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Advisor of Leadership at Google and former vice president of leadership at LinkedIn claims that the biggest driver of motivation is the chance to serve a larger purpose beyond our careers and ourselves, rather than salary, benefits, bonuses, or other material incentives; companies that are able to successfully focus their people, their teams, and their culture around meaning outperform their competition.

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leadership development advisor at google

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Advisor of Leadership at Google and former vice president of leadership at LinkedIn claims that the biggest driver of motivation is the chance to serve a larger purpose beyond our careers and ourselves, rather than salary, benefits, bonuses, or other material incentives; companies that are able to successfully focus their people, their teams, and their culture around meaning outperform their competition.

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Libro: Now, Discover your Strengths - Marcus Buckingham

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Libro: Now, Discover your Strengths - Marcus Buckingham

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One of the most important characteristics the good ones have in common is their ability to ask insightful questions, says Lisa Z. Fain, CEO of The Center for Mentoring Excellence, a mentoring consultancy and coaching organization. "For mentors, the most important thing, really, is to ask questions, to be this guide on the side, rather than the sage on the stage," she says.

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3 Ways to Hold Employees Accountable for Their Career Growth

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3 Ways to Hold Employees Accountable for Their Career Growth

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It can be tough finding a balance between micromanaging and being too hands-off, especially when it comes to guiding employees who want to grow within the company. So, how can employers guide them and hold them accountable without being too bossy?

Advancement opportunities are incredibly motivating. The 2014 Global Workforce Study by Towers Watson found that career advancement opportunities are among the top driving forces for employees. The truth is that employees want to be held accountable for their own career development.

Let's take a look at how employers can shift the accountability to employees, who want to learn and grow.

1. Help them set goals.

Goal setting is crucial to success, and employers can guide their staff to set goals that are SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. However, employees want to set their own goals, not have others impose their own agendas.

Help them develop a personal statement, identify their values and then translate those into specific, actionable tasks. The main issue people have with setting goals is actually following through and sticking to their habits.
Related: This is Why You Need to Let Your Best Employees Go
To prevent them from losing their motivation, be sure employees are writing their goals down. University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson calls this "self-authoring." His 2010 study found that students, who utilized goal-setting practices that involved writing, saw a significant improvement in academic performance.

While the act of writing and revisiting goals is indeed effective at helping employees feel accountable, how do they maintain that level of accountability to the outside world?

2. Create a supportive environment.

The work environment must be supportive and encourage a high level of accountability. People need to give their word to others around them just as they set expectations on themselves. This way, when they feel tempted to falter, they let down others as well, which is a social pressure most people don't like to fall under.

With all this talk about sticking to their guns, employees need to also approach this business of self-leadership and motivation in a fun, lighthearted way. Focus on creating a culture and workspace that facilitates pleasant activities so people don't feel trapped in formality.

For example, host a morning huddle where employees pass around a ball to whoever is talking. It helps lighten the mood, speed up the meeting and engages everyone.

Accountability is not forced compliance. It's not about pressuring people into doing what someone else wants them to do and resorting to authoritative measures to combat resistance. Accountability is support. It's achieved when everyone can openly set commitments, and share their feelings.
Related: How to Create Paths to Career Advancement That Matter to Your Employees
The workplace needs a social element, like an internal online platform or a bulletin board, where people can share their updates on progress and motivate one another. Create a forum that invites regular updates to empower everyone to achieve their goals.

It's no surprise that sharing new developments while working toward a goal increases a person's rate of success. According to a Dominican University of California study, more than 70 percent of the participants, who sent weekly updates to friends, reported successful goal achievement compared to 35 percent of those who kept their goals to themselves without writing them down.

Make an effort to establish the big picture - the purpose driving the actions and commitment. Accountability is preceded by purpose. Without it, employees may lose sight of why they're pursuing their aspirations.

3. Hire coaches.

Staying focused on purpose requires more than just writing and sharing successes and setbacks with others. This is where coaches come in.

Personal coaches help educate employees on methods of achieving their goals, create action plans, establish habits and routines that align with their goals and hold them accountable. They specialize in motivating employees and guiding them toward success.
Related: Find a Business Mentor -- or Fail Trying
They also help employees develop new skills, improve their confidence, manage their time, become more decisive and cope with stress. What it comes down to is the power of personalization.

When employees are assigned unique, specific strategies and must report to a professional coach on a regular basis, they are more engaged in their plan and focused on achievement. The challenge is far more enjoyable when a trained coach delivers expert advice on how to optimize time and build the professional and personal life employees want.

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3 Ways to Hold Employees Accountable for Their Career Growth

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. It can be tough finding a balance between micromanaging and being too hands-off, especially when it comes to guiding employees who want to grow within the company. So, how can employers guide them and hold them accountable without being too bossy?

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Career development is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving retention, engagement, productivity and results. Nevertheless, it's frequently the thing that gets side-lined. When asked, the number one reason managers give is that they just don't have time. Don't have time for the meetings. The forms. The administrative hoops.

But there's a better way. And it's surprisingly simple: frequent short conversations with employees about their career goals and options, integrated seamlessly into the normal course of business. Kaye and Giulioni identify three broad types of conversations that have the power to motivate employees more deeply than any well-intentioned development event or process. These conversations will increase employee's awareness of their strengths, weaknesses and interests; point out where their organization and their industry are headed; and help them pull all of that together to design their own up-to-the-minute, personalized career paths.

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go is filled with practical tips, guidelines, and templates, as well as nearly a hundred suggested conversation questions. Illuminated with stories, quotes, and the perspectives of real managers and employees, this book proves that careers are best developed one conversation at a time.

Details

Available at

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Check Out the Book Help Them Grow or Watch Them GO: Career Conversations Employees Want

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Career development is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving retention, engagement, productivity and results. Nevertheless, it's frequently the thing that gets side-lined. When asked, the number one reason managers give is that they just don't have time. Don't have time for the meetings. The forms. The administrative hoops.

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Why a Growth Mindset is Essential For Career Success

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Why a Growth Mindset is Essential For Career Success

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Mindset is everything. Whether you're talking about career success, starting your own business, getting through a tough workout or being a parent, having the right mindset can make the difference between success and failure. The concept of mindset can't be discussed without mentioning Carol Dweck and her insightful book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck discovered the power of mindset. In her book, she outlines the differences between a fixed and growth mindset-showing how success in almost every area of life can be influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. Once we harness the power of a growth mentality, studies show that it can be essential for career success.
Fixed vs. growth mindset
A fixed mindset assumes that our intelligence, character and creative ability are static. Basically, you are dealt a hand in life and are required to accept it. Believing that your qualities are set in stone creates a desire to prove yourself over and over again. A fixed mindset can result in career stagnation.

On the other hand, a growth mindset is based on the idea that your essential qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. It assumes that everyone can change and grow through experience and practice. A growth mentality sees failure not as a detriment, but as a springboard to success. Failing is actually a form of learning. In one study conducted by Dweck with children, she offered four-year-olds a choice. They could either redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or try a harder one. Those with a fixed mindset chose the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability. They wanted to make sure they succeeded to seem smart. The children with a growth mindset tried to stretch themselves because their definition of success was about becoming smarter. In her book, Dweck writes, "After thirty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value."
Developing a growth mindset
Mindset stems from our own set of powerful beliefs. A growth mentality assumes that views can be changed when they no longer allow us to achieve our goals. Here are five ways you can take control of your mental attitude to foster a growth mindset:

1. Embrace failure

Fostering a growth mentality involves viewing failure as a positive rather than a negative. Everyone has setbacks. The key is to learn from each one and improve your decision making. Wildly successful people typically fail their way to success. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times before getting his big break. Even Oprah Winfrey was fired from her news coanchor position at a Baltimore TV station before going on to build a successful daytime talk show. A producer reportedly told her that she was "unfit for television news." Oprah later said, "I had no idea what I was in for or that this was going to be the greatest growing period of my adult life."

2. Become a lifelong learner

People with a growth mindset actively seek learning opportunities which result in more career success. Be curious about everything. Research shows that, while less successful people read mostly for entertainment, those at the top are avid readers of self-improvement books. In fact, 85% of successful people read two or more self-improvement or educational books per month. Another study revealed that 30% of executives said having a willingness to keep learning is the characteristic they consider most necessary for an employee to succeed.

3. Seek out challenge

Challenges are opportunities that propel you forward towards your goals and help you grow. According to C.S. Lewis, "Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny." Don't underestimate the power of being able to overcome obstacles. Are you feeling too comfortable in your current career? That may be an indication that it's time to seek out new challenges. After all, the magic happens outside your comfort zone.

