25 Tips to Men + Women = Brainpower

It’s no secret that women and men leaders differ, and  research now shows that’s the case even at rest. Yet while gender distinctives span both biologically and cognitively, awake and asleep – it takes keen facilitation skills to mesh two sides together for mutual dividends.

We gain riches from offerings each gender adds when we better balance male and female brainpower. When we leverage refreshing strengths together. Conversely, you’ll soon spot weaknesses that impacts an entire group, whenever one side is blatantly missing. Have you noticed?

From boardrooms to halls of government, or higher education, blended gender brainpower trumps either side alone. Why ignore making leadership decisions jointly – when it’s obvious we’d win with wisdom from opposing views?

Yet because we miss the magic and ignore  differences that link together in the brain at work, both sides tend to dismiss grand gender contributions from the other side. Visualize men’s and women’s brains as capital at your next leadership meeting, and you’ll begin to spot nuances that polish pretty much any topic. How so


For full article go to http://www.brainleadersandlearners.com/ellen-weber/25-reasons-men-women-brainpower/ 

Ending Procrastination--Right Now!

It takes deliberate strategies to avoid becoming our own worst enemy by procrastinating on our intended actions. Here are some tips, all based on research, that will keep you one step ahead of procrastination. 


Each tip follows on its predecessor, so you can use them in sequence to build your own tactical defense against procrastination.


For the full article go to http://www.psychologytoday.com:80/articles/200909/ending-procrastination-right-now

How Trivial Decisions Will Impact Your Happiness

I was reminded of this subject when I heard last week thatJeff Kindler had suddenly resigned as CEO of Pfizer, at least partly because the stresses of the job were affecting his family life. (I admit that there may have been other reasonsfor Kindler's resignation, although we may never know for sure. For this discussion, let's just assume that job stress was a factor.) By all reports — and gathered from some personal experience — Kindler is very devoted to his family, but also worked hard to achieve the success of becoming a CEO. And after spending more than four years working almost non-stop at the top of Pfizer, Kindler seems to have realized that it is very difficult to have both.


Read the full article here http://s.hbr.org/gxhKh6

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Go?

It’s the holiday season, when we start making lists of the gifts we want-and of the pros and cons of the jobs we have. The end of one year and the start of a New Year is the time when just about everyone takes stock of where they are with their work, and whether they are where they expected to be.

So as you get ready to transition from your Christmas list to a wish list for your career, ask yourself these five questions about your company, your colleagues, and your personal game plan for what comes next.

From HBR - click here for the full article.

Six Ways to Refuel Your Energy Every Day

Are you working longer hours, attending more meetings, taking shorter vacations, answering more emails and eating lunch at your desk, if you eat lunch at all?

Does demand in your life just keep getting higher, so you're struggling more and more just to keep up? Are you utterly sick of hearing the phrase "do more with less?" Does the word "unsustainable" sound about right?

From HBR - read full article here.

Perfectionism

From Psychology today Link

Far too many of us feel the unbearable weight of our perfectionism. These unrealistic expectations, often internalized as the expectations of others, are a sickness within us. Research consistently shows that this maladaptive perfectionism is related to our unhappiness, distress and our inability to successfully pursue our goals. In this brief post today, I offer up a poet's voice with words of healing.

When we struggle with our internal battles, long-held irrational thoughts, emotional turmoil and spiritual pain, we can find healing in the most unexpected places. Art and music often can play a role in our healing.

On holidays

I am away on holidays so the blog entries will be sparse. Should be back in full swing in December 2010.

The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions

On some days it seems that your world is full of issues.  If you want to step back and get some perspective have a listen to this video where Michio Kaku tells us about the 11 dimensions of the multiverse.  This is from Big Think and here is the link to the video.

Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science.  If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it.

Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Andre Lepiere: Are there only three dimensions in other universes, or could there be more?

The Pursuit of Happiness

From Psychology Today - click here for the link to the full article.

Welcome to the happinessfrenzy, now peaking at a Barnes & Noble near you: In 2008 4,000 books were published on happiness, while a mere 50 books on the topic were released in 2000. The most popular class at Harvard University is aboutpositive psychology, and at least 100 other universities offer similar courses. Happiness workshops for the post-collegiate set abound, and each day "life coaches" promising bliss to potential clients hang out their shingles.

