5 Teaching Lessons We Can Learn from Groundhog Day

5 Teaching Lessons We Can Learn from Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day has always been one of the “strange” holidays celebrated in the US, passing each year mostly unnoticed until the release of the 1993 movie by the same name. Suddenly, the day had a whole new meaning. What would you do if you kept repeating the same day over?

Since its release, Groundhog Day has been one of my favorites – I have watched it so many times, I can practically say the entire dialog along with the movie. Although it’s a comedy (possibly Bill Murray’s best), there are still many great lessons tucked away among all the laughs and one-liners.

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How Every Business Is the Same: A Peek Inside the Movies

How Every Business Is the Same: A Peek Inside the Movies

For the past two weeks my house has been an “on location” film set. Movie making seems so glamorous, but after a few small peeks behind the curtain, like most things, it is mostly a lot of work.

It is so easy to assume that any business in which you don’t have direct experience is more interesting, easier, more fun… (you can pick any descriptor you choose). But when you really get down to basics, most businesses have lots of the same characteristics, both good and bad. The trick is to figure out what will make YOU happy, what YOU find interesting, and what YOU will find easy because it is the right match for YOU!

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Leadership lessons come from surprising sources sometimes. Like, totally.

Leadership lessons come from surprising sources sometimes. Like, totally.

I love movies – lots of movies – but I particularly enjoy a “surprise” movie. A surprise movie is that movie you decide to go see because a friend wants to see it or the one you watch because there is nothing else on and you feel like vegging out on the couch. You expect it to be bad, or just okay, and then it turns out that it is really good. I felt that way about Legally Blonde. What could have been a completely ridiculous movie was surprisingly good. But I particularly loved the smart character of Elle Woods — everything you expect plus a whole lot you don’t expect!

As I was reading an article today on the Harvard Business Review blog I realized what great leadership skills Elle actually displayed throughout the movie. The pink-wearing, perky blonde is not our typical image of strong leadership, but read on and I think you might agree that we should all aspire to be a bit more like Elle; she’s an excellent example of strong leadership.

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