Still curious? General Kleenex, Hoover & Xerox! What do Kleenex, Hoover & Xerox all share? There are times when a particular brand become so synonymous with the product 05.23.22 Read more Tips Positive Behavior Support – More Than Reinforcement Recently in a talk I was having with some colleagues we were discussing the topic of social skills training and some of the 05.16.22 Read more Story De-Escalation Training – It’s A Game Changer! It’s always interesting to meet new Instructors that believe the training they are about to receive is very specific to 05.09.22 Read more Resource Creating A Safer Workplace Australian criminologist John Braithwaite once wrote, “crime hurts, so justice should heal” (2004). This is a great way to 05.02.22 Read more Story Using Humor I have recently found myself observing a situation between two friends where one of them uses a lot of humor in his 04.25.22 Read more Tips Positive Behavior Supports I had one of those nightmare events for a trainer this past week, I lost my voice. Thanks to the Massachusetts pollen, my 04.18.22 Read more Tips What About After Class? Even after 47 years in the Learning & Development industry it is unusual for an organization using the Mandt System 04.11.22 Read more General Creating Engagement Through Positive Behavior Support A while back I was talking to a friend who I have great respect for, and he mentioned a book that he felt I would 04.04.22 Read more General De-escalation Training Through Positive Relationships There are so, so many people who believe that training they receive from The Mandt System will be some sort of magical answer to 03.28.22 Read more Resource Conflict Resolution and the Four Virtues of Stoicism At the Mandt System, we believe that healthy conflict resolution grows from healthy relationships, values, and attitudes. 03.21.22 Read more Story Positive Behavior Support for Ourselves Since our workshop locations repeat every two years, I recently taught the last instructor workshop that I taught before COVID 03.14.22 Read more Tips Violence in the Workplace People are always looking for ways to decrease violence in the workplace. Another way to think about that is how can we 03.07.22 Read more Tips Dignity & Respect This past week I had a mechanic friend show me the correct way to use a 'Torque Wrench'. For those that don't know, a torque 02.28.22 Read more News Positive Behavior Support – Forgiveness Matters On Thursday February the 10th 500,000 people convicted of low-level, not violent crimes in Utah had their records expunged 02.21.22 Read more Tips Conflict Resolution Techniques One of the most significant challenges that people face in their work is managing conflict, which is not surprising considering 02.14.22 Read more Resource Healthy Conflict Resolution in the Workplace Begins with Ethical Leadership One of the central tasks of leadership in an organization is to set the tone for how conflict will be managed. A culture of 02.07.22 Read more Resource Every Interaction Matters… I was reading an article entitled, 'Positive Childhood Experiences May Buffer Against Health Effects Of Adverse Ones', which 01.31.22 Read more Story Creating A Safer Workplace Who wouldn’t like to work in a safer workplace? No matter what your current position or employer, imagine feeling safer 01.24.22 Read more Tips Relational Limp Mode… The holiday season can put significant stress on our relationships with the throwing together of people, emotions, food and 01.17.22 Read more News Positive Behavior Support Takes a Village Over the years I have written about my son Tyler and being a parent of a child with unique needs. Many of the things 01.10.22 Read more General Difficult Questions… I am often confronted by participants in Mandt System workshops with difficult questions and situations regarding a person 12.20.21 Read more Tips Using 2 Languages… De-escalation training and Positive Behavior Support in everyday life The philosophy of The Mandt System since 1975 has been 12.13.21 Read more Tips Relational Rebar Over the summer and Autumn this past year, my colleague Tim and I have both had new driveways poured and have shared and 12.06.21 Read more Story Four Cigars… Much of my adult life I had smoked cigarettes. I truly enjoyed smoking but knew I needed to stop due to the health 11.29.21 Read more General What we do… Occasionally It’s useful to revisit the core purpose of our program. First and foremost, the Mandt System is a course in 11.22.21 Read more Resource 9 Chapters… 1 Mission For those of you who have been long-time Instructors of The Mandt System program, you are well aware of all the topics that are 11.15.21 Read more Story On Being Thankful… My wife recently taught her first Mandt System De-escalation Training workshop at the school where she works and asked me to 11.08.21 Read more Tips Mandt is Universal We just got a new puppy in our house, an eight week old cocker spaniel we have named Hattie. Since it has been 15 years 11.01.21 Read more Resource Scenario Based Training At the Mandt System, we believe that staff members have