Quotes About Communication

When we do discipline without showing frustration, the odds for success increase in a very big way.

Anger Short-Circuits Learning

Trying to reason with kids who are emotionally upset is a waste of good air.

Kids have minds of their own. They want to exert their independence and do their own thinking. They blow off the things that are forced onto them and embrace the things they want to believe. If we want to pass our values down to them, we must present those values in a way our kids can accept: in our actions and words. Kids' values come from what they see and hear. They don't accept what we try to drive into their heads through lecturing.

No wonder Nolan whines like a pro: He has a good teacher. The fact is, parents who spend a lot of time pleading with their children develop kids who are experts at pleading

we surrender and grudgingly fork over the cookie. The message the child gets is that whining works.

Limits can be set much more effectively when we're not fighting with our kids.

Telling our kids what to do—"You get to work on that lawn right now." Telling our kids what we will not allow—"You're not going to talk to me that way!" Telling our kids what we won't do for them—"I'm not letting you out of this house until you clean the living room.

He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. Most important, he backed his wife to the hilt. He didn't allow Blake to drive a wedge between Lisa and him.

Sincere empathy works wonders. Sarcastic empathy backfires every time.

For their part, the savage men appear to spend an inordinate amount of time lounging around their lodges, smoking and gossiping among themselves...so that it occurs to me that perhaps our cultures are not so different after all: the women do all the work while the men do all the talking.

There is a wonder in reading Braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back.

Choose your words carefully. They reveal your inner character.

Value your wife by valuing what she says.

He hoped the tower would be the first to send signals—and power—wirelessly to anywhere in the world.

Beware of anyone who calls you bad names merely for asking honest questions.

If Jimmy indeed cracked corn and you truly didn't care, why the fuck did you write a song about it? I call bullshit.

I show Dave the dummy for my book. He reads every bit of writing, looks at every picture, and asks no questions. When he's done, he wipes his hands on the book.

If you're screwing up and people aren't saying anything, that means they have given up.

Love at Work Is a Lot of Work!

Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.

At the core of healthy team relationships is trust and respect.

The capability of self-organizing teams lies in collaboration. When two engineers scratch out a design on a whiteboard, they are collaborating. When team members meet to brainstorm a design, they are collaborating. When team leaders meet to decide whether a product is ready to ship, they are collaborating. The result of any collaboration can be categorized as a tangible deliverable, a decision, or shared knowledge.

The quality of results from any collaboration effort are driven by trust and respect