Stellar Performance Quotes

In the context of the work environment, emotional intelligence enables three important skill sets: stellar work performance, outstanding leadership, and the ability to create the conditions for happiness.

Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hardworking, brilliant, creative and unified. But the person supervising is also responsible for someone troubled, who is performing poorly, elsewhere. In a fit of inspiration, the well-meaning manager moves that problematic person into the midst of his stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens?—and the psychological literature is clear on this point.64 Does the errant interloper immediately straighten up and fly right? No. Instead, the entire team degenerates. The newcomer remains cynical, arrogant and neurotic. He complains. He shirks. He misses important meetings. His low-quality work causes delays, and must be redone by others. He still gets paid, however, just like his teammates. The hard workers who surround him start to feel betrayed. “Why am I breaking myself into pieces striving to finish this project,” each thinks, “when my new team member never breaks a sweat?” The same thing happens when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability.65 Down is a lot easier than up.

Bring it in.” Herr Reitmann's scowl had softened. “You both have some crazy notions of what going over a jump ought to look like.” He emphasized the word over. “You both have talent, I can't deny that. It wasn't a stellar performance, but I'll train you. Tomorrow morning, be here at seven.” “In the morning?” I squeaked. Now my voice worked.

Experiment: Ask yourself if the either/or perfectionism trap is a problem for you. If it is, consider the following: 1. Maybe the flaws you see yourself as having aren’t as big in reality as they are in your mind. Maybe other people will care less about them than you think. Can you think of any flaws you perceive yourself as having where this might be true? 2. Achieving excellent performance at all times isn’t a realistic option, nor is always performing at the top, especially if you’re mixing in a pool of other smart people. Sometimes anxious perfectionists will avoid mixing with other very talented people because it triggers social comparison and self-doubt. This has a self-sabotaging effect because smart people spark each other’s ideas (the iron sharpens iron principle). Do you avoid situations that trigger social comparison? 3. Give other people some credit. Why would they forget about all the other stellar work you’ve done if you occasionally produce something that is not quite at your usual high standard?

The fair awakened America to beauty and as such was a necessary passage that laid the foundation for men like Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. For Burnham personally the fair had been an unqualified triumph. It allowed him to fulfill his pledge to his parents to become the greatest architect in America, for certainly in his day he had become so. During the fair an event occurred whose significance to Burnham was missed by all but his closest friends: Both Harvard and Yale granted him honorary master’s degrees in recognition of his achievement in building the fair. The ceremonies occurred on the same day. He attended Harvard’s. For him the awards were a form of redemption. His past failure to gain admission to both universities—the denial of his “right beginning”—had haunted him throughout his life. Even years after receiving the awards, as he lobbied Harvard to grant provisional admission to his son Daniel, whose own performance on the entry exams was far from stellar, Burnham wrote, “He needs to know that he is a winner, and, as soon as he does, he will show his real quality, as I have been able to do. It is the keenest regret of my life that someone did not follow me up at Cambridge … and let the authorities know what I could do.” Burnham had shown them himself, in Chicago, through the hardest sort of work. He bristled at the persistent belief that John Root deserved most of the credit for the beauty of the fair. “What was done up to the time of his death was the faintest suggestion of a plan,” he said. “The impression concerning his part has been gradually built up by a few people, close friends of his and mostly women, who naturally after the Fair proved beautiful desired to more broadly identify his memory with it.

