Recently I've been working with managers to run better meetings, while, in my private life, I've been held hostage at bad meetings—the kind where you squirm in your seat—with the dentist.

Is there a connection between good meetings and bad dentistry? Yes! It's about control.

Mistake #1: Too much control. You talk, but no one's engaged.

One day, I asked my dentist why he didn't have a spittoon. I like spittoons. They let you, the patient, sit up once in a while, spit, and take a break.

"Describe yourself," one CEO asks job applicants, "in three words or less."

What would you say? Probably not, "I'm wordy and verbose. Also repetitive."

An engineer is dying to tell her boss: "STOP sending me so many emails!"

Ever try to reform your boss?

You know it's risky. Maybe your boss doesn't want to be changed. Maybe, if there's a problem, your boss thinks the problem is you.

No matter how many times people tell you not to drink too much and photocopy your butt at the office holiday party, some people just won't listen.

Here are some of the most outrageous things people have done at office parties, according to a survey of marketing and advertising executives by staffing firm The Creative Group:

"An employee threw his coworker in a lagoon!"

"A person rode naked on a ferris wheel."

"An employee dressed up as a wrestler."

Feedback is like death -

1) You receive a 360 feedback report, describing what everyone at work really thinks about you.

Your first reaction: shock.

You see yourself one way, others another. That's the human condition.

I used to lead management workshops for a large consulting company, the Forum Corp, that included 360 feedback reports. Before distributing the feedback, we'd warn participants:

"You may not believe it's really your report," we'd say.

Workers confessed to professional-networking site LinkedIn what they always wanted to be when they grew up.

Of course, astronaut is on the list.

Here were the Top 5 dream jobs among the men, according to the survey from LinkedIn :

Many workers used to take their health benefits for granted but cutbacks or outright elimination of care has everyone white-knuckling those benefits – just try to pry our fingers off!

A new survey puts it all in perspective: Most people would rather spend a night in jail than lose their benefits.

On a 1-10 scale: how do you respond to problems? Try this technique.

Whenever there's an earthquake—there was one here a few days ago—the first thing you wonder is, "How bad was it on the Richter scale?"

I'm a big fan of the Richter scale, even though I don't really understand it. The scale goes from 1-10, but the smallest earthquake "that can be felt" (Webster's), only gets a 2.

If I were in an earthquake that could be felt and it only got a 2, I'd be extremely disappointed.

Forget face time, meetings and spending your nights and weekends in the office. There's a growing movement to dump the stereotypical signs that you're working hard in favor of actually working hard – and getting stuff done.

"The majority of companies believe you have to be there from 9 to 6 or 8 to 5, " said Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "But it really doesn't make sense to say a person who is in the office 40 hours a week is more productive than someone who is in the office 20 hours."

When Obama watched video of the debate, "he grimaced. 'It's worse than I thought' ran through his mind."

That was 2008. Obama had begun his run for president ("Game Change," John Heilemann, Mark Halperin).

Four years later, after his first debate with Mitt Romney , President Obama was probably thinking the same thing.