Keep your planning real - not just dreams

From Psyblog:

We often hear from self-help gurus that just this type of happy dreaming is a good source of motivation. If we can picture our future success then this will help motivate us.

Loosely speaking there is some truth to this: positive thinking about the future is broadly beneficial. But psychologists have found that visualization and fantasy can be tricky customers and research carried out by Oettingen and Mayer (2002) shows why.

Fantasy versus expectation

The researchers wanted to see how people cope with four different challenges that life throws at us: getting a job, finding a partner, doing well in an exam and undergoing surgery (hopefully not all at the same time).

Across four studies the researchers examined how people thought about each of these challenges. They measured how much they fantasised about a positive outcome and how much they expected a positive outcome.

The difference might sound relatively trivial, but it's not. Expectations are based on past experiences. You expect to do well in an exam because you've done well in previous exams, you expect to meet another partner because you managed to meet your last partner, and so on.

Fantasies, though, involve imagining something you hope will happen in the future, but experiencing it right now. This turns out to be problematic.
The researchers found that when trying to get a job, find a partner, pass an exam or get through surgery, those who spent more time entertaining positive fantasies did worse.

Take those looking for a job. Those who spent more time dreaming about getting a job, performed worse. Two years after leaving college the dreamers:

• had applied for fewer job,
• unsurprisingly had been offered fewer jobs,
• and, if they were in work, had lower salaries.

For the full article go here http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/success-why-expectations-beat-fantasies.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PsychologyBlog+%28PsyBlog%29

Willfull blindness

Good coverage on willfull blindness - think this also applies to us in our daily lives - what do you think.

Full article is at Bnet Link to Bnet article

It doesn’t matter whether the company is large or small, old or young, high tech or blue collar manufacturing. The reality is that no leader is fully informed of what is happening on his or her watch.


Ignorance Isn’t Bliss
Of course in theory, this shouldn’t happen. The chain of command should ensure that information reaches the top. Daily reports should flag critical issues. Balance sheets should indicate significant trends. And they all do - up to a point. The problem is that none of them works quite well enough.

Leader or just a rebel?

From HBR this morning a way to tell if your leading or rebelling?

There is a fine line between a rebel and a leader, though we tend to conflate the two. 

A rebel resists conformity. Sometimes the rebel's challenging voice helps an organization to discover a gap, push themselves to innovate, and ultimately to thrive. So the challenging, dissenting voice can, at times, be tied to leadership.


But to be effective, we need to understand key distinctions:

• To rebel is to push against something. To lead is to advocate for an idea.
• To rebel is to say "heck no." To lead is to say "we will."
• To rebel is to deny the authority of others. To lead is to invoke your own authority. 

For the full article go here http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/are_you_a_rebel_or_a_leader.html

SMART goals - version 2 video

This has some good info but you need to get over the very American video (there are some laughs) but think the message is sound.  This is a video link http://www.bnet.com/videos/smart-goals-20-leilas-house-of-corrections/376549?promo=713&tag=nl.e713

Solitude and Leadership

This article really struck a chord. Over the years I have seen many leaders who are very ordinary people who have reached a position that does give off the sense of them being a "shark".  The article also speaks about why we should avoid distractions and take time to read, and read books from past times, to improve our ability to set a course.

Here is one of the opening paragraphs (the full article is here http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/ )

Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. Solitude is what you have the least of here, especially as plebes. You don’t even have privacy, the opportunity simply to be physically alone, never mind solitude, the ability to be alone with your thoughts. And yet I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. This lecture will be an attempt to explain why.

Finding the Elusive Work-Life Balance

Leo Babauta over at zenhabits has some practical tips on getting "work life balance".  The full article including his tips can be found here:  http://zenhabits.net/life-balance/

How to Reignite Your Passion for Your Job

workawsome has some suggestions on howe to spice up you life in your job.

If discontent is eating away at you, read on for practical tips to help you renew your enthusiasm and sense of passion at the workplace.


Full list of ideas is here http://workawesome.com/your-job/how-to-reignite-your-passion-for-your-job/utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Workawesome+%28WorkAwesome%29

The "Help-Rejecting Complainer.

An interesting read and some good links from the Happiness Project.

A “help-rejecting complainer” complains as a way to seek help and support, but then rejects any help that’s offered. Whenever anyone tries to make a constructive suggestion -- “Why don’t you try…?” or “Could you…?” -- the help-rejecter insists that the advice is useless. In fact, help-rejecting complainers sometimes seem proud to be beyond help.