4. Go beyond your limits

Another way to foster a growth mentality is to push yourself beyond what you think you can do. In one interesting study, researchers asked participants to cycle as hard as they could for 4,000 meters. Later, participants were given the same instructions but were able to race against an avatar of their previous ride. What they didn't know was that the avatar was going faster than they did previously. The result was that participants rode alongside their avatar, going significantly further than they did the first time. When you push yourself, you can surpass even your own expectations.

5. Ask for feedback

People who want to grow personally and professionally tend to ask for and value feedback. This is because growth-oriented individuals are interested in developing and challenging themselves. They aren't afraid to be criticized or judged. Once you understand that you are responsible for your own growth, you will have the confidence to ask for feedback and learn from it.
A changing world
With technology and business models changing rapidly, embracing a growth mindset is vital to career success. Workers will need to continuously learn new skills to remain competitive as automation technologies, including artificial intelligence, become more prevalent. According to a report by McKinsey, up to 375 million workers worldwide will need to change roles or learn new skills by 2030. Research shows that your mindset predicts achievement. It's not how good you are but how good you want to be that matters.

... Read More

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Why A Growth Mindset Is Essential For Career Success

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Mindset is everything. Whether you're talking about career success, starting your own business, getting through a tough workout or being a parent, having the right mindset can make the difference between success and failure. The concept of mindset can't be discussed without mentioning Carol Dweck and her insightful book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success .

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Assessments

The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) describes bright-side personality - qualities that describe how we relate to others when we are at our best. Whether your goal is to find the right hire or develop stronger leaders, assessing personality gives you valuable insight into how people work, how they lead, and how successful they will be.

The HPI was developed in the 1980s in the context of socio-analytic theory. Within this model, getting along with and getting ahead of others are seen as the dominant themes in social life. The HPI captures key behavioral tendencies relevant to these life themes and are based on the five-factor model of personality.

Quick Facts

15- to 20-minute completion time

Available in more than 40 languages

Based on the Five-Factor Model

More than three million participants assessed

Validated for use in more than 1000 research studies

No invasive or intrusive items

No adverse impact

Instantaneous scoring and reporting output

Online administration

The Hogan Personality Inventory is comprised of seven primary scales, six occupational scales, and 42 subscales.

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Hogan Personality Inventory | Hogan Assessments

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Assessments The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) describes bright-side personality - qualities that describe how we relate to others when we are at our best. Whether your goal is to find the right hire or develop stronger leaders, assessing personality gives you valuable insight into how people work, how they lead, and how successful they will be.

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The Dark Side of Personality
When the pressure's on, the line between strength and weakness isn't always clear - drive becomes ruthless ambition, and attention to detail becomes micromanaging. The dark side of personality derails careers and companies, but it doesn't have to.
Impression management is an important skill; research shows that individuals who scored high on a measure of self-monitoring were more likely to get promoted and have a successful career than their less tactful counterparts. But the more time we spend under pressure, the less able we are to manage our behavior, and, eventually, our dark sides emerge.

Dark-side personality describes a group of characteristics that can be strengths under normal circumstances, but, when individuals aren't self-monitoring, can become reputation-ruining interpersonal flaws. Even though they only tend to show up in times of increased stress or pressure, they can be extremely damaging to your reputation.

These dark side tendencies erode trust, loyalty, and enthusiasm, and are of particular concern in relation to leadership roles. The HDS measures eleven such flawed interpersonal styles that become exaggerated under pressure and are difficult to detect in interviews.

Hogan Development Survey

The only validated personality assessment that identifies the dark side of personality.

1. Leadership Development
Research indicates that for most people their immediate manager is a major source of stress. Most managers can improve their interpersonal effectiveness and HDS-based development programs help to reduce employee stress, improve staff morale, increase job satisfaction and retention, and optimize the constructive influence of managers.

2. Coaching
For those in positions of responsibility, dysfunctional interpersonal skills are among the most frequent causes of failure. The HDS is highly effective in highlighting the areas appropriate to a coaching agenda. While for some individuals, group or team situations may be a suitable context for personal development, in many cases individual executive HDS-based coaching is more appropriate.

3. Advanced Team Building
The HDS takes team building to another level by addressing dysfunctional behaviors that threaten working relationships. Within teams that work in a confined physical or psychological spaces, dark-side characteristics will upset team dynamics, add to stress, and adversely affect performance. An appreciation of the stress reactions of other team members will help to reduce the impact of disruptive dark-side tendencies.

4. Management Selection
High (or low) HDS scores pinpoint potential problem areas. HDS scores provide an indication of the possible risks associated with any appointment. HDS profiles help to focus on areas that can be explored at the interview and support more insightful interpretation of assessment center observations.

Find Out More

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When the pressure's on, the line between strength and weakness isn't always clear - drive becomes ruthless ambition, and attention to detail becomes micromanaging. The dark side of personality derails careers and companies, but it doesn't have to.

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Everyone has some level of privilege, and it is important to be open about these issues at work. How do you make it a constructive conversation? First, acknowledge that privilege does not mean being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It means that certain parts of your demographic make-up have…

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Want To Be A Great Leader? Be A Great Coach

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Want To Be A Great Leader? Be A Great Coach

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It's no secret that the Bay Area is one of the highest-priced labor markets in the country, if not the world. That's the bad news. The good news is that it is also a place where some of the most talented people in the world choose to work. I was recently chatting with a client - the CEO of a company that's fully equipped with expensive, but also highly skilled people - about how best to leverage and inspire his team. We discussed all the things he was doing to motivate them. It looked like the KPIs were already set and the goals were very clear, and that many of his people were already highly skilled at collaborating.

So, we asked, "What's next?" I asked if his leaders were effective coaches. He looked at me and said, "I don't even know what that means." I told him, "That's what people of the caliber of talent you have want - not to be directed, but rather to be inspired to discover their own strengths, and then be trusted to collaborate." I went on to explain that we are now in a coaching era of leadership and outlined how we got here and how it is different from the past.

Until about 20 years ago, most leaders grew up in a Post-World War II leadership model that was most focused on "command and control." Leadership was largely about getting people to follow direction, and the primary orientation of the leader was ensuring that execution was consistent and orderly. Everything from strategies to processes were set up to control for outcomes and employees were evaluated on compliance and noncompliance.

As information became more ubiquitous and people became more educated, there was a subtle shift toward an era of collaboration, where the primary leadership orientation placed less emphasis on hierarchy and direction and more on bringing shared skills to the table. During this era, the most successful organizations built their capabilities by leveraging the collective strength and wisdom of the leaders. Working with others became critical and cross-functional collaboration became an imperative.

In the current era, we have collected more data on what inspires people. Research suggests that certain constructive feedback is of limited value. Instead, leaders should focus on helping people discover their own greatness and leverage their unique talents. This is what I call the coaching era, and it requires a fairly distinct and radically more evolved skill set than leaders previously needed.

An essential premise of coaching is that the question is more important than the answer. In a "leader as coach" orientation, the leader's fundamental assumption is that the people they lead have everything needed to excel. By listening and asking questions, the leader understands their people and helps them better understand themselves. In this case, "understand" literally means "stands under" them - supporting them, helping them grow and making it clear that success is best achieved by people discovering and leading from their own wisdom. This whole concept is still relatively new and, like most change, comes slowly. According to a survey, 93% of employees believe their managers need training on how to actually coach employees. It's clear to me that most leaders are still operating in outdated modes and inappropriate orientations.

Still, for the CEO, it was a question of how. He asked, "For my leaders to be inspired to take on the mantel of coaching, how do we build it as a core leadership competency?" My answer is simple: The best way to learn how to coach is to be coached.

A leader who has the experience of being listened to, guided in their own discovery, held as an expert, observed and supported by a coach, will have a better understanding of what coaching looks like, what it feels like and the value that can be gained from it. I know this from experience. I became an executive coach only after being coached myself. It made me realize how to lead people in a very different way.

A recent Harvard Business Review article, "The Leader as Coach," suggests that the kind of coaching that creates sustainable success requires that all managers coach their people all the time, "in ways that help define the organization's culture and advance its mission. An effective manager-as-coach asks questions instead of providing answers, supports employees instead of judging them, and facilitates their development instead of dictating what has to be done."

