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