I believe in anger. Anger is raw and incredibly powerful when harnessed. No doubt that an overabundance or unexpressed anger is toxic. However, it’s our greatest ally when we listen to it to know when others are out of line, when clients are not a good fit, or when a situation is clearly wrong.

Too often clients describe situations that are clearly not right and brush it off as being ok. My job is to feel the anger that my client may be smothering and bring it to life so they can objectively look at a bad situation and take action.

When you smother your anger instead of harnessing it what are you giving up?

Every year we head into the holidays with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.  Who can forget Bridget Jones’ holiday party singing that was tone deaf in oh-so-many ways.

Here are a few ways to play it safe without neutering the holidays and boring yourself and others to tears:

• send Thanksgiving cards
• wish people Happy New Year
• look at company parties as an opportunity to stretch your professional skills in the social arena
• keep the hard partying and too-hot-to-handle clothes for partying with your friends, because company parties are work, period
• be genuine and enjoy the season!

On a recent Mastermind call, the discussion was about self-management and putting on a game face in difficult situations.

There’s a problem with the game face when it’s used to neutralize our emotions. As a result, we can begin to be complacent by tolerating behavior that we would not accept if we were honest in our reaction.

Discard the game face and take a stand for your value. Others treat us the way we train them to. How are you training people to treat you today?

A colleague was recently sick for a week and missed some calls and sending information to a client. He asked if he should cop to being ill or say he was out of town. Within an hour I found myself on a Mastermind call discussing masking our natural responses.

My response is this: Being human is the best way, if not the only way, to be in trusting relationships.

The problem is that we work so hard at not being human in our work and workplaces because we fear it can be messy. We wear ‘game faces’, or play roles if not games as a poor substitute for being the humanness and human mess that we inherently are.

To quote Nitsche, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

What becomes possible when we are honestly human in all of our interactions?

Mentor relationships begin with plenty of promise. Often however they don’t deliver because the mentor and mentee don’t know how to make the most of the relationship. As a professional business mentor, and mentor to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Global Social Venture Competition for the past few years I’ve been asked to share my thoughts on what makes a mentoring relationship successful and my tips for this year’s teams and mentors as they start out

Three keys to creating a successful mentoring relationship

Don’t believe everything the other person has to say.

If you find yourself nodding along to what the other person is saying – even when you don’t necessarily agree – then you’re not participating fully. Challenge the assumptions the other person is making. Especially challenge what they consider the “facts.” Engage in very candid conversations as part of the mentoring relationship. It will get to the results you both want and create the foundation for a lasting and effective relationship.

Be willing to be dumb

If you’re human, there’s a natural desire to look good to the other person in a mentoring relationship. However, this is a trap that saps a lot of effectiveness from the relationship. Neither mentee nor mentor has to know all the answers. The best questions are simple and may even feel silly to ask. Simplicity cuts to the heart of the matter quicker and more deeply than the 14-part question, which often includes a lot of posturing.

Break Miss Manners’ rules

Don’t wait to be invited to have a conversation. Follow your muse by calling when you have a question or emailing when you have an idea. Unless this becomes a stream-of-consciousness barrage, you’re bothering the other person less than you think you are. There’s inspiration in the moment, embrace it and more your mentoring relationship forward dramatically.