I believe that in this complex, ever-changing world, leadership development training is necessary and organizations of the future will make coaching the primary tool for growth opportunities. In a 2019 Trium study on coaching best practices, 50% of participants stated that they use coaching today as a leadership development tool, yet nearly 100% indicated an aspirational desire to use it for helping already strong performers become even stronger. We already see this manifesting in leading companies. Take Microsoft. According to Joe Whittinghill, corporate vice president of talent, learning and insights, Microsoft has put a new coaching initiative in place that reinforces a "growth mindset in the way managers interact with their employees." I expect Microsoft to be one of many companies who require their leaders to become better at coaching.

So, ask yourself: Are you oriented to control, collaboration or coaching? You can use many different leadership models, but how you interpret the application of that model will be driven by your mindset and your underlying assumptions about who you are. In the coming years, I believe that organizations that embrace a "leader as coach" philosophy - and require its leaders to lean into it - will create unprecedented levels of performance while also honoring the talent of the people they lead.

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Council Post: Want To Be A Great Leader? Be A Great Coach

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It's no secret that the Bay Area is one of the highest-priced labor markets in the country, if not the world. That's the bad news. The good news is that it is also a place where some of the most talented people in the world choose to work.

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Leadership   |   Leaders Need Professional Coaching Now More Than Ever

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Leadership   |   Leaders Need Professional Coaching Now More Than Ever

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The pandemic brought unforeseen disruption at breathtaking speed, taking a toll on the physical and emotional well-being of employees. The stakes are even higher for leaders reexamining strategic direction and vision while managing ambiguity. With employees concerned about an evolving workplace, it is imperative that leaders be better equipped to address real anxieties. Professional coaching provides a long-term solution to lessening increasing pressures and growing uncertainty.

Business leaders need the agility to create vision and to support a company's greatest asset: its people.

Five workforce priorities are emerging for business leaders, according to PwC. All five have a people component:
* Protect people
* Communicate effectively
* Maintain continuity of work
* Assess workforce costs
* Prepare for recovery

In a traditional workplace, priorities like protecting people and communicating effectively were part of everyday leadership. When the workplace culture moved into the home, remote working altered the status quo. A leader's approach to intention, trust, and inclusiveness in relationships changed. Making intentional choices about work and team became difficult for anyone simultaneously homeschooling children and running a business. Without a water cooler, physical isolation inhibited building trust. Ensuring all team members had a voice and felt like part of a team was difficult without finely tuned soft skills of empathy and vulnerability.
A Strong Coaching Culture
Today's tumultuous times magnify opportunities to be proactive, discover alternate possibilities, and create an innovative ethos that looks for new solutions that resist the status quo. Shawna, one company leader who shared her story on #experiencecoaching, found that coaching transformed the way she led. Not having a vision for how people worked together had increased her leadership challenges, but through coaching, she learned new skills to create a vision and to reinvent her team's structure. Organizations integrating coaching into organizational effectiveness see improvements in retention, teamwork, relationships, and job satisfaction.

Companies that purposefully move away from "command and control" leadership in favor of a coaching culture are likely better prepared to quickly adapt, manage workforce priorities and support employees' physical and emotional well-being. Leaders like Shawna who have received coaching or are trained in coaching skills have a greater ability to communicate effectively and to lead with empathy.

A strong coaching culture is correlated with high-performing organizations, including success at large-scale strategic change. A successful coaching culture has six elements, according to Building a Coaching Culture for Change Management, a 2018 study conducted by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Human Capital Institute:

Employees value coaching.

Senior executives value coaching.

Managers/leaders develop coaching skills through accredited coach-specific training.

Coaching has a dedicated line item in the budget.

Employees have equal access to coaching.

Three coaching modalities are present: internal coaches, external coaches, and managers/leaders using coaching skills.

Shawna embraced a "coach approach" to leadership. This approach, using evidence-based ICF competencies specific to the coaching profession, is proven to help organizations better respond to the unknown. Paramount to these competencies is adherence to a code of ethics and confidentiality, the criticality of partnership between coach and client, and the importance of cultural, systemic, and contextual awareness. Partnering with an ICF-credentialed coach helped Shawna co-create possibilities and solutions that she may not have come up with on her own.

ICF defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." In a pandemic-aware world in which potential has become blurred for many, professional coaching offers a future-looking, transformational, and sustainable way to redesign potential. Coaching raises self-awareness and creates change through intentional choices. It is in those moments of choice when the coach/client partnership holds great value to build a plan that moves toward outcomes.
The Fear of Vulnerability
"All [coaching] clients, whoever they are and however grand, successful and important, fear two things: vulnerability and loss of control," Jenny Rogers writes in Coaching Skills-A Handbook. What could bring about these fears more than a pandemic? Professional coaches are trained to examine these and other uncertainties to inspire understanding and growth.

Unlike training, which has a set curriculum and agenda, coaching focuses on the client's agenda. During each session, the coach uses skillful questioning to help the client set its own goals, identify choices, and close gaps while moving toward a client-envisioned future. Engagements are ongoing, with frequent reinforcement and realignment through new learning and outcomes. In coaching, a client (or team) sets their own objectives, with a coach providing guidance. Ultimately, coaching is about change.
Leading Change Through Coaching
In times of change, it's necessary to have a clear change-management plan with people at its center. Coaching is one of the most effective ways to develop change-management capabilities. Individuals, teams, and organizations can explore resistance, increase engagement, and promote resilience in the face of change. Clients self-assess and course correct in real time rather than relying on predetermined milestones or measurements.

Shawna saw the need for change in her organization. Through her partnership with an ICF-credentialed coach, she learned new skills and resources, which she used with her new leadership team. That leadership team then brought newly acquired skills to their subgroups. The result was a trickle-down "coach approach" throughout the organization, helping Shawna move her leadership team forward while creating space for her to stay engaged and committed as a leader.

Workplace challenges are real and filled with uncertainty and ambiguity. Normalization is an ongoing struggle. Employees need support, communication, and consistency. How companies respond to this change is an intentional choice. The art and practice of coaching can build a pathway to change and create the possibility of emerging stronger and more resilient from Covid-19 and any situation. As Shawna discovered, professional coaching is an investment in leaders that can produce a win-win scenario through its positive ripple effect that leads to overall individual and organizational effectiveness.

To learn more about professional coaching and its organizational benefits, visit the International Coaching Federation.

Read more from the International Coaching Federation:

________________________________________________________________________________________________

The International Coaching Federation is the world's largest organization leading the global advancement of the coaching profession and fostering coaching's role as an integral part of a thriving society. Founded in 1995, its 35,000-plus members located in more than 140 countries and territories work toward common goals of enhancing awareness of coaching and upholding the integrity of the profession through lifelong learning and upholding the highest ethical standards. Through the work of its six unique family organizations, ICF empowers professional coaches, coaching clients, organizations, communities, and the world through coaching. Visit coachingfederation.org for more information.

Ann Rindone, ACC
Ann is an ICF Associate Certified Coach and a former Vice-President of ICF Professional Coaches where she led membership growth strategies and collaborative stakeholder relationships.

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Leaders Need Professional Coaching Now More Than Ever - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COACHING FEDERATION

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The pandemic brought unforeseen disruption at breathtaking speed, taking a toll on the physical and emotional well-being of employees. The stakes are even higher for leaders reexamining strategic direction and vision while managing ambiguity. With employees concerned about an evolving workplace, it is imperative that leaders be better equipped to address real anxieties.

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The Art of Self Coaching | Ed Batista Public Course

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The Art of Self Coaching | Ed Batista Public Course

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The Art of Self-Coaching is a course that I designed and launched at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) in Spring 2015 and have taught 13 times in the intervening years. In Spring 2020, the GSB moved all courses online in response to COVID-19, and in an effort to make a small contribution to help people cope with the pandemic, I offered a freely available online version of the course to the public. I recorded the live webinar sessions, and those videos, my slides, and all course readings have been posted below, so you can now take the course at the time of your choosing and at your own pace.

This page includes the following:

Course requirements.

Course registration (for future live versions of the course.)

A list of class sessions.

A list of textbooks for this version of the course (although it is NOT necessary to obtain any books in order to complete the course.)

Webinar videos, slides, readings and instructions for each week's session.

This course is free of charge and open to anyone. All necessary materials are posted below.

The only thing you need to provide is a partner with whom you can interact in real time during each class session via the medium of your choice: in-person, over the phone, or on a separate video call. (Much of the time in class sessions is spent in discussion with your partner, so I highly recommend committing to this course together with another person.)

If you participate in a future iteration of the live version of the course, you'll need online availability during course hours (to be determined) and the Zoom client application for video meetings.

The Spring 2020 live version of the course has been concluded, but if you'd like to receive information about future iterations of the course please submit your address below.

