Social Capital Mentor

White House Reporter’s Lack of Social Capital Gets Him the Evil Eye from President Obama

President Obama was forced to stare down one of the White House press core. The reporter on the receiving end of Obama’s ire, Politico’s Jonathan Martin, got there because he didn’t understand the social dynamic of Obama’s suprise visit to the press room. He wanted to deliver a ‘tough’ question to Obama, when Obama’s visit [...]

Continue reading...

January 22nd is Thank Your Mentor Day

If you haven’t already, mark January 22 on your calendar. The folks at Harvard have declared January to be National Mentoring Month, and January 22nd, Thank Your Mentor Day. A day to reflect, a day to thank those people that have sacrificed a bit of themselves to make you a better person. What exactly is [...]

Continue reading...

Can You Swear at Work?

That depends on which part of the world you’re in. I’m not going to tell you that you need good work-place manners to develop social capital. You already know that manners are important. That said, I did find this article by Miral Fahmy to be a pretty interesting look at how perceptions of manners are [...]

Continue reading...

Practice Conscientiously

If you’re like a lot of people, one the hardest things about improving your social capital is putting yourself out there. We can talk all we want about social capital, but as the old saying goes, talk is cheap. You need habits of interacting well with people. Michael Phelps swims more laps then there are [...]

Continue reading...

Leadership Skills and the Brave New Face of the San Francisco 49′ers

Driving to work the other morning, I was listening to sports radio KNBR. I tuned in just in time to hear the end of an interview the host was having with Jed York, the newly named team president of the San Francisco 49′ers. The York family owns the storied franchise, so to most this move [...]

Continue reading...

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! With all the running around, the traffic, the madness at the stores, and the doom-and-gloom news this season, people lose track of how much is going well in their lives. Let’s take a moment to count our blessings and spread some happiness. Take some time to tell a stranger, like the guy [...]

Continue reading...

Practice Makes Habit

How do you develop Social Capital? The answer is easy, but like anything it takes a lot of hard work and practice. How much practice? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, says that to become an expert at something you need 10,000 hours of practice. He found this to be true [...]

Continue reading...

I’m So Stoked To Be Here

All my life I’ve helped people develop and understand themselves. Whether it was coaching high school kids, being a sounding board for a friend, or just giving directions to a stranger, I’ve tried to treat people as I’d like to be treated. Raised in an environment which put a heavy emphasis on social graces, I [...]

Continue reading...