Lady Thornton, how very good of you to find the time to pay us a social call! Would it be too pushing of me to inquire as to your whereabouts during the last six weeks?” At that moment Elizabeth’s only thought was that if Ian’s barrister felt this way about her, how much more hatred she would face when she confronted Ian himself. “I-I can imagine what you must be thinking,” she began in a conciliatory manner. He interrupted sarcastically, “Oh, I don’t think you can, madam. If you could, you’d be quite horrified at this moment.” “I can explain everything,” Elizabeth burst out. “Really?” he drawled blightingly. “A pity you didn’t try to do that six weeks ago!” “I’m here to do it now,” Elizabeth cried, clinging to a slender thread of control. “Begin at your leisure,” he drawled sarcastically. “here are only three hundred people across the hall awaiting your convenience.” Panic and frustration made Elizabeth’s voice shake and her temper explode. “Now see here, sir, I have not traveled day and night so that I can stand here while you waste time insulting me! I came here the instant I read a paper and realized my husband is in trouble. I’ve come to prove I’m alive and unharmed, and that my brother is also alive!” Instead of looking pleased or relieved he looked more snide than before. “Do tell, madam. I am on tenterhooks to hear the whole of it.” “Why are you doing this?” Elizabeth cried. “For the love of heaven, I’m on your side!” “Thank God we don’t have more like you.” Elizabeth steadfastly ignored that and launched into a swift but complete version of everything that had happened from the moment Robert came up behind her at Havenhurst. Finished, she stood up, ready to go in and tell everyone across the hall the same thing, but Delham continued to pillory her with his gaze, watching her in silence above his steepled fingertips. “Are we supposed to believe that Banbury tale?” he snapped at last. “Your brother is alive, but he isn’t here. Are we supposed to accept the word of a married woman who brazenly traveled as man and wife with another man-“ “With my brother,” Elizabeth retorted, bracing her palms on the desk, as if by sheer proximity she could make him understand. “So you want us to believe. Why, Lady Thornton? Why this sudden interest in your husband’s well-being?” “Delham!” the duchess barked. “Are you mad? Anyone can see she’s telling the truth-even I-and I wasn’t inclined to believe a word she said when she arrived at my house! You are tearing into her for no reason-“ Without moving his eyes from Elizabeth, Mr. Delham said shortly, “Your grace, what I’ve been doing is nothing to what the prosecution will try to do to her story. If she can’t hold up in here, she hasn’t a chance out there!” “I don’t understand this at all!” Elizabeth cried with panic and fury. “By being here I can disprove that my husband has done away with me. And I have a letter from Mrs. Hogan describing my brother in detail and stating that we were together. She will come here herself if you need her, only she is with child and couldn’t travel as quickly as I had to do. This is a trial to prove whether or not my husband is guilty of those crimes. I know the truth, and I can prove he isn’t.” “You’re mistaken, Lady Thornton,” Delham said in a bitter voice. “Because of its sensational nature and the wild conjecture in the press, this is no longer a quest for truth and justice in the House of Lords. This is now an amphitheater, and the prosecution is in the center of the stage, playing a starring role before an audience of thousands all over England who will read about it in the papers. They’re bent on giving a stellar performance, and they’ve been doing just that. Very well,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see how well you can deal with them.

Avoiding failure is something we learn at some later point in life. I’m sure a lot of it comes from our education system, which judges rigorously based on performance and punishes those who don’t do well. Another large share of it comes from overbearing or critical parents who don’t let their kids screw up on their own often enough, and instead punish them for trying anything new or not preordained. And then we have all the mass media that constantly expose us to stellar success after success, while not showing us the thousands of hours of dull practice and tedium that were required to achieve that success. At some point, most of us reach a place where we’re afraid to fail, where we instinctively avoid failure and stick only to what is placed in front of us or only what we’re already good at. This confines us and stifles us. We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.

I went from mediocre to a stellar performer when I told myself: To heck with worrying about the money and obsessing over the scoreboard. I’m just going to focus on being the best trader I can be and sticking to the rules. Then the money followed.

The final score was five to zero, with high-scoring Brother, the hockey hero! The cheers for the Cousins were long and loud. They left the ice to the roar of the crowd. So there you have it. A stellar performance by Brother Bear and another victory for the Bear Country Cousins. This puts the Cousins in the big Valentine’s game against… the Beartown Bullies-- a dubious privilege at best. There was a special cheer for Brother as well. The cheerleaders gave him a well-deserved yell. They then addressed Brother in more personal terms. “Yuck, when it comes to mush, I’d rather eat worms.

In the context of the work environment, emotional intelligence enables three important skill sets: stellar work performance, outstanding leadership, and the ability to create the conditions for happiness. Stellar

In insurance, for example, USAA has been a stellar performer with a value proposition aimed at low-risk customers. Here’s what is essential: finding a unique way to serve your chosen segment profitably.