In the late 1990s, psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania exhorted colleagues to scrutinize optimal moods with the same intensity with which they had for so long studied pathologies: We'd never learn about full human functioning unless we knew as much about mental wellness as we do about mental illness. A new generation of psychologists built up a respectable body of research on positive character traits and happiness-boosting practices. At the same time, developments in neuroscience provided new clues to what makes us happy and what that looks like in the brain. Not to be outdone, behavioral economists piled on research subverting the classical premise that people always make rational choices that increase their well-being. We're lousy at predicting what makes us happy, they found.

Introducing Managerial Change

This is a link to the Manager Tools where you can download the podcast on this topic.

This guidance recommends how to introduce changes in how you manage your team.

We had a conversation recently with a client who asked, what do I do to reduce the resistance my directs seem to have to my new way of doing things? He went on to say, I'm trying to change the way we do reviews, using some simple metrics, and I'm trying to put a budgeting process in place. But they just keep either not doing what seems pretty clear to me, or they just act like it's totally foreign and a bad idea.

We get this a lot. Look, sometimes it's just a manager blaming his team for being stubborn when in fact the ideas he's trying are just bad ideas. Those directs aren't resisting so much as standing up for the old, better way. But those situations aren't that common. What's common is a manager trying something new, something that probably will work, and having a plurality or a majority of her directs either playing passive aggressive, or maybe just plain aggressive.

What can we do to increase the chances that our directs are as receptive as they can be to our changes?

Why we're conditioned to blame our partners for our unhappiness

For the full article go here to Psychology Today.

With general affluence has come a plethora of choices, including constant choices about our personal and family life. Even marriage itself is now a choice. "The result is an ongoing self-appraisal of how your personal life is going, like having a continual readout of your emotional heart rate," says Cherlin. You get used to the idea of always making choices to improve your happiness.

The Little Book of Procrastination Remedies

From Zen Habits. Procrastination is one of those topics that, it seems, I can’t write enough about. There isn’t a person among us who doesn’t procrastinate, and that’s a fact of life. It’s deep within us. We think we’re going to do something later, or read that classic novel later, or learn French later. But we always overestimate how much we can do later, and we overestimate the ability of our later selves to beat procrastination.
If our current self can’t beat procrastination, why will our future self do it? I thought I should cover some of the best procrastination-beating strategies, in light of my recent book, focus. People seem to want ways to beat procrastination, so they can actually get down to focusing.  Click here for full details from Zen Habits.

Shape Perceptions of Your Work, Early and Often

From HBR. There is an obvious lesson for you in this: don't assume that anyone — your boss, your peer, or your subordinate — knows the good work you are doing. They are all probably focused on their own jobs and concerns. Do things to let them know.
Yes, I know this smacks of self-promotion, and self-promoters are not only disliked for blowing their own horns but not particularly credible in doing so. But there is a way around the dilemma. Research by social psychologist Robert Cialdini, two doctoral students, and myself shows that when you get someone else to sing your praises — even if that individual is hired by you, under your control, and the audience knows these facts — you receive attributions of competence without being tarred by the brush of behaving inappropriately.(Here's the pdf.) If hiring someone is not an option for you, then start relying on the norm of reciprocity. Praise one of your colleagues for her good work and chances are, she will feel obligated to return the favor. When others talk about your great works, those works will garner the attention they deserve.

Consuming Passions

From Psychology today. All the animals are unwilling recruits in the scientific quest to understand appetite, a fundamental human drive whose complexities have long frustrated researchers and dieters alike. Craving and bingeing are anomalies in rodents, but they're common in people. Studies of eating behavior show that most men and women go on occasional eating binges and experience food cravings that feel overwhelming.

I Win, You Lose: Brain Imaging Reveals How We Learn from Our Competitors

From Science Daily. Surprisingly, when players were observing their competitor make selections, the players' brains were activated as if they were performing these actions themselves. Such 'mirror neuron' activities occur when we observe the actions of other humans but here the players knew their opponent was just a computer and no animated graphics were used. Previously, it has been suggested that the mirror neuron system supports a type of unconscious mind-reading that helps us, for example, judge others' intentions.

"The Secret of Happiness Lies in Taking a Genuine Interest in All the Details of Daily Life."

“The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
-- William Morris

Is happiness impossible?

