Mark Goulston

“Buying involves decision-making. It's a performance activity, like sports or acting.”

“One of the best ways to see how critical being present is to effective leadership is to notice what being absent, distracted, hiding something, and/or agenda-driven does to people's ability to trust, respect, and have confidence in you.”

“If fun puts a smile on your face, beauty and elegance put a smile in your heart and take your breath away. It's longer-lasting and more satisfying than fun.”

“More often than not, CEOs are conflict-avoidant because their role is to define vision and strategy than it is to get into confrontations with negative and toxic people which they can't stand.”

“Denial is not always a bad thing. Without it, you couldn't function. For instance, if you were hyperaware and hypervigilant regarding all the dangers in the world - from driving your car to crossing the street to eating food that might have contaminants in it to taking medications that have many side effects, etc. - you would become frozen.”

“Connecting is always better than disconnecting.”

“Be it terrorists or 'blinded by greed' capitalists or 'deaf and dumb and siloed' officials, special interests will always tyrannize the common good.”

“Despair - or as I like to call it, des-pair - means feeling unpaired in a world in which it feels like everyone else is paired with a good job, a happy marriage, loving family, caring, and hope - and you're not.”

“I have heard it said that the measure of a civilization is how it treats those who have hurt it. I think a further measure is how it treats those who deeply disappoint it.”

“If there was one key to happiness in love and life and possibly even success, it would be to go into each conversation you have with this commandment to yourself front and foremost in your mind, 'Just Listen' and be more interested than interesting, more fascinated than fascinating, and more adoring than adorable.”

“If you're fortunate, you'll meet people over the course of your career who exceed your expectations in every way. When you work or spend time with them, you find yourself wanting to be a better person.”

“Sadly, most labor attorneys will advise you not to say you're wrong to anyone, because that might lead them to have something they can use to sue you.”

“Leadership is more about clarity than it is about control.”

“There is something calming and emotionally restoring when you focus on gratitude for a known deed that helped you, instead of fear of the unknown.”

“One word that seems to connect both leaders and employees is: 'outcomes.' Built into that word is the implicit and explicit understanding and agreement that effective actions lead to good outcomes; ineffective actions lead to poor outcomes.”

“One of the reasons it is so difficult to break a connection to something or someone you have imprinted on is that after you imprint, it seeds into your mind and goes from working memory to stored, hard-wired memory from which it is much more difficult to sever that attachment.”

“If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can't resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.”

“People often say, 'I don't need recognition,' and the truth is they are right. We don't need it. But like healthy food and exercise, life is a whole lot better with it.”

“It's no fun being a salesperson when it feels like you're talking to a wall. That's what it feels like when you haven't learned your customer's points of interest.”

“When you listen with memory, you have an old agenda, and when you listen with desire, you have a new one. You can't listen to the other person if your agenda is overtaking you.”