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Columns

Seek first to understand in relationships and in business

Habit Number 5 in Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood. Living by this principal can be life changing. Almost half of marriages in the USA end in divorce. In their book “Make Love, Make Money, Make it Last” ...

An American’s impressions of Germany and Iceland

Last Sunday morning at 6 AM Nathan (Shale Crescent USA president), Lynnda and I landed in Frankfurt Germany after a flight from New York City of over seven hours. We flew from Pittsburgh to New York to catch the international flight. Picked up our luggage from the Pittsburgh flight, ...

The tantalizing arrival of early spring weather

This is one of my favorite times of the year. No, I don’t love the cold, rainy conditions that Mother Nature is still sending our way from time to time. But I do enjoy the longer days that mean I might make it out of the office before dark once in a while. I revel in the really warm days ...

Retired justice: Democrats made missteps setting up primary

Retired Justice Supreme Court of Ohio The Democrats have been the minority party at the Supreme Court of Ohio for the better part of two decades. Now the Democratic leadership of the Ohio Democratic Party wants to extend that dry spell by engineering an unnecessary primary. They have ...

Silence doesn’t lead to successful collaboration

When Lynnda and I do team building and leadership training, one of the exercises we do is to divide the group into teams. We give each team a 1-pound box of spaghetti and a bag of large marshmallows. Then we instruct them to build a tower as tall as they can in 10 minutes using only the ...

A unique opportunity to visit the Bellaire Bridge

It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of this column that my job sometimes gives me the opportunity to do things that other people just don’t get the chance to do. Such was the case as we prepared the series of stories that has been featured on the front pages of our weekend ...