People often find help-rejecters annoying because first, the help-rejecter wants constant attention and two, it’s very frustrating when attempts at help are constantly refused.

If you’re facing a help-rejecting complainer, it can be useful just to realize this category of behavior. If you’re dealing with a help-rejecter, don’t expect to make any headway by dreaming up creative new suggestions. Don’t wear yourself out!

Read the full article here: 

The Happiness Project: Assay: A Useful Term: the "Help-Rejecting Complainer." "Why Don't You Try...?" "No, That Won't Help."

Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything

Change is hard. New Year's resolutions almost always fail. But at The Energy Project, we have developed a way of making changes that has proved remarkably powerful and enduring, both in my own life and for the corporate clients to whom we teach it.

Our method is grounded in the recognition that human being are creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behaviors are habitual, or occur in response to a strong external stimulus.Only 5 percent of our choices are consciously self-selected.

In 1911, the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead intuitedwhat researchers would confirm nearly a century later. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism," he wrote, "that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

Most of us wildly overvalue our will and discipline. Ingenious research by Roy Baumeister and others has demonstrated that our self-control is a severely limited resource that gets progressively depleted by every act of conscious self-regulation.

In order to make change that lasts, we must rely less on our prefrontal cortex, and more on co-opting the primitive parts of our brain in which habits are formed.

Put simply, the more behaviors are ritualized and routinized — in the form of a deliberate practice — the less energy they require to launch, and the more they recur automatically

What follows are our six key steps to making change that lasts: 

Read the full article here: Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review

Tips for Making an Employee’s First 90 Days Successful

Making a new hire feel comfortable and a part of the team from day one is imperative to helping the employee become a successful and productive member of your business. Here are the steps you need to follow to guide your new hire through the first 90 days on the job.


For a great slide show of the full detail go here: Hiring Tool Kit 2011: Tips for Making an Employee’s First 90 Days Successful | Inc.com

Revenge of the Introvert

Scientists now know that, while introverts have no special advantage in intelligence, they do seem to process more information than others in any given situation. To digest it, they do best in quiet environments, interacting one on one. Further, their brains are less dependent on external stimuli and rewards to feel good.
As a result, introverts are not driven to seek big hits of positive emotional arousal—they'd rather find meaning than bliss—making them relatively immune to the search for happiness that permeates contemporary American culture. In fact, the cultural emphasis on happiness may actually threaten their mental health. As American life becomes increasingly competitive and aggressive, to say nothing of blindingly fast, the pressures to produce on demand, be a team player, and make snap decisions cut introverts off from their inner power source, leaving them stressed and depleted. Introverts today face one overarching challenge—not to feel like misfits in their own culture.

Read full article here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201008/revenge-the-introvert

How to make sense of a new hire, a touchy stranger, a potential lover, and other perplexing encounters.

People are hugely overconfident about their ability to judge others in general, and recruiters may be particularly so. The reality, says Allen Huffcutt of Bradley University, is that the interview is a dicey venue in which to get a good read on someone. "You've got a high stakes situation, an interaction between strangers, and a general inability to verify what candidates say," says Huffcutt, who has spent his career parsing job candidates.

Read the full article here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/magazine/archive/2011/01

How to Deliver Bad News to Employees

Whether you're starting the conversation about layoffs, communicating a bad financial situation, or dealing with poor employee performance, being the bearer of difficult news is one of the toughest tasks a manager faces. Here's how to do it right.


For the full article go here How to Deliver Bad News to Employees

How to Be Early…When You Are Perpetually Late

You leave things to the last minute, find yourself at every red light on your route to work, never have enough time to eat breakfast or comb your hair, and you are perpetually late. Friends and co-workers expect it from you and your boss (if you’re so lucky) tolerates it on the basis of the entertaining excuses you come up with.

Running late sucks and it’s mighty embarrassing to show up last. You admire the person who arrives polished and early, coffee in hand and wonder just how they do it. It’s not magic; it takes effort, forethought and a genuine desire to be on time to do it.


FOR THE FULL ARTICLE GO HERE How to Be Early...When You Are Perpetually Late

Are You the Boss You Need To Be?

How are you doing as a boss?