From Psychology today. People who tell us happiness is impossible imprison us in illusion. Positive individuals break the tyranny of our stories about happiness, because they, like that doctor at Boston Children's Hospital, show us that the external world does not dictate the terms of our happiness. The truth is there have been positive people even in some of the most horrific situations in history.  And thus, happiness is a verifiable, scientific possibility.

The Four Capacities Every Great Leader Needs (And Very Few Have)

From HBR:
1. Great leaders recognize strengths in us that we don't always yet fully see in ourselves.
This is precisely what Kosner did with me. He provided belief where I didn't yet have it, and I trusted his judgment more than my own. It's the Pygmalion effect: expectations become self-fulfilling.
Both positive and negative emotions feed on themselves. In the absence of Kosner's confidence, I simply wouldn't have assumed I was ready to write at that level.
Because he seemed so sure I could — he saw better than I did how my ambition and relentlessness would eventually help me prevail — I wasted little energy in corrosive worry and doubt.
Instead, I simply invested myself in getting better, day by day, step by step. Because we can achieve excellence in almost anything we practice with sufficient focus and intention, I did get better, which fed my own confidence and satisfaction, and my willingness to keep pushing myself.
2. Rather than simply trying to get more out of us, great leaders seek to understand and meet our needs, above all a compelling mission beyond our immediate self-interest, or theirs.
Great leaders understand that how they make people feel, day in and day out, has a profound influence on how they perform.
We each have a range of core needs — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Great leaders focus on helping their employees meet each of these needs, recognizing that it helps them to perform better and more sustainably.
Arthur Gelb helped my meet not just my emotional need to be valued, but also my spiritual need to be engaged in a mission bigger than my own success. Far too few leaders take the time to figure out what they truly stand for, beyond the bottom line, and why we should feel excited to work for them.
3. Great leaders take the time to clearly define what success looks like, and then empower and trust us to figure out the best way to achieve it.
One of our core needs is for self-expression. One of the most demoralizing and infantilizing experiences at work is to feel micromanaged.
The job of leaders is not to do the work of those they lead, but to serve as Chief Energy Officer — to free and fuel us to bring the best of ourselves to work every day.
Part of that responsibility is defining, in the clearest possible way, what's expected of us — our concrete deliverables. This is a time-consuming and challenging process, and most leaders I've met do very little of it. When they do it effectively, the next step for leaders is to get out of the way.
That requires trusting that employees will figure out for themselves the best way to get their work done, and that even though they'll take wrong turns and make mistakes, they learn and grow stronger along the way.
4. The best of all leaders — a tiny fraction — have the capacity to embrace their own opposites, most notably vulnerability alongside strength, and confidence balanced by humility.
This capacity is uniquely powerful because all of us struggle, whether we're aware of it or not, with our self worth. We're each vulnerable to believing, at any given moment, that we're not good enough.
Great leaders don't feel the need to be right, or to be perfect, because they've learned to value themselves in spite of shortcomings they freely acknowledge. In turn, they bring this generous spirit to those they lead.
The more leaders make us feel valued, in spite of our imperfections, the less energy we will spend asserting, defending and restoring our value, and the more energy we have available to create value.
All four capacities are grounded in one overarching insight. Great leaders recognize that the best way to get the highest value is to give the highest value.

How the internet is rewiring our brains

It’s no-one’s idea of news that the internet is changing the way we live. But could it actually be fostering ignorance?

Nicholas Carr (The Big Switch, The Shallows) is one of the world’s most ground-breaking thinkers on technology and its impacts. In this conversation with journalist Gideon Haigh, he describes how internet use is changing our brains. Distraction, skim-reading and instant information - all hallmarks of the new technology - have real potential to reduce our capacity for deep concentration and deep reading.
The Wheeler Centre, September 2010

Build Your Confidence

From Psychology Today. Perhaps the single greatest source of mental energy is positive interaction with others. Even if you were the class nerd in high school, it's never too late to achieve social success. You can develop social confidence by following a few simple steps.

Training the brain.

From the New Scientist. Our brains are constantly adapting to information from the world around us. However, some activities make a bigger impression than others. In recent years, researchers have been probing how outside influences, from music to meditation, might change and enhance our brains.

Four faces of introversion

From Psychology today. While many people self-identify as shy, whether this is problematic or not depends on their need to socialize--an important distinction, says Cheek. His research identifies four subcategories of shyness.