the right to a safe workplace. We also believe that all 10.25.21 Read more Tips Relationally Craving… I was recently talking to a friend of mine in education and in the conversation, she made the following comment: “It’s like 10.18.21 Read more Resource Conflict Happens… Has anyone seen those super cute onesies that have “Spit Happens” across the front? So cute! Well, maybe another slogan 10.11.21 Read more Tips Relationship In-Action I have a neighbor who recently experienced the unexpected loss of a friend. Her reaction to this loss struck me as 10.04.21 Read more News Family Reunion This past week The Mandt System faculty and leadership met together in Chicago to review the updates to the curriculum that we 09.27.21 Read more Tips Setting People Up For Success Think about the best or most favorite job you have ever had. Now, also think about the worst or least favorite job you 09.20.21 Read more Story Travel Pro’s Getting it Right Have any of you been hearing about the significant upswing in “unruly” passengers aboard airplanes? I’ve read varying 09.13.21 Read more Tips Time Much has been written over the centuries about time. Time impacts all things alive or dead. Song writers 09.06.21 Read more News Starting The New Season So for many of us this this past week and the coming week see our Kids returning to school and college, and marks the transition 08.30.21 Read more Resource Telling The Story of Conflict Throughout much of human history, storytelling has been one of the primary methods for passing information from generation to 08.23.21 Read more Tips When Everyone Accommodates I am spending this week on vacation with my wife’s family. While I do enjoy interacting with them, the one thing I find the 08.16.21 Read more News Bullies in The Workplace If you do much research at all you will find that one of the main causes of conflict in the workplace is bullying. We have 08.09.21 Read more General When You Are Not The GOAT This week, if you follow the Olympics or not, you have seen numerous articles discussing Simone Biles decision to drop out of 08.02.21 Read more General 3 Tips to Counterbalance ‘Sunken Cost Fallacy’ The Oxford Dictionary defines sunken-cost fallacy as ‘the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or 07.26.21 Read more Tips Elements of Positive Behavior Support At The Mandt System, we strive to offer a holistic approach to supporting people, whether they be adults or children. Our 07.19.21 Read more Resource The Third Side The Mandt System teaches strategies for resolving conflict utilizing positive behavior interventions and supports within the 07.12.21 Read more Story The Perfect Student What does the perfect elementary school student look like? This was a question posed by a new instructor during the teach back 07.05.21 Read more Story Choosing Your Weather Pattern In Chapter 1 of the Mandt System we discuss information from Hiam Ginott and how it is our personal approach that creates the 06.28.21 Read more Story Effective Parenting Requires Healthy Communication As parents of three teenage and young adult children my partner and I have naively believed we have got the parental consistency 06.21.21 Read more Tips Begin With The End in Mind I recently was talking with a co-worker of mine about a meeting we had recently attended. He referred to my ability 06.14.21 Read more Tips Teaching While at Baseline… My Godson, Elijah, is totally adorable. I mean, TOTALLY ADORABLE. This past weekend I was visiting Elijah’s family in 06.07.21 Read more News Remembering Those Who Served… My grandfather served his country in the United States Navy on a Destroyer in the Pacific ocean during WW2. He survived a 05.31.21 Read more Story Mandt System Certification Anniversary One comment I hear frequently as I teach instructor level workshops is, “I wish I would have had this de-escalation training 05.24.21 Read more General Competition for the Greater Good… How much workplace conflict arises from issues at the team level? When people talk about how to handle conflict in the 05.17.21 Read more Resource Why Language Matters About 25 years ago the National Charity I worked with was approached to take over a smaller non profit that had run into 05.10.21 Read more Resource Positive Behavior Support & Workplace Conflict Often when we are dealing with difficult behavior it has nothing to do with the people who are in care but rather with each 05.03.21 Read more Tips When Things Derail, Tips for Staying on Track Have you ever had one of those really challenging workshops? You know the ones...the ones where everything that could go wrong, 04.26.21 Read more Story Salamanders & Lizards When I was about ten years old I spent a lot of time in the woods. I was fascinated by the wonders of nature and had a 04.19.21 Read more Tips Keeping A Positive Attitude Have you ever seen a particular meeting, event, or assignment on your schedule and started thinking of ways that you can get out 04.12.21 Read more Tips Refining Our RADAR In Mandt we talk about using our RADAR to be aware of what is going on around us. The