As a leader and manager, someone responsible for the results obtained by others, are you the boss you need to be? Are you getting the best from your people, and from those you need but don't control? Are you fully satisfying the ever-rising expectations of your firm and its customers?
Equally important, are you meeting your own expectations? How would you like to work to develop yourself? Are you good enough to achieve your own aspirations? Are you ready for increased responsibility?
These are critical questions all bosses must ask if they want to be fully effective. Why? The two of us have spent nearly 60 years in total studying and practicing management, and again and again we've made a troubling observation: Most managers grow and develop to a certain point, and then they stop. They reach the "Plateau of Good Enough." Perhaps they struggled at first as new managers, but they quickly learned how it's done in their organizations, how to cope with the challenges they typically face every day, and they've come to feel comfortable.

FORTHE FULL ARTICLE GO HERE http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2011/01/are-you-the-boss-you-need-to-b.html

Management Tips for New Supervisors

Some very good tips for the new supervisor at Work Awesome - Management Tips for New Supervisors . The one thing that I would add is to get to know other supervisors across the organisation - your job is to help bind the organisation not just look after your team.

A Field Guide to the Workaholic

"Workaholics are out of balance," says Bryan E. Robinson, a therapist in Asheville, North Carolina, and author of Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them. "They don't have many friends. They don't take care of themselves. They don't have any hobbies outside of the office. A hard worker will be at his desk, thinking about the ski slopes. A workaholic will be on the ski slopes thinking about his desk."


For the full article with tips on how to "turn down the addition" go to A Field Guide to the Workaholic | Psychology Today

The Psychology of Persuasion

All human societies are alive with the battle for influence. Every single day each of us is subject to innumerable persuasion attempts from corporations, interest groups, political parties and other organisations. Each trying to persuade us that their product, idea or innovation is what we should buy, believe in or vote for.

In our personal lives the same struggle is played out for the supremacy of viewpoints, ideals and actions. Whether it's friends and family, work colleagues, potential employers or strangers, each of us has to work out how to bring others around to our own point of view. We all play the influence game, to greater or lesser degrees.

Psychologists have been studying how we try to influence each other for many years. I've been covering some highlights of this research, which are collected below.

For the full article go to PsychBlog - Psychology of Persuasion — PsyBlog

Use The One-A-Month Technique To Adopt Habits That Stick

Keeping resolutions is hard. It’s easy to get to the end of a year and proclaim loudly all the things you didn’t like about the last year and all the things you’re going to do differently with the new one. Making sweeping changes with resolution shopping lists, however, is a recipe for failure. Willpower is a finite resource, and a very limited one at that; it’s critical to structure your habit changes for success.

Below, we’ll offer some tips for pruning your resolutions and making them more realistic, then walk you through creating a more realistic resolution schedule during which you’ll adopt one new resolution each month. Read on for the details.

For the full article go to Lifehacker at this link Use The One-A-Month Technique To Adopt Habits That Stick | Lifehacker Australia

How a Good Leader Reacts to a Crisis

Here are some tips for the next big storm that hits your office:

Take a moment to figure out what's going on. An executive I know experienced a major disruption in service to his company. He was the person in charge and he told me that at the first response meeting everyone started talking at once. The chatter was nervous response — not constructive — so he delegated responsibilities and then called for a subsequent meeting in an hour's time. This also helped to impose order on a chaotic situation.

Act promptly, not hurriedly. A leader must provide direction and respond to the situation in a timely fashion. But acting hurriedly only makes people nervous. You can act with deliberateness as well as speed. Or as legendary coach John Wooden advised, "Be quick but don't hurry."

For the full article go to HBR via this link How a Good Leader Reacts to a Crisis - John Baldoni - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Think You Need a New Job? You’re Probably Wrong

Bet you are thinking, “Well, some jobs are definitely bad: coal mining would be too much for me.”  That might be true, but the same is true with being a lawyer: Both jobs totally suck. The reason is that you need only three things to make any job good:

• Control over your work environment
• Control over your workload
• Challenging goals you can meet

If you have these three things then your job will not prevent you from being happy. Coal mining does not give you control over your environment, so you constantly fear for your safety. Lawyering does not give you control over your workload, so you have to cater at your client’s whim if you want to keep your income stream.

So why do people continue to talk about the perfect job, the best job, the most successful, and on and on? I think it’s because it’s so hard to turn inward, and to admit our limitations. Isn’t it easier just to chase a new job?

Read full article here at Bnet - Think You Need a New Job? You’re Probably Wrong | BNET