Actionable strategies and techniques that are easy to understand and apply in real life.
When making important decisions with possible life altering effects, the uncertainty of the outcome and the fear of stepping into the unknown keeps us locked in an unproductive cycle where the more data we collect and the more we analyze it, the more we overthink our decision. Spending all your time analyzing while failing to act leads to analysis paralysis.
What makes some leaders produce excellent work while others barely do a part of their job? When leaders aren’t conscious of their time, let fear guide their decisions, worry about being disliked, and use excuses to delay or put off things that need their time and attention, they fail to do their job. Their behaviors push the organization back instead of lifting it up.
Who would you like on your team or choose to work with—someone who’s highly competent but unpleasant and difficult to work with or someone with decent skills but an amazing attitude? Likability plays a crucial role in your success at work. Because after all, everyone likes to work with people they like. Competence, knowledge and skills are important to get the right opportunities and additional responsibilities at work, but those things alike, likability gives people an additional reason to choose you over others.
Some people have the nerve for taking risks. Give them a challenge and they’ll jump right into it. You’ll find these people leading some of the biggest initiatives, driving the most challenging projects, and making bold decisions at work. They’re admired and respected for their ability to step up when everyone else is trying to escape the risk. These people are the change drivers, thought leaders and visionaries who have a knack for solving tough problems, courage to step into the unknown and the skills to handle the uncertainty. But what makes these people such good risk takers?
A big mistake that employees at all levels make is confusing career development with attaining specific positions. Rush to climb the career ladder makes them take on positions which make them miserable because they actually don’t enjoy the role or not having the proper skills to do their job well leads to exhaustion and burnout. Becoming a manager when you’re not ready is the worst of all. Your job is not just about you. You’re now responsible for other human beings. Take a long term perspective. Don’t be short-sighted.
Are you bold enough to say what you need to say in a meeting or do you feel knots in your stomach and refuse to speak up? Being able to speak up on the spot is a very valuable skill. Sharing your perspective or contributing to the discussion even in small ways not only projects confidence, it also builds credibility. But how do you find the courage to do so when your heart starts racing at the thought of uttering even a few words? How can you say something that can potentially make you appear silly, feel embarrassed or look incompetent?
Big or small, it’s impossible to remember everything you need to do. When you don’t actually write things down, it’s hard to prioritize complex, long-term, forward looking tasks over easy, short-term, time wasting activities. Not writing things down has another problem. Keeping track of all the unfinished tasks puts an unnecessary burden on the brain. To make the most of your todo list, you need to turn it from a bunch of meaningless line items to a more meaningful action oriented list.
What erodes credibility at work and what builds it? Most employees don’t think about credibility consciously which prevents them from taking the right steps to build it. They think that if they keep their heads down and keep doing the good work, someone will take notice and good opportunities will land their way. But workplaces aren’t designed to lift people with good intentions and good skills. Building credibility requires earning trust of people who work with you. It requires more than just competence and knowledge.
Feedback is a crucial part of growth. If you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s impossible to take corrective actions and improve. Many leaders fail at this. They either do not explicitly seek feedback or the way they ask for it only boosts their ego by getting feel-good praise about what they’re doing well without surfacing the actual areas where they’re falling short.
The human brain has this remarkable cognitive capacity to perform at levels far beyond what we consider as our natural abilities, but it’s not without its limits. The cognitive biases that enable the brain to prioritize and process large amounts of information quickly also gets in the way of our productivity. These mental shortcuts are the brain’s way to conserve energy and work more efficiently. But they also lead to many thinking errors.
For a manager, being effective is not optional, it’s a crucial part of their job. Without effectiveness more time is spent on inconsequential tasks and less on forward moving activities, effort spent never matches up to the results, opportunities are missed and problems linger on. Effectiveness is nothing but a habit and much like other habits in life, it too can be learned. If you want to be an effective manager, master these 6 micro habits.
Meetings can be extremely stressful unless you know how to run them well. Sharing your ideas and making others lean your way is not easy. The biggest mistake we all make when trying to make our meetings impactful is to place extreme focus on ourselves and the content of the meeting without paying much attention to the process. To create an unforgettable impact during meetings, practice these 4 key strategies.
When you stop managing individual contributors and start managing other managers, a lot needs to change. Your role is no longer about assigning tasks, meeting deadlines or taking care of your team’s work assignments and other responsibilities. Your managers are now doing the work you used to do yourself. So, how can you let go of the control? How can you trust them to do the job while you’re still responsible for it? Ask these 5 questions to your managers every month.
What makes some employees rise through challenges, tap into opportunities, find a way to break through and make an impact while others are taken aback by a difficult circumstance and don’t know what to do or how to move forward? The difference between high impact contributors and typical contributors isn’t talent, competence or skills. They’re equally capable, have similar potential and the urge to do well. Yet, impact players consistently find ways to add value while others are simply going through the motions.
