brain. One links to our regulation of emotion; the second is where we make financial decisions and assign values on outcomes. Both encode and process selected data.

These two circuits process what they see and hear like calculators, rating what they experience based upon a series of personal preferences and filters. Then the two blend  results to provide us a score. That score is a first impression. Humans have operated this way since the dawn of man — early man’s survival depended on a quick read of another as friend or foe.

Neuroscientists peg most brain processing stopwatches at a range from three to seven seconds. Nearly everyone forms first impression in less than a half-minute.

After that, opinions are slow and difficult to change. Growing familiarity can change them, but a negative first impression creates a reluctance to engage long enough (or often enough) for us to want to draw a second. It’s this lack of new information that hinders a change because there simply are not enough new or different data points to draw a different conclusion. Change is hard, so many don’t do it.

When teaching, I sometimes ask the class how long it takes them to decide if a first date will ever result in a second. For women, the range is five to ten minutes. Men are blind optimists; they think their “show” will work better as the night goes on. Rarely does it.

Scientific evidence is virtually unanimous that we rely much more on initial opinions than later information because what we see first represents the truth. Impressions are therefore quick to form but slow to change. Whether that’s fair or not doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the process is very much part of human nature.

Keys to a creating a first impression are a smile — which can be seen and noticed from 100 feet away — a warm handshake, clothing, grooming, eye contact, and, surprisingly perhaps, how happy and well balanced the person is. A happy, grounded, positive person tends to radiate that internal contentment in a way that creates a positive impression on others.

In other words, a person who’s happy on the inside tends to display him or herself as happy on the outside. These people are “whizzywigs” — What You See is What You Get. In a world of situational actors, whizzywigs are a breath of pure oxygen.

First impressions extend beyond just fact accumulation, processing, and filtration through lenses of expectation. As importantly, we project our conclusions forward in anticipation of how likely someone is to react to hypothetical situations. We flash forward to future behavioral projections. Some, we decide, we like and trust; others we do not.

First impressions are tough to change because, once formed, people typically do not look to change an existing conclusion. What we look for after forming that first impression is validation, not contrary evidence. Since we tend to find in life what we look for, people who look for validation tend to find it. Change comes more slowly. This means that more often than not we have some work to do if we want to change someone’s existing impression.

Demeanor, mannerisms, dress, and body language (including posture) are all parts of a first impression. So are a warm smile and sincere, respectful handshake.

Master the art and you’ll increase your “Q factor” (your likeability). Do that and your sphere of influence will grow in all good ways.