Fear shuts people down. When you feel safe, your brain is free to soar. When you feel in danger, your brain goes into survival mode, not peak performance mode. Too many people feel unsafe at work, under toxic pressures, and stretched too thin. They are literally about to snap. Within an atmosphere of trust and what I call connection, a supervisor can create conditions under which people's brains can set aside fear and fly high.

Modern loneliness is an extraverted loneliness, in which the person is surrounded by many people and partakes of much communication but feels unrecognized and more alone and, although connected technically, isolated and even estranged emotionally.

In order to do what really matters to you, you have to, first of all, know what really matters to you.

All connections matter, but the people you depend upon matter most.

I would suggest that excellence occurs in direct proportion to necessary suffering, but in inverse proportion to unnecessary suffering or toxic stress. Connection is the best antidote to unnecessary suffering.

Several elements of the ADD mind favor creativity....As mentioned earlier, the term 'attention deficit' is a misnomer. It is a matter of attention inconsistency. While it is true that the ADD mind wanders when not engaged, it is also the case that the ADD mind fastens on to its subject fiercely when it is engaged. A child with ADD may sit for hours meticulously putting together a model airplane.

It is especially important for managers to know about, neuroplasticity, the greatest discovery in neuroscience in the past 20 years. It refers to the fact that the brain is remarkably plastic. It can grow and change for the better throughout life. In fact, "plastic" denotes the brain's ability to grow and change throughout life.