10 Ways to Connect Deeply at Thanksgiving
Would you like to move beyond superficial conversation during your Thanksgiving gathering this year? Would you like to connect deeply with your family and...
32 Ways to Enjoy Highly Relational Holidays
If you're like most people, the coming holiday season will be either the best time of the year or the worst time of the year ... and it will probably depend...
Asking Parents to Give Up Their Keys
One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to ask my mother and my mother-in-law to give up their car keys. Doing it with each of them on the same day...
20 Ways to Prevent and Resolve Conflict in the Church
The COVID crisis, combined with heightened racial and political tension, has triggered unprecedented conflict throughout our nation, as well as in the local...
The Last Human Freedom
“The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude.” So wrote Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust,...
17 Ways to Respond to Explosive Politics
In a little over a week, millions of people will be rejoicing or weeping as the 2020 political season comes to its climactic end. The emotions that are now...
Can You Read Faces and Eyes?
Thirty-two years ago a trial attorney read a distressed look in my eyes and responded in a way that changed the course of my life. The ability to read the...
To Mask or Not to Mask … That Is the Divisive Question
Masks are dividing churches all around the country. Some church members are willing to continue following government COVID-19 mandates to wear masks during...
Reflecting Christ in a Chaotic World – Using the Upgraded RW Small Group Study
Have you ever seen a time like this? A time when relational tensions are threatening to divide so many families, churches and communities? The dangers are...
Four Amazing Church Discipline Cases
I’ve been involved in dozens of church discipline cases, both as an elder in my church and as a conciliator assisting other churches. Some of these cases were...
What You Can Do About Racial Tensions
As I watched the George Floyd memorial service this afternoon, I was grieved more than ever by his tragic death, the loss that his family is feeling, and by...
Five Ways to Bless Your Mother This Sunday
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. If you’re tired of doing the same “card and gift” routine, allow me to suggest something that will blow your mother (or your...
Serving a Barista
She was working the early shift at a small Starbucks counter in Dulles Airport. The young barista had probably been up since 4 or 5 a.m., and she already...
SOG vs COVID-19
We are surely living in unprecedented times! Who would have ever thought that churches, businesses, schools and parks throughout the world would be void of...
EI/RW Training During Covid-19 Crisis
Relational wisdom is an enhanced form of emotional intelligence that helps to deal with the stress created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bringing RW and the Gospel to Soldiers, Teachers and Nurses
Our country is blessed every day by over two million men and women who serve in our military. In addition to protecting our nation from outside threats, many...
10 Ways to Connect Deeply at Thanksgiving
Would you like to move beyond superficial conversation during your Thanksgiving gathering this year? Would you like to connect deeply with your family and...
15 New Training Options and Opportunities
Including New Group-Study DVD Sets! During a seminar in southern California, a business owner volunteered that he was “successfully failing in his business.”...
Daniel Project: Washington DC Update
Washington DC is an interesting place, to say the least. Politics, power, money … countless temptations, continual controversy … and thousands of people whom...
The Daniel Project: RW in Washington DC
Over the next few days, I will have the privilege of presenting relational wisdom to congressional and military leaders in our nation’s capital. I’m both...
Here’s Looking at You Kid
You’re in for a treat today. Humphrey Bogart is providing an unforgettable example of relational wisdom. His platform is Casablanca, a movie that has...
Papa, Clean Me!
When he was two-and-half-years-old, my grandson, Andrew, came across a fresh pile of dog poo in the yard. Having been told repeatedly to stay away from dog...
Gracious Eyes
Years ago I completed a particularly sad divorce mediation. The husband had tried for years to meet his wife’s expectations, but she was adept at finding...
How Well Do You Love Your Enemies?
Do you have an enemy today? Someone who has has done you great harm or is out to get you right now? Perhaps it's not been quite that bad. Perhaps someone has...
Five Ways to Bless Your Mother This Sunday
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. If you’re tired of doing the same “card and gift” routine, allow me to suggest something that will blow your mother (or your...