It is not necessary to register to take the course at your own pace using the materials posted on this page.

Your email address will only be used to send you messages related to this course. It will not be shared with any other parties for any reason.

...to the authors who have given me permission to make their copyrighted materials freely available here. While I've provided PDFs of various chapters and excerpts from their books below, I've also linked to their books on Amazon, and I encourage you to support their work:

...to the 468 students who've taken the course with me at Stanford since 2015, including 36 pioneers in Spring 2020 who helped me learn how to teach online--their feedback has made it better every year.

...to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, an institution I've been associated with since 1998 when I first arrived as an MBA student.

...to you, for joining me in this experiment!

It is not necessary to purchase any books for this course, thanks to the generosity of the authors above, whose books are listed in bold below. These authors or their publishers agreed to make the copyrighted chapters and excerpts that I share below freely available to the students in this course.

When it wasn't possible to make similar arrangements for other copyrighted materials, I've made those readings optional for this course. That said, I highly recommend exploring all of these works in full. Here's a printer-friendly list of these texts.
Class 1: BEGINNINGS Class 2: CHANGE Class 3: ATTENTION Class 4: EMOTION Class 5: HAPPINESS

No textbooks--all readings are available online.
Class 6: RESILIENCE & Class 7: UNHAPPINESS Class 8: SUCCESS Class 9: ENDINGS Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Note that the first several times I refer to an onscreen timer it fails to appear, due to user error. I eventually get it right :-) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) VULNERABILITY Slides Concepts Objectives
0:00-0:25 - Introduction & Warmup
0:25-0:45 - Partner Exercise
0:45-1:00 - Remarks on Coaching Skills
1:00-1:25 - Coaching Conversations with Partners
1:25-1:30 - For Next Time...
Preparation

Provide an overview of the course.

Understand basic principles of coaching.

Readings Introduction Coaching Skills

Complete the required readings below. (If you find yourself wanting to get more out of the conversations with your partner in future weeks, refer back to the Coaching Skills readings or to these additional coaching resources.)

Have a pad of paper and a Sharpie or magic marker--you'll be making a drawing and showing it to your partner.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Why am I taking this class? What concerns or interests motivate me?

What are my goals? What do I hope to accomplish?

OPTIONAL: Reflection and Journaling

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize (Ed Batista, originally published by the Harvard Business Review, 2012)

Scott Ginsberg on Asking (Better) Questions (Ed Batista, 2008)

OPTIONAL: Helping: How to Give, Offer, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)
Chapter 3, pages 30-47: "The Inequalities and Ambiguities of the Helping Relationship"

This course does not provide in-depth coaching training, but a basic understanding of coaching tools and skills will allow you to get more out of the conversations you'll have with your partner and others. In addition to the optional readings above, additional coaching resources can be found on my site.

There are no assignments for this course beyond the readings and exercises below, but I encourage you to make time for written reflection each week. These articles explore why reflection in general is useful, why journaling is particularly important, and how to pursue these practices most effectively:
Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes)
Agenda (& Approximate Timing)
Slides Concepts
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 1: BEGINNINGS in my Stanford course archive.
Objectives Preparation

Model of change (Kurt Lewin and Edgar Schein).

Grit (Angela Duckworth).

Mindset (Carol Dweck).

The complex effects of goal-setting.

Readings

Complete the required readings below and be prepared to discuss them with your partner.

Have a pad of paper and a Sharpie or magic marker.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Part 1: How does this model of change apply to you? What conditions foster a growth mindset for you?

Part 2: How might you use goals more effectively How does you mindset affect your grittiness?

Why Change is Hard (Ed Batista, 2014)

Building Blocks (A Tactical Approach to Change) (Ed Batista, 2019)

True Grit (Angela Duckworth and Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, 2013)

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance [6-minute video] (Angela Duckworth, 2013)

Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 2014)
A discussion of the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck.

Babies, Bathwater and Goal-Setting (Ed Batista, 2012)

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth, 2016)

Debate Arises over Teaching "Growth Mindsets" to Motivate Students (Lydia Denworth, Scientific American, 2019)

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) Slides Concepts
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 2: CHANGE in my Stanford course archive.
Objectives

System 1 and System 2 (Daniel Kahneman).

Mental control (Daniel Wegner).

Continuous partial attention (Linda Stone).

Focus and presence (Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness).

Preparation

Consider the importance of attention as a resource.

Understand the different modes of thinking in Kahneman's framework.

Consider difficulties in the process of mental control.

Begin to explore the relationship between attention and emotion (the topic of Class 4).

Readings & Exercises

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Information Diet" worksheet.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Part 1: We're often in need of "healthy distractions" to help us wind down at the end of the day or fend off anxiety or boredom. What's a "healthy distraction" that you would recommend to others?

Part 2: How am I managing my attention now? What experiments might I run?

A Better Information Diet (Ed Batista, 2019)

"Information Diet" Worksheet

White Bears and Car Crashes (Thinking About Thinking) (Ed Batista, 2013)

Beyond Simple Multi-Tasking: Continuous Partial Attention (Linda Stone, 2009)

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People) (Ed Batista, 2017)

White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control (Daniel Wegner, 1994)

Chapter 1, pages 1-18: "Mental Control"

This book is one of my favorites on our syllabus, and the late Wegner is well worth further study. Brief descriptions of his work on mental control and thought suppression are archived online.

OPTIONAL: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

Chapter 1, pages 19-30: "The Characters of the Story"

Chapter 2, pages 31-38: "Attention and Effort"

Chapter 3, pages 39-49: "The Lazy Controller"

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) Slides Concepts Objectives Preparation
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 3: ATTENTION in my Stanford course archive.
Readings & Exercises

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Emotional Style Assessment." Have a copy of your assessment results available for class.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Part 1: A connection between our classes on Attention and Emotion is the idea that "Emotions are attention magnets." What are some of the emotions (positive and negative) you've experienced recently? How do these feelings affect what you pay attention to?

Part 2: Consider the Dimensions of Emotional Style model and your results. What does this model have to teach you? What are you making of your results?

Part 3: What helps your regulate your emotions? What makes it more difficult?

Emotional Style Assessment and Emotional Style Assessment Scoring (Richard Davidson)

This instrument is reproduced in Chapter 3 of Davidson.

Download, complete and score the assessment (consisting of 60 true/false questions) BEFORE doing this week's readings.

You will not be required to share your results, but have them available for class.

Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason (Part 1: Overview) (Ed Batista, 2011)

Part 2: Underlying Questions, Part 3, Conclusions and Part 4: Excerpts.

Please note that only Part 1: Overview is required reading for this class.

The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live-and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson, 2012)

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Daniel Siegel, 2009)

The Map Is Not the Territory (Ed Batista, 2016)
This reading will be relevant for Weeks 4, 5 and 6. Refer back to it as needed.

The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live-and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson, 2012)

Chapter 1, pages 1-12: "One Brain Does Not Fit All"

Chapter 11, pages 225-252: "Rewired, or Neurally Inspired Exercises to Change Your Emotional Style"

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) Slides Concepts
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 4: EMOTION in my Stanford course archive.
Objectives Preparation

Sources of well-being (Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener and Christopher Peterson).

Hedonistic well-being, i.e. pleasure vs. eudaimonic well-being, i.e. meaning and purpose (Emily Esfahani Smith, Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, et al).

Readings & Exercises

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Activity Fit Diagnostic," the "VIA Survey of Character Strengths," and the "Signature Strengths" worksheet. Have copies of your results available for class.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Part 1: Be prepared to tell a brief joke to your partner. Knock-knock jokes and Dad jokes are perfect. Yes, this will be awkward :-)

Part 2: Consider your Activity-Fit Diagnostic results. What "happiness strategies" most interest you? What experiments might you run? How will you hold yourself accountable? (And how could your partner help?)

Part 3: Consider your Signature Strengths worksheet. How are your Signature Strengths reliable paths to meaning for you?

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) Slides Concepts Objectives Preparation
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 5: HAPPINESS in my Stanford course archive.

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Resilience Quotient Assessment," the "Resilience" worksheet, and the "Vulnerability Stories" worksheet. Have copies of your assessment results and your worksheets available for class.

After completing the required readings, reflect on the following:

Part 1: Dress like a superhero for class--a simple mask is fine--and if your partner isn't with you in person, be prepared to share a selfie with them. Yes, this will be awkward :-)

Part 2: Consider your Resilience Quotient results. How do you feel about this data? What would be useful to discuss with your partner? How might you fully leverage your strengths? How might you address your weaknesses?

