Friends
Friends
Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Get to know AlanShow Notes
We all need friends, but not the same ones! Friends need to evolve as we grow, mature, and change.
Marshall Goldsmith and I wrote Lifestorming together, and we somewhat disagreed on this, but he wrote the terrific book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, so I think this applies to friends, as well!
Your spouse is your best friend? That’s a cop-out.
You need people who will push back, tell you the truth, mourn with you, and celebrate with you. I’d prefer an honest critic to a lying friend. We don’t need our egos protected, we need to grow.
Long-time friends can poison you with their poverty mentality, “guilting” you about your spending, habits, or lifestyle. They can insist on the same places and the same experiences “for old time’s sake.”
“When it’s cold,” said Hemingway, “home is where you go, and they have to take you in.” Fair enough. But with friends, they don’t have to take you in, but they choose to do so.
Have you been to school reunions? If so, you’ve found that people are basically the same as they were X years ago, with very few exceptions. It’s nice, perhaps, to see them again, but you’ve outgrown them.
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
