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Advice on how to improve one’s self is everywhere. It accounts for about 2.5% of all book sales in the United States. Add in speeches, training programs, TV programs, online-products, coaches, yoga, and the like, self-help is a $10 billion industry per year, and that’s just in the U.S. However, research shows that much of the advice extolled may be misleading or even wrong. Several myths about performance persist, despite research and practices that show they are half-truths at best. That might explain why the most likely purchasers of self-improvement books have bought another within the previous 18 months. The first myth-riddled book didn’t work, so they bought another, and maybe another soon after. A recent report in the Journal of Management noted that of nearly 25,000 academic articles on performance, only a fraction include what psychologists call within person variance, which describes ranges, such as that between individuals’ top, average and worst performances. Advice too often mistakenly assumes performance can be compared across people, using the same gauge. That’s absurd. Our observation of hundreds of performance seekers largely confirms the report and has led to delineating a series of myths that hold people back when trying to improve. These assertions are based on a diverse set of fields, including psychology, sports, arts, and leadership. We hope that by dispelling these myths, explaining the reality and offering some sound advice instead, we can help move people toward more effective personal development.
Via The Learning Factor
Tis the season for stress. The holidays are crazy enough, but add in year-end deadlines and sales goals, performance reviews, and the news of yet another raise not given, and you can already feel your blood pressure rise. But there’s good news: You can still stay healthy, even when work is insane. It’ll just take a little extra effort. “When stress takes over, often the first things to go are the ones we need the most–sleep, water, exercise, whole nutritious foods,” laments nutritionist Brigitte Zeitlin. “And that can actually compound the issue, leaving you less equipped to handle the stress well.” Here’s exactly what you can do to keep that from happening before work gets really crazy.
Via The Learning Factor
We may live in a digital world, but soft skills like communication, problem solving, collaboration, and empathy are becoming more valued than technology, says Paul Roehrig, chief strategy officer for Cognizant Digital Business, a business and technology service provider. “People skills are more and more important in an era where we have powerful and pervasive technology,” he says. “It sounds counterintuitive, but to beat the bot, you need to be more human.” When evaluating their hiring plans for 2017, 62% of employers rate soft skills as very important, according to CareerBuilder. But a recent survey by the Wall Street Journal found that 89% of executives are having a difficult time finding people with these qualities.
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To effectively lead and motivate employees, you don’t need charisma and a grand vision. Research from Michigan State University (MSU) found that being a successful boss was more about mind over matter. The study, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, found that a leader’s focus, or mind-set, affects his or her own behavior, which in turn affects employees’ motivation. And the good news is that your mind-set can be changed to produce certain outcomes from workers, from creativity to loss prevention. “Effective leadership may be based in part on a leader’s ability to recognize when a particular mental state is needed in their employees and to adapt their own mental state and their behaviors to elicit that mind-set,” says Brent Scott, MSU professor of management and study coauthor. “Part of the story here is that you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to be an effective leader. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing.”
Via The Learning Factor
Tell someone 'I'm sick' or 'I'm tired' and you're not really giving them much information. How sick? How tired? Do you have a mild cold or a dread disease? Are you a new parent who hasn't slept in months or did you just enjoy the party last night a little too much? Burnout is the same. It comes in different degrees, from your common 'I can't wait for happy hour' variety, to far more serious 'I need to take a six-month sabbatical and re-evaluate my life' burnout. The appropriate response for different stages is very different. So how do you know how burnt out you are exactly? Science, apparently, can help. Recently 99U's Hamza Khan dug up a classic Scientific American article (subscription required) that describes a 12-stage model of burnout developed by psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North. Here are the stages the scientists outline:
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We get it, finding a mentor can be difficult and time-consuming. But when you do find one (or two), they can save you from making costly mistakes that can set you back in your career. Simply put, having a mentor will improve the quality of your decisions and provide opportunities that won’t be available to you otherwise. There’s this idea that that mentors are older people with established careers and well-honed skill sets who provide guidance to younger mentees, but this isn’t always the case. The key to success is selecting the mentor who best suits your needs at any given stage of your career: entry level, middle management level, or executive level. If you’re an entrepreneur or creative person, you can think of these stages as early career, mid-career, and advanced career.
Via The Learning Factor
Flexible jobs, or jobs that can be done remotely, are very common today. A recent Gallup survey found that 43% of American employees spend at least some time working remotely. The nearly half of jobs that can be done remote is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, as technology has paved the way for workers to unplug or become location independent. It’s the same reason why millennials are keen to become digital nomads and travel while they work. Employers benefit by having remote employees because their productivity spikes without distractions provided by an office environment. Further, a FlexJobs report found that 82% of millennials said they are more loyal to their employer if they have flexible work options.
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It’s helpful to be honest about why you’re reaching out (for example, you’re going through a job search or moving to a new city). It can combat nerves and help the process feel more genuine. In other words, it instantly solves two core issues many people stress about when told to network. That said, as with anything else, you know there’s a difference between being straightforward and being overly blunt. For example, you know to write, "I was thinking of approaching the project from a different angle" over "I hate all of your ideas." Aspiring to find this balance, many people begin networking emails with "Remember me?" or even, "You probably don’t remember me..." After all, why not begin with an honest admission so the other person knows you aren’t being fake? Well, unfortunately, this approach often backfires. While you’re coming from a sincere place, it’s pretty audacious to ask for something from someone whom you’re blatantly admitting you barely know.
