25 Comments

Nice work, Dave! Seems as if a good portion of the electorate loves the macho approach, Trump has made a career of it. Politics is a bare knuckle sport.

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Loved this, Dave! Pair this with “Never wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty but the pig will enjoy it” and you usually won’t go wrong.

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Excellent life lesson.

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Helpful column. I never exactly thought of resolving conflict in that way. I probably need to call my younger brother…thanks.

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Ha! Good luck with your little brother!

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Sometimes an organized pack of dogs can run the big dog out of town, tail between its legs. Apparently no such pack in Iowa yet to run out ours.

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The key word there being “organized”, as in the Will Rogers quote.

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Thanks, Dave. I will use some of your thoughts in a reflection I plan to do in church Sunday.

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That’s nice to hear. Hope it goes well.

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Thanks Dave, this is good advice. I once worked for a "Big Dog that wouldn't back down" and I was miserable the entire time. I could never do right by him and never learned a single lesson from that experience, except that I need to learn how better to advocate for myself. I think politicians need to step down from that Big Dog position in many instances. For example, when dealing with other international leaders who are thought to be the Big Dog in their countries. If a Big Dog from the US faces a Big Dog from another country it would help smooth things over if one take a step back. Then maybe the other will step back and they can start to understand each other. Great topic and great lesson!

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Great job Dave! Thank you for bringing light to another reason why neither of these two people should ever be considered qualified for any position of responsibility.

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Right! Trump would have been fired at any other company his daddy hadn’t handed to him.

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Great insight. Thank you.

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Thanks for sharing, that's a great lesson. It's a shame that our culture (and others) views backing down, admitting mistakes, learning from them and moving on in a better way as a weakness.

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It's great to have an understanding boss. I felt free to tell a supervisor once that if it weren't for screwing up I wouldn't have had any productivity that day. I'm a Democrat but I do miss Robert Ray.

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Some days are like that, Karl. Recognizing it and trying to do better tomorrow is a sign of emotional intelligence.

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Summer 2011 KCCI intern here. Your dispatches are always the highlight of my morning. Reading them makes me wish I'd had better time management back then; I could have talked to you and the other staff who'd been around awhile, so I could have learned this stuff the easier way!

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What a nice thing to say, Brandon. Most interns are shy about that stuff, so you were quite normal. Hope all is well.

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Love the “big dog” story, although I’ve not seen the philosophy in action. I definitely would have been impressed.

Trump big-dog messes? Behavioral Psych 101: “Negative attention is better than no attention at all.”

Trump’s got that down and, the collective “We” keep giving him what he wants…immediate gratification.

Thanks for reading.

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And I fear it’s going to last well into the foreseeable future.

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It was just a little extra protein in the ham…

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Just stop right there...

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Dave, great anecdote. It also reminds me that in TV news we always took the folks with the least experience and put them on the shift with the least supervision. What were we thinking? (Mostly, that we couldn't get senior managers to work weekends.)

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Exactly right, Fred. Lucky we didn’t get burned more often.

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Brilliant

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