There are definite benefits of being part of an organization that promotes employee well-being and work towards building a mentally healthy culture, but they’re not enough. What if it’s not the work culture but your own behavior that gets in the way? Most people look outward when it comes to addressing mental health challenges, without paying attention to their own behaviors and actions. Master these 4 behaviors to stay mentally healthy at work.
As important as it is to apply the right strategies to manage your imposter syndrome, equally important is to know what constitutes bad advice. Knowing what isn’t helpful will not only save you time, it will prevent you from applying advice that can amplify your feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt. Don’t settle. Don’t look for shortcuts or quick wins. Don’t go after the fake it till you make it, positive thinking and pushing on through advice.
As a manager, you may feel that there are too many things to learn and too little time to put everything into practice. However, working hard to catch up to the demands and expectations of the job will only leave you tired and exhausted. Good management does not require being a superhuman with extraordinary skills. It only requires practicing these 3 important skills.
When you fall for your mind’s thinking traps, you may assume it’s lack of competence that stops you from going after the things you want. But it’s not competence that’s holding you back, it’s your lack of confidence. When you lose sight of belief in yourself, no amount of competence can make you successful. Competence gives you the skills, confidence underpins your ability to actually get things done.
What makes some teams do exceptionally well and others to perform poorly? Do they have more talented team members, better resources or are simply being lucky? Teams that stand out are not more talented, better skilled or have greater opportunities. What sets them apart are their habits and practices. Empowering work culture, support from leaders in the organization and clarity of vision and goals is important, but they’re not sufficient to drive excellence and high performance in teams.
Thinking traps are the biggest cause of leadership ineffectiveness. When leaders don’t pay attention to how they think, make decisions and the impact it has on the organization and its people, their actions—however well intended they may be—cease to produce the desired effect. Making good decisions isn’t just about making the right choices, it’s also about being able to recognize and eliminate bad ones. Effective leaders make good decisions by paying attention to their errors in thinking and taking steps to reduce them.
Leaders are ordinary human beings who make mistakes from time to time. While some mistakes are insignificant or have minor negative consequences, others might be potentially harmful and damaging to the organization and its people. Most of these mistakes are unintentional—they stem from thinking errors, applying shortcuts and not using the right mental models. When leaders don’t pause and reflect, they make poor choices and terrible decisions which hurt the productivity of their people and performance of their entire organization.
With the uncertainty in the economy, many companies have not only announced a hiring freeze but are also downsizing their entire divisions and non-profitable initiatives. Whether you’re forced to find another job or someone who’s doing it as a choice, the process to find another job is never easy. Making mistakes by not following good practices reduces the likelihood of you landing a job on time, builds stress and may even hurt you mentally and financially. If you want to get hired in a company of your choice, follow these practices.
When employees think they’re not fairly evaluated or their manager lacks information on their true value and worth, it affects their performance and productivity. Not being recognized for what they bring to the table hits them hard—they don’t see a point in taking up new challenges and opportunities or going the extra mile. Doing performance reviews well requires intention and effort, but done right, it can give big returns on investment.
Most problems we face at work involve people. We think we know others, how they think and what drives them. But most of the time we’re wrong. You can’t be empathetic towards others and lead with your beliefs and notions. To build empathy at work, you have to be less wrong when judging other people’s behaviors and actions. You have to stop making assumptions about their circumstances and motivations. You have to step into their shoes to understand what they’re really thinking.
Being a manager of managers is a great responsibility. The impact of your decisions and what you say or do not only impacts your managers, but also people reporting to them. Attracting great talent is not enough. You also need to hold them together and help them achieve excellence. Even though you have a lot to learn, by applying the right practices you can step up and be the leader that your people expect you to be.
How do you deal with uncertainty? How do you handle unexpected events? How do you react to change? Do you panic and avoid dealing with the situation or do you look at the situation with curiosity, explore alternative ways to move forward and pivot, if need be? The ability to think on your feet and solve problems by quickly moving between different ideas is the key to creativity at work. Mental agility is necessary to innovate, embrace change, and thrive in the face of uncertainty.
Good mentors help unlock your hidden potential. They may not only offer advice when you’re stuck with a problem but also help you get over your own limiting beliefs. They tell you things you may not want to hear which keeps you grounded in reality. They’re your sounding board to determine which ideas are feasible and practical and which ones aren’t worth pursuing. But how do you find such a person and why should they mentor you?
