“I learned two things: First, it’s good to solicit your people’s opinions before you give them yours. And second, your people will be very influenced by how you carry yourself under stress.”   - Lloyd Blankfein

FORTUNE’s June lineup highlighted the best advice I ever got from some of the most influential leaders today. The head honcho at Goldman Sachs gave some advice that rang out like lady wisdom herself; The formula for dealing with a crisis.

I currently work on one of the highest profile projects that has our two biggest divisions joining forces. Operating out of the “war room” I’ve been exposed to the highest levels in our company, and some high stress situations to say the least. Amidst all this fury, I’ve been able to observe multiple teams and the leaders that lead them.

In my three months on this project so far I’ve watched extreme anxiety in the room dissipate under a composed…

There are certain situations and events that have a significant amount of permanence attached to them.  Since leaving the comforts of Iowa and emancipating from my parents, I’ve come across said situations/events and found myself getting a serious case of cold feet.  The very thought of passing these milestones terrifies me in a peculiar way.  Maybe I have some crazy ideas that they will tie me down a bit more than I want to be, or they will attach me to one particular place (I haven’t a clue yet where I want to put down roots).  Whatever the cause of my phobia, I’m going to divulge my ridiculous commitment issues, and I ask you to comment if you share any of these feelings (help me feel less nuts).

A lot of my initial cold feet feelings came during my time in Rhode Island.  I had moved out there for work…

I’m a geek and proud of it. So to meet the needs of my nerd stereotype I read a lot of tech blogs - props to Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Gizmodo who deal in some fine technology news and acerbic wit to boot. Like most technofiles I followed the stories last year about Microsoft in a bid to buy Yahoo (affectionately dubbed Microhoo…) to increase their search capability in an attempt to topple the mighty G. Also followed the drama as Microsoft walked away from the deal when the Yahoo board balked at Moneysofts huge take over offer ($45 billion is just not enough don’t you think). Then earlier this year, when you thought Microsoft had given up the search ghost, puffs of smoke from the Internet volcano hinted that Microsoft still had “search” in their cross hairs. All this culminated in a definitive statement from Microsoft last week - we’re still in the game,…

Oh, shit… quite literally. I’m out of toilet paper again.

Unfortunately, the timing of this realization finds me sitting on the ivory throne with my pants at my ankles. I immediately flash back to earlier in the day when I made the observation that my roll was getting to its last rotation. Cursing myself, I start the ass out waddle to the cupboards at the other end of the bathroom. I pause and hope to god there’s one more roll left in my stash of Charmin Ultra… Fail!

I don’t know how many times laziness has kicked in and I’ve neglected to do what I should and succumbed to what I want. I should have switched out my toilet paper, but I wanted to quickly get back to 30 Rock that was paused on hulu. It’s in that moment of decision many of us fall victim to a lazy mindset and neglect good sense.

Our…