At root, the unstoppable rise of C.E.O. pay involves an ideological shift. Just about everyone involved now assumes that talent is rarer than ever, and that only outsize rewards can lure suitable candidates and insure stellar performance. Yet the evidence for these propositions is sketchy at best, as Michael Dorff, a professor of corporate law at Southwestern Law School, shows in his new book, “Indispensable and Other Myths.

This problem enters the business world more viciously than other walks of life, owing to the high dependence on randomness (we have already belabored the contrast between randomness-dependent business with dentistry). The greater the number of businessmen, the greater the likelihood of one of them performing in a stellar manner just by luck. I have rarely seen anyone count the monkeys. In the same vein, few count the investors in the market in order to calculate, instead of the probability of success, the conditional probability of successful runs given the number of investors in operation over a given market history.

Errol Flynn was a film actor whose performances gave pleasure to many millions. On June 20, 1909, he was born in Hobart, Tasmania, and on October 14, 1959, he died in Vancouver, British Columbia. When he was seventeen he was expelled from school in Sydney, and in the next 33 years he lived a life which was full, lusty, restless and colourful. In his career, in his three marriages, in his friendships, in his quarrels, and in bed with the many women he took there, he lived with zest and irregularity. The lives of film stars are not cast in the ordinary mould, and in some respects Errol Flynn’s was more stellar than most. When he died, he posed the only question that I have to decide: where was he domiciled at the date of his death?

TRACS has been founded with an overarching goal to offer multiple professional tracks, consulting and learning paths to individuals, organizations and institutions for achieving their true potential and stellar performance.

One method that leads to this has also been used to launch new mutual funds. Fund managers sometimes start a new fund with a small amount of capital. They then stuff it with hot IPOs (initial public offerings) that brokers give them as a reward for the large volume of business they have been doing through their established funds. During this process of “salting the mine,” the fund is closed to the public. When it establishes a stellar track record, it is opened to everyone. Attracted by the amazing track record, the public rushes in, giving the fund managers a huge capital base from which they reap large fees. The brokers who supplied the hot IPOs are rewarded by a flood of additional business from the triumphant managers of the new fund. The available volume of hot IPOs is too small to help returns much once the fund gets big, so the track record declines to mediocrity. However, the fund promoters can use more hot IPOs to incubate yet another spectacularly performing new fund; and so it goes on.

There was just one problem: Cheney’s background check. Rumsfeld was aware of his protégé’s less-than-stellar academic record. Admitted to Yale on a scholarship, Cheney had distinguished himself as a first-class partier and a fourth-rate student. After three failed semesters, the university told him to take a year off; Cheney went back to Wyoming, where he got a job on a road crew stringing power cables. But upon his return to New Haven, Cheney recalls, “frankly, my attitude really hadn’t changed at all.” After another dismal academic performance, he was told to leave Yale for good. There was worse to

Avoiding failure is something we learn at some later point in life. I’m sure a lot of it comes from our education system, which judges rigorously based on performance and punishes those who don’t do well. Another large share of it comes from overbearing or critical parents who don’t let their kids screw up on their own often enough, and instead punish them for trying anything new or not preordained. And then we have all the mass media that constantly expose us to stellar success after success, while not showing us the thousands of hours of dull practice and tedium that were required to achieve that success.

We all have a hard time saying things that are critical, whether we’re talking to a superior employee or a marginal one. We must keep in mind, however, that no matter how stellar a person’s performance level is, there is always room for improvement. Don’t hesitate to use the 20/20 hindsight provided by the review to show anyone, even an ace, how he might have done better.

He was an ass that wasn’t interested in me. So what if my panties got wet every time his rough voice got bossy with me. It was probably a coincidence. Seriously, the way you lie to yourself is deserving of an Oscar. It’s such a stellar performance.

Both opportunity and perils surface suddenly in the market. It takes swift, resolute action to exploit one and elude the other. Nothing can unravel a trader's courage more than a huge loss in a stock trade. It wasn't until I suffered enough big losses that I made the decision that turned my performance from mediocre to stellar: I decided it was time to make money and stop stressing about my ego.