Part 3: As you prepare for the Vulnerability Stories exercise, consider this passage from my post:

Readings & Exercises
Resilience Vulnerability
We all experience some form of shame on a regular basis in organizational life, ranging from mild embarrassment to more profound remorse to true feelings of deep shame, and all of these emotions leave us feeling vulnerable. A leader who can meet vulnerability with empathy, who can feel compassion for themselves and for others in the wake of setbacks and mistakes, will be able to build connections and improve their working relationships at the most difficult moments and turn crises into learning experiences.
Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing)
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 6: RESILIENCE & VULNERABILITY in my Stanford course archive.
Slides Concepts Objectives
0:00-0:20 - Opening Exercise & Partner Debrief
0:20-1:05 - Series of Three Partner Exercises
1:05-1:15 - Remarks on Unhappiness
1:15-1:25 - Questions
1:25-1:30 - For Next Time...
Preparation

Consider a range of approaches to dealing with setbacks and difficulties.
Readings & Exercises
Buddhist Thought Logotherapy

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Sources of Unhappiness Survey."

Have pen and paper available for class, as we'll be conducting a series of exercises that require you to take written notes.

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing) Concepts
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 7: UNHAPPINESS in my Stanford course archive.
Objectives

Popular beliefs about success, fulfillment, and happiness, and sources of social comparison.
Preparation

Prepare for the challenges that accompany professional struggles and success.
Readings & Exercises

Complete the required readings below, as well as the "Managing Oneself" worksheet, and have a copy of your worksheet available for class.

Part 1: Be prepared to share brief responses to these questions with your partner:

Part 2: Reflect on the following questions and be prepared to discuss them with your partner:

Part 3: Reflect on the following questions and be prepared to discuss them with your partner:

What are my greatest strengths?

Under what conditions do I do my best work?

Webinar Video (1 hour, 30 minutes) Agenda (& Approximate Timing)
Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 8: SUCCESS in my Stanford course archive.
Concepts
0:00-0:25 - Introduction & Partner Conversation
0:25-0:40 - Debrief & Remarks on Endings
0:40-0:55 - Closing the Partnerships
0:55-1:15 - Debrief & Final Remarks
1:15-1:30 - Closing the Class
Objectives

Transitions vs. changes (William Bridges).

Habits and routines (Christopher Peterson).

Preparation

Consolidate lessons learned and prepare for future transitions.

Acknowledge the ending of the coaching partnership and close the class.

Readings & Exercises

Complete the required readings and exercises below, including the two worksheets and the "Closing the Class" survey.

Part 1: After completing the "Putting It All Together" worksheet, reflect on the following questions and be prepared to discuss them with your partner:

What does self-coaching mean to me?

What will it look like in practice for me?

You may want to share your worksheet with your partner before class.

Part 2: Complete the "Partner Feedback" worksheet and be prepared to have a final conversation with your partner.

While the worksheet asks you to share A) how your partner has contributed to your learning, B) what you've appreciated about them, and C) what you hope for them, use whatever format is best for you.

Written notes can help you focus on your main points and keep track of time, but you won't want to simply read from a script, so bullet points may be preferable.

While you may have an ongoing relationship with your partner, this is your final conversation with them in the context of this course. Consider how you want to end this chapter of your work together.

Additional readings can be found at the bottom of Class 9: ENDINGS in my Stanford course archive.

𝔻𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕪 𝕠𝕗 𝔼𝕣𝕚𝕜 𝔹𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕥𝕤𝕤𝕠𝕟.

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The Art of Self-Coaching (Public Course)

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Photo by Seth Anderson OVERVIEW The Art of Self-Coaching is a course that I designed and launched at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) in Spring 2015 and have taught 13 times in the intervening years. In Spring 2020,...

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How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure

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How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure

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Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures?

In May, right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the "New Coke" fiasco of so many years ago. "If we're not making mistakes," he insisted, "we're not trying hard enough."

In June, even as his company was enjoying unparalleled success with its subscribers, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings worried that his fabulously valuable streaming service had too many hit shows and was canceling too few new shows. "Our hit ratio is too high right now," he told a technology conference. "We have to take more risk...to try more crazy things...we should have a higher cancel rate overall."

Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, makes the case as directly as he can that his company's growth and innovation is built on its failures. "If you're going to take bold bets, they're going to be experiments," he explained shortly after Amazon bought Whole Foods. "And if they're experiments, you don't know ahead of time if they're going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn't work."

The message from these CEOs is as easy to understand as it is hard for most of us to put into practice. I can't tell you how many business leaders I meet, how many organizations I visit, that espouse the virtues of innovation and creativity. Yet so many of these same leaders and organizations live in fear of mistakes, missteps, and disappointments - which is why they have so little innovation and creativity. If you're not prepared to fail, you're not prepared to learn. And unless people and organizations manage to keep learning as fast as the world is changing, they'll never keep growing and evolving.

So what's the right way to be wrong? Are there techniques that allow organizations and individuals to embrace the necessary connection between small failures and big successes? Smith College, the all-women's school in western Massachusetts, has created a program called "Failing Well" to teach its students what all of us could stand to learn. "What we're trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning it's the feature," explained Rachel Simmons, who runs the initiative, in a recent New York Times article. Indeed, when students enroll in her program, they receive a Certificate of Failure that declares they are "hereby authorized to screw up, bomb, or fail" at a relationship, a project, a test, or any other initiative that seems hugely important and "still be a totally worthy, utterly excellent human being." Students who are prepared to handle failure are less fragile and more daring than those who expect perfection and flawless performance.

That's a lesson worth applying to business as well. Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino's Pizza since 2010, has had one of the most successful seven-year runs of any business leader in any field. But all of his company's triumphs, he insists, are based on its willingness to face up to the likelihood of mistakes and missteps. In a presentation to other CEOs, Doyle described two great challenges that stand in the way of companies and individuals being more honest about failure. The first challenge, he says, is what he calls "omission bias" - the reality that most people with a new idea choose not to pursue the idea because if they try something and it doesn't work, the setback might damage their career. The second challenge is to overcome what he calls "loss aversion" - the tendency for people to play not to lose rather than play to win, because for most of us, "The pain of loss is double the pleasure of winning."

Creating "the permission to fail is energizing," Doyle explains, and a necessary condition for success - which is why he titled his presentation, with apologies to the movie Apollo 13, "Failure Is an Option." And that may be the most important lesson of all. Just ask Reed Hastings, Jeff Bezos, or the new CEO of Coca-Cola: There is no learning without failing, there are no successes without setbacks.

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How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure

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Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? In May, right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the "New Coke" fiasco of so many years ago.

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Why Some People Get Burned out and others don't

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Why Some People Get Burned out and others don't

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Don't be the source of your stress. Resist your perfectionist tendencies and your drive for constant high achievement. Recognize when you're being too hard on yourself, and let go.

Recognize your limitations. Don't try to be a hero. If you don't have the ability or bandwidth to do something, be honest with yourself and ask for help.

Reevaluate your perspective. Do you view a particular situation as a threat to something you value? Or do you view it as a problem to be solved? Change how you see the situation to bring your stress levels down.

Stress and burnout are not the same thing. And while we know that stress often leads to burnout, it's possible to handle the onslaught of long hours, high pressure, and work crises in a way that safeguards you from the emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a lack of confidence in one's abilities that characterizes burnout. The key is tapping into your emotional intelligence.

This is what one of us (Kandi) discovered in a recent study (" Leading Through Burnout") where we assessed 35 chief medical officers (CMOs) at 35 large hospitals for their level of stress and tried to determine what, if anything, they do to deal with burnout. The findings surprised us: despite the fact that an overwhelming 69% of the CMOs described their current stress level as severe, very severe, or worst possible, the majority were not burned out according to the Maslach Burnout Inventory. In our interviews with these CMOs, we found a common theme to what kept their stress under control: emotional intelligence.

As one of us (Annie) has written about before, research suggests that emotional intelligence (EI) supports superior coping abilities and helps people deal with chronic stress and prevent burnout.