first R in our RADAR stands for 04.05.21 Read more News Reinventing for New Times This past week was the one year anniversary of the Covid19 pandemic initial impacting on the Mandt System programme of classes 03.29.21 Read more Story Give a Smile This week marks the one-year anniversary of the start to locking things down to stop the spread of COVID-19. As I sat 03.22.21 Read more Tips Optimism for Summer… I just read that people who have received their full Covid-19 vaccinations may possibly plan small gatherings for the 03.15.21 Read more Resource Hierarchy, Status, & Aggression… Human beings rely on group cooperation extensively as a means for survival. Whenever groups form, whether formal or 03.08.21 Read more General On The Road Again… I never imagined when I started my first part time position as a direct support professional in 1993 that I would still be 03.01.21 Read more Tips Seek Out the Positives… The pandemic seems to be affecting many people negatively. Many of us are expecting the worst, whether we expect the worst 02.22.21 Read more Story Life’s Rituals, Taken Online This past week, my family and I experienced our first virtual cremation service following the death of my mother-in-law a few 02.15.21 Read more Story Tough Times, Good People… Several years ago, when we received my son Tyler’s diagnosis for fragile x syndrome, we reached out to the National Fragile X 02.08.21 Read more Story Approaching Valentines… According to history.com, Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrated each year on February 14 by the exchange of cards, flowers, 02.01.21 Read more Resource Intrinsic Motivation In the Mandt System we begin our discussion of human motivation through the lens of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 01.25.21 Read more Tips Failure to Communicate Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as saying, “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other 01.18.21 Read more Tips Healthy Values On a recent airplane ride I resumed listening to an audiobook I had started a while back. While some may find the title of the 01.11.21 Read more News New Year, New Thinking? At the Mandt System we had our last ‘All Company’ meeting the week of Thanksgiving and our theme for that meeting was 01.04.21 Read more Tips Learning Forward On Friday of this week will mark the start of 2021. It is probably fair to say many of us cannot wait to put 2020 12.28.20 Read more General Home for the Holidays I’m not sure about anybody else, but the phrase “home for the holiday’s” has taken on a whole new meaning in 12.21.20 Read more Resource Healthy Aging In 1938, George Vaillant began the Grant Study, a longitudinal study of adult development that would last more than 75 12.14.20 Read more General Shared Values The pandemic has caused many changes in the way we conduct live workshops. As I was looking for a teamwork activity that would 12.07.20 Read more Tips It’s Holiday Season… We are entering into the Holiday Season! This will be a Holiday Season like we have never seen before! We are still 11.30.20 Read more General Relationships Matter This past week Dr.Brene Brown shared the following quote and link on her LinkedIn feed and featured in one of her ‘Dare to 11.23.20 Read more Story Frustration in Communication We all at one point or another have become frustrated while communicating. It’s one of the most common human 11.16.20 Read more Tips Putting Empathy Into Action We talk a lot about being empathetic and trying to understand things from someone else’s perspective. But, that can sometimes 11.09.20 Read more Tips Filling the Gap “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our 11.02.20 Read more Resource Toxic Positivity I recently read an article about teachers and toxic positivity. It gives the following definition, “Toxic positivity is 10.26.20 Read more General Thank You Program Participants… Kudos to our trainers participating in face to face certification and/or recertification! When we resumed in person 10.19.20 Read more General Pandemic Perspectives Because the Mandt System is a virtual company, all of our employees were already working remotely out of their homes long before 10.12.20 Read more Story Aligning Passion and Purpose On October 1, 2020 I celebrated the completion of my 19th year and the beginning of my 20th year with The Mandt System. What a 10.05.20 Read more Story Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks… I did a thing. I got contacts. I’m going to admit it. I was cocky about this experience. I’ve worn contact 09.28.20 Read more Resource Maslow & Bloom A phrase that seems to be making its way around education circles is “Maslow before Bloom”. Maslow’s Hierarchy is a 09.21.20 Read more News Relationships Sustaining Us In 2017 I wrote a blog about my wife starting her 18th year of teaching in a new school system and the struggles of 09.14.20 Read more Tips Who Are You? Who Are You is an Album and its title song by The Who. It is also, however, what I would like to ask anyone reading this 09.07.20 Read more Tips Positive Acts of