1. Shy-secure people self-identify as shy and score somewhat high on the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale  They have some social anxiety but don't need a lot of interaction and don't stress about it. "When they were put in the psych lab and asked to converse with a new acquaintance, they were very low key," explains Cheek. "It doesn't necessarily interest or excite them, but they were calm and they would talk." (This is how a number of us here have described our introversion. Yeah, we can socialize. When we want to or must.)
2. Shy-withdrawn people are more anxious about affiliating with others. "They have a lot of sensitivity to rejection, fear of negative evaluation, concern about becoming embarrassed and of social faux pas," says Cheek. Shy-withdrawn people struggle more than the shy-secure because in our society, they must frequently do that which makes them anxious.These shy types also might get lonely.
3. Shy-dependent people want so much to be around others, they are overly accommodating and compliant, and self-effacing. "If you think about it as a social strategy, the withdrawn move away from other people but the dependent move toward other people," says Cheek. "They are affiliative, they go along to get along. They have a better short-term social adaptation profile but long term, how can you build a relationship based on mutuality if you are volunteering to be the junior partner?"
4. Shy-conflicted people have a high need for affiliation, but also are anxious about it. Cheek calls it the approach-avoid conflict. "They have a conflict between withdrawing or seeking autonomy versus moving towards others," says Cheek. "They vacillate and tend to have anticipatory anxiety." While Cheek is fine with the shy-positive movement (he cites such books as The Highly Sensitive Person and The Gift of Shyness), he thinks shy-conflicted shyness may not be benign. "That type of person tends to, among all shy people, have the most problems," he says.

Play and grow....

Play—it's by definition absorbing. The outcome is always uncertain. Play makes children nimble—neurobiologically, mentally, behaviorally—capable of adapting to a rapidly evolving world. That makes it just about the best preparation for life in the 21st century. Psychologists believe that play cajoles people toward their human potential because it preserves all the possibilities nervous systems tend to otherwise prune away. It's no accident that all of the predicaments of play—the challenges, the dares, the races and chases—model the struggle for survival. Think of play as the future with sneakers on.

Change is the basis of human life, so don't attach yourself to birth or death, continuation or discontinuation. Just live right in the middle of the flow of change where there is nothing to hold on to. How do you do this?
Just be present and devote yourself to doing something. This is the simple practice of Zen.

- Dainin Katagiri
(1928-1990)
Japanese Zen Buddhist master

Thought of the day that rings true.

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us.

To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear.

To build a world of justice, we must be just.

And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own mind?

- Dag Hammarskjöld
(1905 - 1961)
2nd Secretary General of the United Nations

Sound health in 8 steps: Julian Treasure on TED.com

Julian Treasure says our increasingly noisy world is gnawing away at our mental health — even costing lives. He lays out an 8-step plan to soften this sonic assault (starting with those cheap earbuds) and restore our relationship with sound. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, England. Duration: 7:15)  Here is a link to the video at TED.

Ethical leadership in tough times

Original article from RSA. In business as in government, it is an interesting time to be a leader. Times are indeed tough. Those in work are supposed to feel lucky just to have a job, no matter how demanding or unsatisfying it is, or how much more ‘productive’ they are being asked to be. Management gets ‘de-layered’ (cut), targets get set at ever more demanding levels, and the penalties for failure can be harsh. Within this unsentimental, ‘measure everything that moves’ climate, we also seem to expect our leaders to be creative, sensitive and ethical. And woe betides them if they commit the tiniest sin: while some of our MPs proved themselves dishonest, witness the outcry over even the pettiest expenses transgression.

There are other huge challenges to leaders that lie underneath the more obvious performance imperatives. Some of these challenges are moral paradoxes. Leaders are expected to manage many tensions. They are expected to drive performance ever harder whilst creating nurturing and empowering environments. We expect them to show emotional intelligence whilst feeling harassed and even bullied by their own bosses and organisations. The good leader needs to espouse work/life balance and engage in developing the well being of their staff while being expected to be on constant duty-call themselves. They must develop ethical organisational practices at the same time as fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. And of course, they must remain calm, confident and driven whilst being subject to disruptive change themselves.

THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF

Just started to read this THE BRAIN CAN CHANGE ITSELF. It is a plastic, living organ that can actually change its own structure and function, even into old age. Arguably the most important breakthrough in neuroscience since scientists first sketched out the brain’s basic anatomy, this revolutionary discovery, called neuroplasticity, promises to overthrow the centuries-old notion that the brain is fixed and unchanging. The brain is not, as was thought, like a machine, or “hardwired” like a computer. Neuroplasticity not only gives hope to those with mental limitations, or what was thought to be incurable brain damage, but expands our understanding of the healthy brain and the resilience of human nature.