You and Your Team Series

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional self-awareness, one of the components of EI, for example, allows us to understand the sources of our frustration or anxiety and improves our ability to consider different responses. Self-management, another EI competency, allows us to stay calm, control impulses, and act appropriately when faced with stress. Conflict management skills allow us to channel our anxiety and emotions into problem-solving mode rather than allowing the situation to bother us-or keep us up all night. Empathy also helps to fight stress. When we actively try to understand others, we often begin to care about them. Compassion, as with other positive emotions, can counter the physiological effects of stress. And, attuning to other people's perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs contributes to our ability to gain trust and influence others. This, on a very practical level, often means we get the help we need before stress spirals into burnout.
What You Can Do to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout
People do all kinds of destructive things to deal with stress-they overeat, abuse drugs and alcohol, and push harder rather than slowing down. What we learned from our study of chief medical officers is that people can leverage their emotional intelligence to deal with stress and ward off burnout. You, too, might want to try the following:

Don't be the source of your stress. Too many of us create our own stress, with its full bodily response, merely by thinking about or anticipating future episodes or encounters that might be stressful. People who have a high need to achieve or perfectionist tendencies may be more prone to creating their own stress. We learned from our study that leaders who are attuned to the pressures they put on themselves are better able to control their stress level. As one CMO described, "I've realized that much of my stress is self-inflicted from years of being hard on myself. Now that I know the problems it causes for me, I can talk myself out of the non-stop pressure."

Recognize your limitations. Becoming more aware of your strengths and weaknesses will clue you in to where you need help. In our study, CMOs described the transition from a clinician to leadership role as being a major source of their stress. Those who recognized when the demands were outweighing their abilities, didn't go it alone-they surrounded themselves with trusted advisors and asked for help.

Take deep breaths when you feel your tension and anxiety rapidly rising. Mindfulness practices help us to deal with immediate stressors and long-term difficulties. Several of our study participants described using mindfulness techniques to slow their heart rate and bring their tension level down when faced with a stressor. As one leader described, practicing mindfulness "allows me to be more open to other solutions and I don't waste time in defense mode." Heightening your awareness of your breathing may be difficult at first, for example, but remember that attention is the ultimate act of self-control.

Reevaluate your perspective of the situation. Do you view a particular situation as a threat to something you value? Or do you view it as a problem to be solved? Changing your perspective on whether you're experiencing distress or eustress can have an eye-opening effect on your ability to bring your stress level down. One CMO described the shift in her mindset, "What once felt like stress is now good stress; I'm motivated to think of it as a problem to be solved."

Deescalate conflicts by putting yourself in the other person's shoes. The stress from conflicts often leads to burnout so it's best to deescalate conflicts when you can. Be inquisitive, ask questions, listen deeply. Keep your attention to the other person and focus on what he is trying to tell you. By seeking to understand his perspective, you'll be in a much better position to gain his trust and influence him. One person we interviewed uses this approach consistently. He described how sharpening his empathic listening skills has enabled him to foster greater collaboration and create buy-in with his colleagues. In a recent situation, he said a physician stormed into his office and said "You must do this or babies will die." Instead of reacting defensively and potentially causing more harm, he steadied himself and focused his attention on seeking to understand the physician's perspective. His response deescalated the conflict and resulted in a healthy, less stressful conversation.

By using and developing your emotional intelligence, you can put a stop to burnout-for you, and for others. Remember, though: improving EI takes time and effort. Be patient with yourself, as well as forgiving and kind. The last thing you want to do is to make improving your EI another source of stress.

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Why Some People Get Burned Out and Others Don't

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Don't be the source of your stress. Resist your perfectionist tendencies and your drive for constant high achievement. Recognize when you're being too hard on yourself, and let go. Recognize your limitations. Don't try to be a hero. If you don't have the ability or bandwidth to do something, be honest with yourself and ask for help.

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¿Como hacer que tu cerebro funcione mejor?

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¿Como hacer que tu cerebro funcione mejor?

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Your working brain needs certain things for optimal health and career performance.
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If you're like most people, you might not know about your own brain. Yet, your brain is who you are. It's the size of your fist, weighs about as much as a cantaloupe-around three pounds-and is the boss of your mind and body. It never shuts down and is active even when you're asleep. It determines how well you perform at work and how far you climb the career ladder, so it's important to know what it needs from you. With modern imaging techniques, neuroscientists have advanced our understanding of this amazing organ, how it functions and what it needs to provide you optimal job performance. Science shows that you can provide your brain 10 things to keep it happy and healthy and maximize your career success.

1. Your brain needs plenty of blood flow to function optimally. Studies show that exercise is good medicine, not just for limbs and heart, but for the brain as well. One study found that, after twelve months, exercise and movement amped up blood flow to the brain and even helped slow the onset of memory loss and dementia. You can feed your brain the excess blood it needs through aerobics, walking and stretching and toning your body.

2. Your brain needs periodic breaks. Science doesn't back up the belief that running your brain into the ground is good business. In fact, new research shows the value of what scientists call "Microbreaks" throughout the workday. These short breaks-I recommend five minutes or less-are effective energy management strategies and can be as simple as stretching, walking up and down stairs, gazing out a window at nature, snacking or having a five minute mindful meditation. Microbreaks mitigate brain and decision fatigue and chill your brain between appointments when you deep breathe, meditate, practice yoga or tai chi or get a massage.

3. Your brain needs certain kinds of foods. Healthy brain foods boost your mood, health and work performance. Pay attention to the food on your plate, and ask if it promotes overall brain health. Proteins-such as meats, poultry dairy, cheese and eggs-give your brain the amino acids it needs to create neurotransmitter pathways. Plus, it stabilizes blood sugar. Omega-3 fatty acids such as salmon, mackerel, tuna and sardines help your brain with mood. Vitamin B is essential for brain wellness and can be found in eggs, whole grains, fish, avocados and citrus fruits. And Vitamin D-found in dairy products, beef liver, orange juice or egg yolks-is an important mood stabilizer.

4. Your brain needs ample sleep. According to neuroscientists, sleep is restorative, whereas sleep deprivation lowers your resistance to stress and harms your brain. Lack of sleep interferes with memory and learning. Your brain moves slower. You're more forgetful, and your attention is short-circuited. A recent study showed that ample sleep restores clarity and performance by actively refining cortical plasticity. The converse is also true. Studies show that sleep deprivation leads to brain stress, cloudy thinking and decision fatigue. Plus, fragmented sleep signals a vulnerability to social stress. Research shows sleep loss makes it difficult to see the positive side of things, causing us to react stronger to stressful workplace situations; whereas, ample sleep helps us respond better to negative and positive situations at work.

5. Your brain learns from novelty. Your brain's ability to adapt to novel situations is essential for survival. Studies show that the brain's exposure to new experiences dampens established thought patterns in order to consolidate new information. Novelty promotes adaptive learning by resetting key brain circuits and enhances your ability to update new ideas into existing neurological frameworks. So your brain likes it when you try new things.

6. Your brain is healthier when you have social connections. Recent findings show that social engagement mitigates cognitive decline. People who get together with friends and family, volunteer or attend classes have more robust gray matter and healthier brains. The key is to avoid social isolation and cultivate safe ways to maintain social interactions in order to enhance your brain's gray matter and amp up your well-being.

7. Your brain prefers focus to multitasking. At some point, you might have to perform more than one activity at a time. But if multitasking becomes a pattern, it can backfire. When you bounce between several tasks at once, you're forcing your brain to keep refocusing with each rebound and reducing productivity by up to 40%. Not only does multitasking undermine productivity, it neutralizes efficiency, creating several half-baked projects that can leave your brain overwhelmed and stressed out. In an effort to handle the overload from prolonged multitasking, scientists say your brain rewires, causing fractured thinking, lack of concentration and decision fatigue. As a result, multitaskers take longer to switch among tasks, have greater brain fatigue and are less efficient at juggling work problems than non-multitaskers.

8. Your brain wants to help you communicate with co-workers from socially diverse backgrounds. Yale scientists discovered that your brain acts differently when you talk with someone of a different socioeconomic background from your own. They detected a higher activity level in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-regulation, bias avoidance and collaboration with your limbic system (or emotional brain) to help you understand the world. Your prefrontal cortex is the decider of whether or not you do what your impulsive, lightning-fast emotional brain wants to do. The Yale scientists concluded that, despite our implicit biases and prejudices, the human brain's frontal lobe activates during conversations among employees from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to assist in navigating communication barriers and social diverse attitudes.

9. Your brain likes positivity. Research shows that, although the brain is wired for negativity, it likes optimism. Neuroscientists have found that chronic pessimism damages your telomeres-the protective tips at the end of chromosomes that are shortened by negative thoughts and lengthened by positive thoughts. Shortened telomeres make us prone to declining health, truncated career trajectory and earlier death. Additional research shows people who are enthusiastic and cheerful are less likely to have memory decline as they age. Positivity is always present-even under the direst pressures. Focusing on the possible, big-picture aspects of situations enlarges your brain's range of vision, allowing it to see more possibilities. Studies show when you expand your negativity's constrictive "zoom lens" into a "wide-angle lens," it creates more optimism, and optimists scale the career ladder faster and farther than pessimists.

