Tonight I drove to Wisconsin after work to meet a bunch of folks from our Regional Leadership Forum (RLF) group for a reconnect.  We have decided as a group to meet 4 times a year (once each quarter) to discuss a book, have dinner together, have a guest speaker where possible, and to renew our friendships.  It’s a great opportunity to keep building wonderful relationships that we built over the past year.

I got up there a little early, so I did some shopping at the Jelly Belly factory store (which just happened to be off the same exit where we were metting), did a little shopping at the outlet mall next to where we were meeting and then joined everyone for dinner and great discussions!  There were about 15 of us there and we had a great time!  During dinner we did our book discussion on a great book by Marshall  Goldsmith:  “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”  We discussed 20 habits that need to be broken to help you get your life and career to the next level.  They are:

  1. Winning too much
  2. Adding too much value
  3. Passing judgement
  4. Making destructive comments
  5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”
  6. Telling the world how smart you are
  7. Speaking when angry
  8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”
  9. Withholding information
  10. Failing to give proper recognition
  11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve
  12. Making excuses
  13. Clinging to the past
  14. Playing favorites
  15. Refusing to express regret
  16. Not listening
  17. Failing to express gratitude
  18. Punishing the messenger
  19. Passing the buck
  20. An excessive need to be “me”

Angela and I also had a great discussion about which ones we felt we needed to work on and had some ah ha moments and some laughs.  🙂

We then had a great guest speaker, Phil Zweig, who just retired as a VP of Northwestern Mutual.  He told us his life’s story and gave us some of his favorite tips and quotes.  One that I really liked was from George Carlin.  He said:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths  you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.

We talked and caught each other up on everything that was going on in our lives.  What a great experience!  I’m looking forward to the next one we have in June!  🙂