Three Qualities that Improve Every Relationship
I’ve hired many people … and fired only a few. My best co-workers thrived because of three key character qualities. The disappointing ones struggled because...
Before It’s Too Late
Years ago, one of my clients was in the hospital with only hours to live. He had no interest in seeing his stock portfolio one more time. Although he had...
Leadership Transitions: The Good, the Bad and the Clumsy
I’ve seen a lot of leadership transitions over the past thirty years. Like the characters in an old Clint Eastwood western, they generally fell into one of...
Has Your Strength Become a Weakness?
To find your greatest weakness, first identify your greatest strength and then look right behind it. That’s one of the tragic results of sin: it twists our...
Are You Relational or Informational?
Many pastors are much better at imparting information than they are at building relationships. They are comfortable in their studies. They love their...
Preventing a Breach
I learned the hard way how easy it is to breach a dam. When I was fourteen, my dad hired a contractor to enlarge a stock pond on our ranch by building a dam....
No Excuses
I failed a friend. Badly. No, not just badly … very badly. It took me a while to face it. When I finally realized what I’d done, embarrassment kept me from...
One Solution to Political Polarization
A week ago today, I had the privilege of teaching relational wisdom to our Montana State Legislators and their staffs. I was warmly welcomed by every person I...
7 Ways to Redeem an Offense
I recently received a complaint from a woman who I will call Ruth (not her real name) regarding a video clip I used in one of my blog posts. The video is...
Five Ways to Defeat Loneliness at Christmas
Three weeks before Christmas, Wolfgang Dircks died while watching television. His body wasn’t discovered until five years later. None of the neighbors in his...
“Chutes and Ladders” Evangelism
During a recent seminar in California, I was approached by a man named Ross who told me he is “successfully failing” in his business. Ross employs over a...
The Two Treasures
My mother-in-law lived with our family for twenty years. For six of those years, my mother also lived with us. Corlette and I called them “the Two Treasures.”...
Redeeming Your Weaknesses
To find your greatest weakness, first identify your greatest strength and then look right behind it. That’s one of the tragic results of sin: it twists our...
Preparing Children for Life
When Corlette and I were raising and educating our children, we struggled far more with relational challenges than we did with academic content. Put four...
Springing from Adversity to Worship
Adversity tends to pull us down. It hurts when others sin against us, take us for granted, fail to stand up for us, or break their commitments to us. Such...
Download the RW360 Smartphone App!
Would you like to have hundreds of articles, videos and downloadable ebooklets on relational wisdom, biblical peacemaking and Christian conciliation available...
Reputation vs Character
Jeff’s reputation was being trashed by people in his own church. He was respected throughout the city for his outstanding Sunday school classes, which had...
Really Nice Pants
In today’s movie clip, Will Smith demonstrates the enormous benefit relational wisdom (RW) can have in the workplace. The clip comes from the movie Pursuit of...
Getting Wind Under Your Wings
After weeks of nonstop travel, I was running out of energy. As a result I was unusually apathetic as I walked into the conference center for one of my recent...
What Is Their Story?
Includes 90 "Getting-to-Know-Others" Questions! Many of us waste golden opportunities to deepen relationships during family, church and business...
The Power of Words
Do you want to learn how to connect with people? Really connect? To touch others heart-to-heart, life-to-life? To convince them you understand and care about...
Hooked
Cindy and Alicia, both seventeen, walked out of the mall after a fun afternoon of shopping. Just as they reached Cindy’s car in the parking lot, two young men...
Changing a Murderer into a Minister
Businge Peter Simon passed the long hours in his prison cell dreaming about how he would murder the man who sent him there. But before he could put his plot...
The Compassionate Boxer
Cinderella Man is packed with examples of relational wisdom. Russell Crowe plays the part of a real life hero named James J. Braddock. Once a successful...
A Severe Mercy
One of my dearest friends and coworkers passed away ten days ago. Gary Brook had been fighting a respiratory illness for nearly a decade but had finally been...