Like most committed professionals, I’m always in learning mode. I find a constant stream of new ideas, lessons learned, and other important information from reading online and offline, speaking with participants in my workshops and presentations, attending conferences and webinars, talking with people inside and outside of my network, watching movies, etc.

Here are several of my most memorable takeaways from 2015.

On recognition and employee engagement:

“Attention is the new black.” Tim Sackett, Globoforce webinar guest speaker, “Better than Robots: Why Your Employees Deserve a More Human Workplace.”

On the decline in customer service:

“To differentiate your brand, you need to be one step above crap.” Peter Shankman, speaking at BlogPaws 2015 Conference.

On leadership:

In one of my internal marketing workshop discussions, a participant shared her revelation that some executives consider the concept of “leadership” to be both a verb and a noun; i.e., they presume they lead by virtue of their title. As a result, they feel they’re exempt from ongoing leadership training and development.

On mindfulness in the morning:

“Everything begins and ends within the greater presence of all, whether I’m paying attention to the way the sun’s rising, or whether it’s misty out in the morning on the trees. When I wake up now I have the privilege of listening to real twitter.” Oprah Winfrey interview in Fast Company.

On perspective:

 “All right! We did not die today, I call that an unqualified success.” Spoken by Fear in the animated film, Inside Out.