Via The Learning Factor
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To make a good decision, you need to have a sense of two things: how different choices change the likelihood of different outcomes and how desirable each of those outcomes is. In other words, as Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb have written, decision making requires both prediction and judgment. But how do you get better at either? We’ve published volumes on this subject —here are a few of my favorites — but there are three rules that stand out. Following them will improve your ability to predict the effects of your choices and assess their desirability. Rule #1: Be less certain. Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said that overconfidence is the bias he’d eliminate first if he had a magic wand. It’s ubiquitous, particularly among men, the wealthy, and even experts. Overconfidence is not a universal phenomenon — it depends on factors including culture and personality — but the chances are good that you’re more confident about each step of the decision-making process than you ought to be. So, the first rule of decision making is to just be less certain — about everything. Think choice A will lead to outcome B? It’s probably a bit less likely than you believe. Think outcome B is preferable to outcome C? You’re probably too confident about that as well. Once you accept that you’re overconfident, you can revisit the logic of your decision. What else would you think about if you were less sure that A would cause B, or that B is preferable to C? Have you prepared for a dramatically different outcome than your expected one? You can also practice aligning your level of your confidence to the chance that you’re correct. Try out quizzes like this one or this one. You’ll realize that while it’s not possible to always be right, it’s totally possible to become less overconfident.
Via The Learning Factor
Some people just seem to bounce back from whatever life throws at them. Whether it’s illness, loss, or tragedy, they do the tough work of picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and carrying on—even when it seems impossible. If you’ve ever thought, “I could never do that” when looking at one of these apparent “superheroes,” don’t be so sure. It’s actually possible to build resilience to make yourself better able to bounce back from even the most difficult times. “It’s the ability to get back in the game after you’ve had some sort of failure. And indeed, we can learn to become more resilient,” says social scientist and leadership expert Frank Niles, PhD. Niles says there are a number of science-backed areas people can address to help them be more resilient. Here are some ways you can shore up your “resilience bunker” to better prepare for when tough times strike.
Via The Learning Factor
Mindfulness has become the corporate fad du jour, a practice widely touted as a fast-track to better leadership. But we suspect that not all the benefits laid at its feet actually belong there. Our research and analysis has revealed a complicated relationship between mindfulness and executive performance—one that is important for leaders to understand as they seek to develop in their careers. Mindfulness is a method of shifting your attention inward to observe your thoughts, feelings, and actions without interpretation or judgment. A mindfulness practice often begins simply by focusing on your breath, noticing when your mind wanders, and then bringing it back to your breath. As you strengthen your ability to concentrate, you can then shift to simply noting your inner experience without getting lost in it at any point in your day. The benefits attributed to this kind of practice range from stronger relationships with others to higher levels of leadership performance.
Via The Learning Factor
How would you describe a superpower in the workplace? Words such as “inspirational,” “influential” and “powerful” would come to mind, but you would rarely think of “empathetic.” Empathy is a skill which is often overlooked in the workplace. Determined by Frans de Waal as the “social glue that holds human society together,” empathy refers to the awareness of one’s own and other people’s feelings, needs and concerns. Having the ability to be empathetic has been proven to prevent poor morale, misunderstandings and conflicts, consequently enabling a person to build significant and long-lasting relationships with others. Empathy therefore is the underrated key ingredient for both personal and professional success.
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Do you remember that executive who was such a natural? She never seemed stressed, always knew the right thing to say, delivered good results consistently. A born leader, right? Just had the right genes for leadership from the start. Remember that other boss you had? He was rubbish. Not much point trying to fix him. He just wasn’t a leader. That’s how it looked. But it wasn’t true. My company’s research from multiple fields, as diverse as neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to form and reorganise synaptic connections, especially in response to learning experience or following injury) and musicology, shows that skills are not as innate as we naturally believe. And that applies to leadership just as much as any other capability.
Via The Learning Factor
If you think your boss is some freak of nature and you're the luckiest person alive, I'll break it to you gently: He or she is human and will make mistakes. The great ones rise up from their errors by A) acknowledging they made a mistake and correcting a behavior (think humility), or B) acknowledging a blind spot that needs to be addressed, then doing something about it. Lets dive into a few prevalent leadership mistakes that even the best and smartest leaders tend to make.
Via The Learning Factor
We all want to be more confident-it's a personal quality that helps us build strong relationships with others, get things done, and move forward in our work and life. However, sometimes we can go overboard, and our confidence can become something much darker: arrogance. In their book, Why Leaders Fail, authors Peter Stark and Mary Kelly explain how leaders sabotage themselves-and their organizations-when they project arrogance instead of confidence. According to the authors, the defining factor of a strong leader is rooted in the relationships he or she builds with followers, and how effectively he or she propels the organization toward great achievement.
Via The Learning Factor
There are lots of problems with brainstorms, but the main one is they don’t go on for long enough. They usually stop when people have run out of ideas and you get those embarrassing silences. But those embarrassing silences are when your unconscious starts engaging on the problem and is a vital part to coming up with great ideas. The way brainstorms are practiced in most companies today is still almost exactly the same way that was recommended by their inventor, advertising executive Alex Osborn, over 60 years ago. Business and our understanding of how the brain works have both moved on so much in that time, and yet we’re still hanging onto this old technique for so many of our idea-gathering sessions. Here’s how to rethink your brainstorm so it goes for longer than you're used to, but proves much more productive once it’s over.
Via The Learning Factor
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Stop comparing yourself with other people.
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