10. Your brain needs 120 minutes per week in nature. A groundbreaking study in Scientific Reports found that your brain loves spending a minimum of two hours a week in parks, woodlands or beaches. It promotes physical and mental health and well-being and gives you a bigger perspective of your life circumstances. Study participants who spent 120 minutes per week had better health and higher psychological well-being than the ones who didn't spend any weekly time in nature or those who spent less than two hours per week. It doesn't matter how the 120 minutes are achieved. It can be done in one block or spread out over the entire week to get the benefit. It doesn't matter what activity you're involved in, either, as long as you're outdoors: sailing, biking, kayaking, walking or tennis-or simply sitting.

It's A No-Brainer
These 10 steps stress-proof your brain and make it happy and healthy. You don't have to continue to allow external or internal pressures to clog your brain, dictate its health and burn you out. Your brain and body weren't designed to stay on red alert 24/7 in order to speed from task to task. Unless you're under threat, you were designed to saunter. When you slow down and savor job tasks you've been rushing through, ease and stillness keep your energy up, brain clear and productivity high. Scientists recently discovered that when you resolve an argument by day's end, it significantly reduces brain stress. So step back, take a breath and chill. By the end of the day, you will have time left over for the things you want to do. You will be more productive at work, your brain will be happier, and you won't wear it out before its time.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

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10 Things A Working Brain Needs To Build A Healthy, Successful Career

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If you're like most people, you might not know about your own brain. Yet, your brain is who you are. It's the size of your fist, weighs about as much as a cantaloupe-around three pounds-and is the boss of your mind and body. It never shuts down and is active even when you're asleep.

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Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com!

Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com!

Program Coordinator

I lead a team of facilitators that present to elementary school students everyday (experienced facilitator myself) and the whole vibe of life Labs is AMAZING! I get lots of great ideas and nuggets that help me to coach my team ...and myself. I appreciate the genuine sentiment to never stop learning. These snackable pod cast episodes are so addicting and I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind them. Please keep them coming! I am inspired!!

Love these Jedi-mind tricks!

Stumbled upon this podcast while looking to brush up on my leadership skills and can already tell that it's right up my alley.

Somehow manages to be both high-level *and* accessible, which is a feat in itself.

Looking forward to more!

Wow! I'm hooked

As a mentor, instructor, and human being I strive to learn two new things everyday in different subjects. Listened to your first episodes and I am hooked!!!

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the leaderlab powered by lifelabs learning

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‎The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning on Apple Podcasts

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Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com! Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode.

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Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com!

Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com!

Program Coordinator

I lead a team of facilitators that present to elementary school students everyday (experienced facilitator myself) and the whole vibe of life Labs is AMAZING! I get lots of great ideas and nuggets that help me to coach my team ...and myself. I appreciate the genuine sentiment to never stop learning. These snackable pod cast episodes are so addicting and I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind them. Please keep them coming! I am inspired!!

Love these Jedi-mind tricks!

Stumbled upon this podcast while looking to brush up on my leadership skills and can already tell that it's right up my alley.

Somehow manages to be both high-level *and* accessible, which is a feat in itself.

Looking forward to more!

Wow! I'm hooked

As a mentor, instructor, and human being I strive to learn two new things everyday in different subjects. Listened to your first episodes and I am hooked!!!

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the leaderlab powered by lifelabs learning

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‎The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode. This podcast is packed with research, humor, and experiments for you to try in your laboratory of life. Want to learn more? Head to LifeLabsLearning.com! Learn a new leadership skill in less than 11 minutes each episode.

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Learn how leaders can develop an "adaptively authentic" style in this video slide deck. Download a customizable version here.

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Alejandro Durán,
Desarrollo de personas y equipos | Formación | Learnability
www.alexdurana.com

16/02/2021 · La Learnability o capacidad para desarrollar el deseo de aprendizaje continuo durante toda la vida es sin duda uno de los términos que de manera más recurrente venimos oyendo en los últimos tiempos. No en vano, la situación por la que atravesamos nos ha dejado claro que aprender ha dejado de ser un elemento puntual para convertirse en un modo de vida. Cambios profundos a todos los niveles (social, económico, laboral, político, etcétera) nos permiten comprender que seguir siendo empleables en un mercado como el actual reside precisamente ahí, en la capacidad para aprender de manera continua o lo que es lo mismo en la learnability.

En base a este contexto es importante tener presente una serie de claves que ayudarán a interiorizar esta nueva competencia y a desarrollarla de manera enfocada y en base a unos objetivos claros.

Así, las 10 claves que pueden ayudar a comenzar a trabajar la learnability son:

1. Nuestra faceta de estudiantes nos acompañará durante todo la vida. En este nuevo paradigma profesional donde tendremos que cambiar de trabajo e incluso de profesión en diversas ocasiones, comprender esto lo antes posible no permitirá estar abiertos al conocimiento de una manera proactiva.

2. Aprender es posible en cualquier momento y en cualquier lugar. Gracias a las nuevas tecnologías, plataformas existentes así como a los múltiples dispositivos con los que interactuamos en la actualidad el conocimiento no conoce límites.

3. El aprendizaje autodidacta es absolutamente válido. Aprender en base a nuestra necesidades y preferencias para desarrollarnos adecuadamente fuera de los canales más formales y encorsetados.

4. Interioricemos la filosofía basada en el concepto de APRENDER - DESAPRENDER - APRENDER. Enseñemos a nuestro cerebro a ser flexible y maleable ante el cambio. Solo de esta manera podremos sobrevivir y convertir el learnability en nuestra herramienta de desarrollo más poderosa.

5. Estamos expuestos a mucha información y en ocasiones nos costará diferenciar lo que aporta valor de lo que no. En este sentido necesitamos volvernos más críticos y exigentes para no terminar infoxicados y sobrepasados con enseñanzas que no nos aportan nada.

6. Nuestro entorno en una fuente de aprendizaje continuo. Hasta la persona que menos imaginamos puede enseñarnos algo. Solo tenemos que tener los ojos abiertos y la mente permeable para que cale lo que otros tienen en su maleta y quieren compartir con nosotros.

7. Si nos piden hacer algo que desconocemos, digamos que sí y lancémonos enseguida a aprenderlo. Aquí radica en buena parte la esencia del learnability, en la curiosidad y la actitud de estar siempre abiertos a aprender cosas nuevas.

8. El factor económico también ha dejado de ser un problema para nuestro aprendizaje. Si bien es cierto que hace años era necesario disponer de un respaldo económico importante para poder realizar cualquier tipo de formación, hoy en día se han desarrollado opciones que nos ayudan a luchar contra este elemento limitante. Existen multitud de opciones de aprendizaje que son absolutamente gratuitas o con un coste muy bajo. Descubrámoslas y pongámonos manos a la obra

9. Los límites al conocimiento los ponemos nosotros. Si antes lo ideal era que fuéramos expertos en una sola temática, ahora esos límites se difuminan y nos permiten ampliar nuestros conocimientos en todos los ámbitos que deseemos y creamos que son generadores de valor.

10. Ya no nos quedan excusas para no aprender. Nunca antes aprender había sido tan accesible y fácil. Ahora solo nos falta interiorizarlo y ponernos manos a la obra. Si queremos avanzar en este nuevo contexto profesional debemos asumir que el aprendizaje nos va a acompañar durante toda nuestra vida.

Para que estas claves cobren sentido y podamos trabajar de manera estructurada en su desarrollo existe una herramienta que debemos conocer y desarrollar. Se trata de la EPA (entorno personal de aprendizaje). Podemos definirlo como el conjunto de herramientas, recursos y metodologías que estructuradas bajo un sistema de trabajo nos permiten aprender a nuestro ritmo y en base a nuestras necesidades.

En torno a este concepto existen 3 aspectos fundamentales que van a marcar el eje central en el desarrollo de un buen EPA:

1. La temática o temáticas sobre las que necesito seguir formándome y capacitándome.

2. El tiempo del que dispongo para esta labor.

3. Los recursos que tengo a mi alcance para trabajarlo.

Dicho esto, podemos decir por tanto que para trabajar el EPA de nuestro learnability de manera adecuada debemos poner foco en los siguientes elementos:

Identificar las áreas de conocimiento sobre las que necesito seguir formándome o capacitándome.

Identificar el tiempo que realmente tengo disponible e incluirlo en mi agenda de trabajo.

Identificar las fuentes de conocimiento que nutrirán mi EPA para optimizar su acceso y uso.