Norman Doidge, MD, a psychiatrist and researcher, set out to investigate neuroplasticity and met both the brilliant scientists championing it and the people whose lives they’ve transformed.

There is also an interview with Dr Doidge on the ABC all in the mind radion nations website.

What Makes Me Feel Big

Full article is at "This I believe." For me, the beautiful resides in the physical, but it is spiritual. I have never heard a sermon as spiritual in either phrase or fact as, “Waters on a starry night are beautiful and free.” No hymn lifts my heart higher than the morning call of the bobwhite or the long fluting cry of sandhill cranes out of the sky at dusk. I have never smelled incense in a church as refining to the spirit as a spring breeze laden with aroma from a field of bluebonnets.

Not all hard truths are beautiful, but beauty is truth. It incorporates love and is incorporated by love. It is the goal of all great art. Its presence everywhere makes it free to all. It is not so abstract as justice, but beauty and intellectual freedom and justice, all incorporating truth and goodness, are constant sustainers to my mind and spirit.

Educator and folklorist J. Frank Dobie wrote numerous books and articles about vanishing ways of life on the ranches of his native Texas. He taught in the English department at the University of Texas for many years and was a lecturer on U.S. history at Cambridge during World War II.

Owning Up to Our Choices Ultimately Makes Us Happier; If We Don’t Like our Choices, We Can Change Them

Original article is at Happiness Blog. In 168 Hours, Laura argues that we have more time than we think. We feel rushed and overwhelmed, that we don't have enough time for the things that are important to us, but she points out ways to reclaim time, so that we spend it mindfully, in the most meaningful ways. (Mindfulness! It keeps popping up in happiness! And I find it so hard to be mindful.)

When to Choose Is to Lose

Full article at Psychology Today. You're among the first generation in history to decide not only where to live and what profession to enter (fundamental choices that now feel like a birthright) but whether to shell out for a 32, 42, or 52 inch flat-screen, LCD or LED.From breakfast cereal to birth control, we are assailed with options at every moment in our day—choice that's often marketed as sparkling necessity. Our big decisions are also subject to spin: Colleges vie for applicants; doctors are poised to help us choose not just the time of conception but the profile and pedigree of our progeny. Entire industries—travel agents, interior decorators, portfolio managers—are devoted to the navigation of a selection-saturated world.
Our ancestors would be overwhelmed by this orgy of options. Our brains still are. That's because we evolved in a world where choice was limited by chronic shortages of food, absence of transportation other than one's own two feet, and few reliable sources of information. In a world without menus, speed dating, or iPods, either you ate, found a mate, and enjoyed a snatch of music, or you went without. Often, the choice was between something and nothing. In such a world, our ancestors could afford to simplify decision-making to "Always get the best."

The Perfect Level of Stress

From Psychology Today. Anxious people, it turns out, may make better decisions. Gregory Samanez-Larkin, a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University, scanned the brains of healthy people (none of them had anxiety disorders) and found that a particular region, the anterior insula, lit up when the subjects anticipated losing money. But those who were more anxious showed even more activity in the anterior insula.

Later he brought the same group back to the lab to play a computer game for real cash. Those with greater insular activity—the more anxious ones—were better at learning how to avoid losing money in subsequent games. "Their anxiety over losing money perhaps led them to be more precise in the way they played the game," Samanez-Larkin says.

Why We 'Choke' Under Pressure—and How to Avoid It

From JUS News Science: A star golfer misses a critical putt; a brilliant student fails to ace a test; a savvy salesperson blows a key presentation. Each of these people has suffered the same bump in mental processing: They have just choked under pressure.

It's tempting to dismiss such failures as "just nerves." But toUniversity of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, they are preventable results of information logjams in the brain. By studying how the brain works when we are doing our best—and when we choke—Beilock has formulated practical ideas about how to overcome performance lapses at critical moments.

Beilock's research is the basis of her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To, published Sept. 21 by Simon and Schuster, Free Press.

A Practical Plan for When You Feel Overwhelmed

FROM HBR - First, spend a few minutes writing down everything you have to do on a piece of paper. Resist the urge to use technology for this task. Why? I'm not sure, but somehow writing on paper — and then crossing things out — creates momentum.

