How grateful do you feel each day? To what degree do you express your gratitude and appreciation to others around the office? If the answer is ânot a lot,â youâre not alone. The Blessings of Gratitude Weâve previously discussed negativity biasâthe brainâs predisposition to favor negative experiences, thoughts, and...
Management guru Peter Drucker coined the term âknowledge workerâ in 1959.[1. Peter F. Drucker, The Landmarks of Tomorrow, 1959.] He differentiated knowledge workers from manual workers, forecasting that new industries will employ mostly the former. Late in his life, Drucker wrote, "The most important contribution management needs...
Do you notice that setbacks tend to occupy your mind more than victories?
Do you sometimes struggle to stay positive about your business?
Employees expect their leaders to be enthusiastic, energetic, and positive about the future. But on a day-to-day basis, maintaining a positive outlook and inspiring others can be challenging.
Even if everything in your business is going smoothly, a problematic issue in your personal lifeâwith your spouse, child, friend, or relativeâcan throw you off your game.
Leaders must inspire their people amidst professional and personal challenges. Research-based methods for counteracting negativity and fostering optimism give leaders the resources to inspire themselves and uplift others.
How can you inspire others if you donât feel inspired?
Again, it is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because, when you come back to it you are a better judge; for sitting too close at work may greatly deceive you. Again, it is good to retire to a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the discords or disproportion in the limbs and colours of the objects.Leonardo Da Vinci[1. Leonardo Da Vinci, âOf Judging Your Own Pictures,â The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete, translated by John Paul Richter, 1883.]
When things are busy or stressful, itâs easy to get caught up in the doing and lose perspective. And, when you lose perspective, itâs hard to connect your day-to-day actions with what you desire over the long-term
Here are three ways taking a break can help you achieve long-term success.
Why are we drawn into stories about adventures? What is our fascination with journeys traveled by characters like Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen or Washington crossing the Delaware or the fabulously named Rough Riders?
Mythology expert Joseph Campbell tells us that these adventures are all part of the heroâs journeyâa schema laid out in his ground-breaking book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The heroic quest predates written language and its primary structure can help guide teams through massive changes. This story structure is all but hardwired into the human brain: We tell stories this way because stories that follow this pattern release transformative psychological power.
There are ways to change the tide and bring greater optimism and joy into your organization as well as your personal life.
Fostering a happy workplace starts by cultivating optimism within yourself.
Here are four effective strategies for developing positive personal psychology:
When you visualize daily, you align your thoughts and feelings with your vision. This makes it easier to maintain the motivation you need to continue taking the necessary actions.Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning
Developing a vision creates energy and momentum in a company.
But, that energy usually fades over time. The pressure of the now takes over. The vision becomes something that will happen in the distant future.
The vision loses the power it was designed to have: create a passion to motivate you through anything in service of the better future you want.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose,âa point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.Robert Walton in Mary Shelleyâs Frankenstein
Talk of pivoting is popular. But, most companies donât have a place to pivot from.[1. Eric J. McNulty, âFind your pillar before you pivot,â strategy+business, 2019.]
When a company only chases profits or market share, they only have the whims of the market to anchor their business. And, when those whims change, their anchors get dislodged and they have to scramble for a new spot to give them stability.
It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you donât know where you are, and if you donât know where you are, then your donât know where youâre going. And if you donât know where youâre going, youâre probably going wrong.Terry Pratchett[1. Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight, 2010.]
As humans, we have the tendency to do what we have always done. What we have always done works, to some degree. But, what we have always done is not the best we are capable of being.
Over time, we develop ways of behaving and reacting. These ways are habitual because they served us at some point, in some situation. And, they are often unconscious: itâs just the way we do things. Yet, often these types of behaviors are not suited for the situations we employ them in.
We get caught up in the constant struggle to keep doing, instead of engaging in the practice of consistently becoming better.
Last week, we wrote an in-depth guide to leading during a crisisâhow they affect an organization and strategies to get through them. The advice also applies to any business situation involving a major change as, at their core, thatâs what crises are: situations of significant change.
One of the keys to navigating a crisisâor a big changeâis what organizational psychologist Edgar Schein calls adaptive moves. In Scheinâs words:
By calling them âadaptive,â I am emphasizing that they are not solutions to âthe problemâ but actions intended to improve the situation and elicit more diagnostic data for the planning of the next move. By calling them âmoves,â I am again emphasizing that they are small efforts to improve the situation, not grand plans or huge intervention.[1. Edgar H, Schein, Humble Consulting: How to Provide Real Help Faster, 2016.]