Establecer unos objetivos de aprendizaje semanales, mensuales o trimestrales para poder chequear que se van cumpliendo y que los alcanzamos tal y como estaba previsto.

Desarrollar mi MAPA EPA, donde identificar objetivos, recursos a utilizar, indicadores de éxito o revisión de resultados, entre otros elementos.

En definitiva, recordemos que en un mundo cambiante como el actual el efecto learnability será capaz de marcar la diferencia entre los profesionales que seguirán estando en la cresta de la ola laboral y aquellos otros que encontrarán mayores limitaciones para encontrar su lugar.

Por todo ello, pongámonos manos a la obra, trabajemos en su desarrollo y sintamos en primera persona el efecto learnability.

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El efecto Learnability: Claves para convertir el aprendizaje continuo en tu mayor aliado profesional

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La Learnability o capacidad para desarrollar el deseo de aprendizaje continuo durante toda la vida es sin duda uno de los términos que de manera más recurrente venimos oyendo en los últimos tiempos. No en vano, la situación por la que atravesamos nos ha dejado claro que aprender ha dejado de ser un elemento puntual para convertirse en un modo de vida.

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A few years ago, leaders at the Gates Foundation reached out to see if I could help them improve their culture. They already had a strong culture of performance: They hired world-class scientists and maintained excellence of execution. Their goal was to improve their learning culture, in which people have the humility to know what they don't know and the curiosity to rethink the way they've always done things.

When I first arrived, people were whispering about the annual strategy reviews. It's the time when program teams across the foundation meet with the cochairs - Bill and Melinda Gates - and the CEO to give progress reports on execution and collect feedback. Leaders were concerned that the pressure to present airtight analyses was discouraging people from taking risks. They often stuck to tried‑and‑true strategies that would make incremental progress rather than daring to undertake bold experiments that might make a bigger dent in some of the world's most vexing problems.

The foundation of a learning culture is psychological safety - being able to take risks without fear of reprisal. Evidence shows that when teams have psychological safety, they're more willing to acknowledge their own mistakes and figure out how to prevent them moving forward. They're also more comfortable raising problems and exploring innovative solutions.

Related stories

by Jon Katzenbach, Chad Gomes, and Carolyn Black

The standard advice for managers on building psychological safety is to model openness and inclusiveness: Ask for feedback on how you can improve, and people will feel it's safe to take risks. To test whether that recommendation would work, I had launched an experiment with a doctoral student, Constantinos Coutifaris. In multiple companies, we randomly assigned some managers to ask their teams for constructive criticism. Over the following week, their teams reported higher psychological safety, but as we anticipated, it didn't last. Some managers who asked for feedback didn't like what they heard and got defensive. Others found the feedback useless or felt helpless to act on it, which discouraged them from continuing to seek feedback and their teams from continuing to offer it.

Another group of managers took a different approach, one that had a less immediate impact in the first week but led to sustainable gains in psychological safety a full year later. Instead of asking them to seek feedback, we had randomly assigned those managers to share their past experiences with receiving feedback and their future development goals. We advised them to tell their teams about a time when they benefited from constructive criticism and to identify the areas that they were working to improve now.

By admitting some of their imperfections out loud, managers demonstrated that they could take it - and made a public commitment to remain open to feedback. They normalized vulnerability, making their teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles. Their employees gave more useful feedback, because they knew where their managers were working to grow. That motivated managers to create practices to keep the door open: They started holding "ask me anything" coffee chats, opening weekly one‑on‑one meetings by asking for constructive criticism, and setting up monthly team sessions where everyone shared their development goals and progress.

Creating psychological safety can't be an isolated episode or a task to check off on a to‑do list. When discussing their weaknesses, many of the managers in our experiment felt awkward and anxious at first. Many of their team members were surprised by that vulnerability and unsure of how to respond. Some were skeptical: They thought their managers might be fishing for compliments or cherry‑picking comments that made them look good. It was only over time - as managers repeatedly demonstrated humility and curiosity - that the dynamic changed.

At the Gates Foundation, I wanted to go a step further. Instead of just having managers open up with their own teams about how they had previously been criticized, I wondered what would happen if senior leaders shared their experiences across the entire organization. It dawned on me that I had a memorable way to make that happen.

A few years earlier, our MBA students at Wharton had decided to create a video for their annual comedy show. It was inspired by Mean Tweets, the late‑night segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which celebrities read cruel tweets about themselves out loud. Our version was Mean Reviews, where faculty members would read harsh comments from student course evaluations. "This is possibly the worst class I've ever taken in my life," one professor read, looking defeated before saying, "Fair enough." One of my own was "You remind me of a Muppet."

I made it a habit to show that video in class every fall, and afterward the floodgates would open. Students seemed to be more comfortable sharing their criticisms and suggestions for improvement after seeing that, although I take my work seriously, I don't take myself too seriously. I sent the video to Melinda Gates, asking whether she thought something similar might help with psychological safety in her organization. She not only said yes; she challenged the entire executive leadership team to participate and volunteered to be the first to take the hot seat. Her team compiled criticisms from staff surveys, printed them on note cards, and had her react in real time in front of a camera. She read one employee's complaint that she was like Mary F***ing Poppins - the first time anyone could remember hearing Melinda curse - and then explained how she was working on making her imperfections more visible.

To test the impact of her presentation, we randomly assigned one group of employees to watch Melinda engage with the tough comments, a second to watch a video of her talking about the culture she wanted to create in more general terms, and a third to serve as a pure control group. The first group came away with the strongest growth mindsets - they were inspired to recognize their shortcomings and work to overcome them.

But mindsets aren't enough to transform a culture. Although psychological safety erases the fear of challenging authority, it doesn't necessarily motivate us to question authority in the first place. To build a learning culture, we also need to create a specific kind of accountability - one that leads people to think again about their decisions.

To build a learning culture, we need to create a specific kind of accountability - one that leads people to think again about their decisions.

In performance cultures, people are held accountable for results: Did their projects succeed or fail? But social scientists find that focusing only on outcomes makes it too easy for people to continue with ill‑fated courses of action. It isn't until a high‑stakes decision goes horribly wrong that people pause to reexamine their practices. Focusing on results might be good for short‑term performance, but it can be an obstacle to long‑term learning.

In learning cultures, people don't stop keeping score. They expand the scorecard to hold others accountable for processes as well as outcomes. Even if the outcome of a decision is positive, it doesn't necessarily qualify as a success. If the process was shallow, you were lucky. If the decision process was deep, you can count it as an improvement: You've discovered a better practice. If the outcome is negative, it's a failure only if the decision process was shallow. If the result was negative but you evaluated the decision thoroughly, you've run a smart experiment.

The ideal time to run those experiments is when decisions are relatively inconsequential or reversible. In too many organizations, leaders look for guarantees that the results will be favorable before testing or investing in something new. It's the equivalent of telling Gutenberg you'd only bankroll his printing press once he had a long line of satisfied customers - or announcing to a group of HIV researchers that you'd only fund their clinical trials after their treatments worked.

Requiring proof is an enemy of progress. This is why companies like Amazon use a principle of disagree and commit. As Jeff Bezos explained it in an annual shareholder letter, instead of demanding convincing results, experiments start with asking people to make bets. "Look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it?" The goal in a learning culture is to welcome these kinds of experiments, to make rethinking so familiar that it becomes routine and people don't hesitate to pitch new ideas.

In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we've declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it's imperfect and where it could improve. Organizational learning should be an ongoing activity, but best practices imply it has reached an end point. We might be better off searching for better practices.

That's what we were after at the Gates Foundation. When Melinda and her colleagues shared their mean reviews, some of the power distance evaporated. Afterward, employees weren't afraid to dish it out - they knew their leaders could take it. People were less afraid to be vulnerable and more likely to reach out to senior leaders with both problems and solutions. In performance cultures, people are determined to prove themselves. But in learning cultures, people are more interested in improving themselves - and the organization around them.

Author Profile:

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School, the host of the TED podcast , and the author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.

Excerpted from Think Again, by Adam Grant, published on February 2, 2021, by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Adam Grant.

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A few years ago, leaders at the Gates Foundation reached out to see if I could help them improve their culture. They already had a strong culture of performance: They hired world-class scientists and maintained excellence of execution.

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BUILDING WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES IN THE WFH ERA

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BUILDING WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES IN THE WFH ERA

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MICROSOFT ANALYZED DATA ON ITS NEWLY REMOTE WORKFORCE

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The most fundamental skill: Intentional learning and the career advantage

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