Second, spend 15 minutes — no more — knocking out as many of the easiest, fastest tasks as you can. Make your quick phone calls. Send your short emails. Don't worry about whether these are the most important tasks on your list. You're moving. The goal is to cross off as many items as possible in the shortest time. Use a timer to keep you focused.

Third, when 15 minutes are up, turn off your phone, close down all the windows on your computer, and choose the most daunting thing on your list, the one that instills the most stress or is the highest priority. Then work on it and only it — without hesitation or distraction — for 35 minutes.

How the Brain Fears (video attached)

From Big Think - Emotions are messy, complicated phenomena—not just for lovers, but for neuroscientists as well, because they combine cognition with physiology. Scientists once thought of emotion as a purely mental activity which elicited bodily responses, but they now see the mind and body as equally responsible for creating the experiences of fear, joy, and anger. Despite this complexity, science is beginning to understand emotion by examining one emotional pathway at a time, with the hope of some day combining them into a comprehensive understanding.

How Your Brain Connects the Future to the Past

Publish Post

From HBR - Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske. We tend to think of memory as a way to revisit past experiences: a vacation in the tropics, a bad business decision, or where you might have put those elusive car keys. Neuroscientists have long believed that the brain's so-called episodic memory circuits are largely involved in remembering past events or occurrences. Neuroimaging studies had even identified parts of the brain that are specifically activated when retrieving information from prior life experiences. These include regions in the prefrontal and medial temporal lobes, as well as more posterior regions such as the retrosplenial cortex. Butrecent studies (pdf)have found a striking overlap between these areas and brain regions that are activated when you think about the future.

Getting to Know You

Most of the thoughts that cause distress are not new; they're all recycled. And they boil down to "I want to be appreciated/loved/approved." "We're trapped in these thoughts," says Katie. Freedom and happiness lie in opening up your judgments.

Let's say you feel your boyfriend or girlfriend isn't paying enough attention to you. It causes you deep anxiety because you feel s/he doesn't love you. You may even worry that you will be partnerless soon.
"The mind's job is to validate what it thinks, " says Katie, so it looks for proof that s/he doesn't love you. The problem is, there are not a lot of options in fear. You need clarity to know what is really going on.

Leaders of the Pack Display High 'Emotional Intelligence'

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2010) — The ability to understand emotions is a key ingredient in people who become leaders in groups with no formal authority, a new paper has found. The findings come through two different studies using commerce students. Study participants were given an emotional ability test as part of the study, as well as a self-analysis of their emotional skills. Then, they organized themselves into small groups or were randomly assigned to small groups and were given a group project to do.

For those who use facebook - 7 effective habits

From Psyblog. Love it or loathe it, Facebook is everywhere, and will continue to be everywhere as the film describing its genesis—The Social Network—is released worldwide over coming months.

To help you cope, here are 7 research-based tips for total Facebook domination. If you don't use it, these should at least help you pepper Facebook-related conversations with compelling observations from the psychological research.

Research from the AGSM - Adaptive Leadership: Can the One-trick CEO Be Retrained?

The CVs of "two-dimensional leaders" provide clues for those who may be most at risk, observes Barry Bloch, partner in leadership consulting at Heidrick & Struggles, a global executive search firm. Typically, they have one-track careers with "experience in single industries or single companies", he says. And the inability to adapt often reflects where they have learned to lead.   A hallmark of the authoritarian leader is not listening to others, bypassing the opportunity to hear bad news. A common tactic is keeping people who may challenge their approaches at bay by surrounding themselves with those who understand and support their style of leadership. Frequently, a cabal of chosen operatives goes with a CEO when he or she changes jobs.

Dr Russ Harris, MD - the Happiness Trap

It is strange that on some occasions you find a book (in this case the book was purchased by my wife) only to find that you skim through it and then a short time later you find an almost perfect fit to use it for a good purpose.  In a coaching session last night I was working with a very strong and competent woman who was looking at career issues.  During the session I recalled a story from Ron’s book around the demons we try and keep at sea (using a lot of energy when we know the demons are really like CGI effects) where I think the example was really useful.  I would recommend Ron’s book and he also has a website with a raft (keeping on the at sea theme) of free and useful resources.  Check out his website and if you think you are in a happiness trap then maybe the book would help you “stop struggling and start living”.