Trolling… Is it still ‘Trolling’ if the anonymously posted comments are positive? In the current climate of turmoil, 08.31.20 Read more General Close Enough to Count There is a statement I have heard all of my life that goes “close only counts in horseshoes and hand 08.24.20 Read more Story Community in Crisis This past week the midwest was hit hard by wind storms. Wind you ask? Yes, wind. No tornadoes. Not flash floods. Wind. The type 08.17.20 Read more Resource Investigating Behavior… Reductionist explanations are often used to rationalize why a person behaves the way that they do. “They’re just doing 08.10.20 Read more Tips A Behavior Plan for Your Staff I recently saw a meme of an individual with a disability carrying a huge stack of papers that read, “If my staff had behavior 08.03.20 Read more Story The Anxiety Bush I recently had a student in a train the trainer session who had high test anxiety. I’m sure we have all met someone with 07.27.20 Read more General Just because you can… In our world of Behavior Management approaches there is an ongoing, some would say raging debate, concerning ‘use of force’ 07.20.20 Read more General Thank You to the Worlds Calmers & Diffusers Recently I have seen a meme floating around social media that shows two law enforcement officers smirking and the meme reads 07.13.20 Read more News Doing Things Differently… We hope everyone had a chance to celebrate Independence Day 2020. Probably not in the same way you’ve celebrated in the past, 07.06.20 Read more Resource Difficult Conversations 2020 has been a strange year so far. The Covid 19 pandemic and high profile events of excessive force and systemic racism 06.29.20 Read more Resource Video Meeting Exhaustion Video meetings seem to be part of what’s being called the new normal. Next week will be the first in person workshop I’ve 06.22.20 Read more Tips Which Side Showing? Every morning we wake up we have a decision to make. Do we want to show the world a good side of ourselves or do we want 06.15.20 Read more General ALL People If you follow The Mandt System at all, you know the underlying philosophy of the program is “All people have the right to be 06.08.20 Read more News Why Mandt is not a KIA… When I say that Mandt is not a KIA, I am not referring to the South Korean Auto maker but to KIA the abbreviation of ‘Know It 06.01.20 Read more General Creative Graduations Well, here we are. I had originally planned to write about graduations and parties and being with friends and family at the 05.25.20 Read more Resource There’s No Such Thing as “Sheeple” Human beings are a social species. We are not the strongest or fastest creatures in the animal kingdom. What puts us 05.18.20 Read more Tips Unfollow, Don’t Unfriend (reprise) I have seen several friends on Facebook expressing feelings of guilt for unfriending or unfollowing family members this 05.11.20 Read more Tips Are You OK? So, many of us have been in quarantine for some time now. Are you OK? I have seen, read, and heard reports of some people 05.04.20 Read more General What can Covid-19 teach us about our relationships? At the Mandt system we have taught for 45 years that ‘Building Healthy Relationships’ has to be at the foundation of 04.27.20 Read more Tips A Deeper Empathy My guess is that you are spending a lot of time at home these days. Unless deemed essential, you, like me, are doing 04.20.20 Read more General Self Isolation Here we are. Quarantine 2020. I’ve lost count of how many days I’ve been in self isolation. Actually, I’m not really sure 04.13.20 Read more Tips Living Through Life’s Questions… “It is not the strongest species that survives, it is the most adaptable”. I’ve been thinking about this quote a bit 04.06.20 Read more Tips In this thing together… For all the bad news out there right now, I am inspired by the ways that I have seen people pull together to help their 03.30.20 Read more News Social Distance Must not Equal… Social Distance does not mean Social or Emotional Isolation. Welcome to a strange and unusual time. Hope everyone is 03.23.20 Read more General Care Virus 2020 With all the news and impact of the current Covid-19 infection it has been fascinating to observe how different countries and 03.16.20 Read more News Like-mindedness!! Last week I once again attended a conference I have now not missed for over 8 years. The Midwest Symposium for 03.09.20 Read more Tips Roll With the Punches Have you ever had one of those really challenging training events? You know the ones...the ones where everything that could go 03.02.20 Read more Tips Had an off day? Sooner or later, if you work in the training profession ,or any profession, really; you will inevitably experience an off 02.24.20 Read more General Romantic Relationships & Sexuality Writing this blog on Valentine’s Day reminded me of several recent workshops while talking about the needs of people in their 02.17.20 Read more Tips Practising De-Escaltion Hopefully everyone is getting what they want/need out of 2020! The month of January proved to be an interesting travel month 02.10.20 Read more