When you’re having a bad day at work, your mind spirals into all sad things. It’s like someone dimmed the light around you and everything appears dark and gloomy. You’re more likely to lose your nerve or react poorly to even minor inconveniences. Healthy disagreements turn into personal attacks. Minor conflicts into major issues. While it is difficult for you to look for the bright side of things when your mind is stuffed with negativity, there are specific things you must do to prevent a bad day from turning into a bad week.
Effective communication is a key ingredient to work together, advance your career and make work a happy experience. When communication breaks down at work, more time is wasted in filling gaps in alignment and expectations and less in productive work. Instead of seeking a perfect work environment with 100% alignment between people and teams, adopt this powerful framework to reduce communication gaps at work.
What if employees at work mentally check out? They do what they are being asked to do—nothing more and nothing less. Quiet quitting is a mindset that safeguards employees from placing excessive focus on one’s work, ignoring personal time because their career comes first or becoming so dedicated to their jobs that friends, family and their own health turn into an afterthought. Disengaging from work can create a healthy balance between work and life but mentally checking out this way isn’t without negative side effects.
Healthy boundaries are essential for the mental and personal well-being of all employees at work. When these boundaries are exploited by difficult people, the more time someone spends around them, the more damage they suffer. Apply these 4 strategies to give feedback to a difficult person without challenging them in a way that makes them quit or create more trouble.
As you grow in your career, the cost of not putting your time to best use is significantly high. If you’re serious about utilizing your time well, use these 3 productivity frameworks to identify what deserves your attention and what shouldn’t be done at all, give life to your goals by utilizing the right opportunities and taking action, and staying focused by avoiding distractions when you actually get down to work.
Your manager should know about the areas you’re doing well, where you excel, your strengths and highlights. Keeping your manager in the loop is essential for your success and growth. But what if your manager isn’t paying attention? Should you keep your head down and keep doing the good work with the hope that they will take notice someday or can you do the work to get into the spotlight and make yourself visible?
Philosophical razors in day-to-day life serve as critical thinking tools to eliminate noise, strip away unnecessary parts and better understand the problem at hand thereby enabling you to make better decisions. Like cognitive biases that lead to thinking errors and arise due to the ability of our mind to apply shortcuts, razors are mental tricks that enable better judgment but aren’t right 100% of the time. When used appropriately though, applying razors can be extremely valuable.
As a manager, hearing that someone on your team quit is the most challenging experience. On the one hand, you’re worried about the impact it may have on your team, on the other you’re concerned about how it reflects on you as a manager. Losing a top performer, someone you value in the team or someone with great potential is definitely upsetting. It may be hard to believe at first especially if it comes off as a total surprise—they seemed committed and engaged and you really cared for them, so what went wrong?
Communicating effectively with others is a crucial element to get work done. When we don’t pay attention to the cognitive distortions that impact our thinking, we communicate in a manner that makes collaboration difficult. Without being self aware and catching ourselves with those occasional errors in thinking, biased views and irrational thoughts make us form an inaccurate view of reality and stick with it thereby impacting our behaviors and actions.
We work in environments that aren’t optimized for solid decision-making. We also have irrational or negative thought patterns from time to time. This leads to habitual errors in thinking which creates an inaccurate view of reality. Combating cognitive distortions during high stakes decisions or events where irrational thoughts have long term implications requires self awareness and practicing good habits of the mind which enable you to make conscious decisions as opposed to letting your brain run on autopilot.
Do you want to 10x your impact at work? Do you know what behaviors hold you back? What about your team—do they admire, respect and acknowledge you? Do they find you helpful? The gap between how you view your behaviors and actions and how others perceive you is always huge. Don’t let your manager decide where you end up. Don’t wait for them to share feedback that you need. Ask these 5 questions every month to take charge of your own growth and 10x your impact.
Do you say yes to every last minute request? Being able to help others, put out fires, share your knowledge and expertise can lead to feelings of accomplishment. Knowing that others need you can make you feel important. But that dopamine hit comes at a cost. Accommodating all these requests into an already packed schedule leaves you feeling burnt out, and exhausted. Saying no is not only healthy, it helps you recognize your limitations and empowers you to make the right choices.
Not sure how you can assign tasks to your team, how you can raise concerns or how you can have tough conversations? Some discomfort is natural as a new manager. But letting your discomfort get in the way of your decisions, holding yourself back from giving your ideas and suggestions, hesitating to set direction and guide your team or delaying feedback with the worry how it might land with the other person not only makes you ineffective as a manager, it also hurts your team’s productivity and performance.
The constant desire to improve ourselves and our life situation, seeking a better life, or the pursuit of pleasure is what keeps the human race thriving. But it also sets us on a hedonic treadmill constantly chasing the next big target. We set goals and expectations. We run to gain those things. But once we succeed or reach that destination, instead of being euphoric, the feeling is more of a relief.
Faking it by posturing, pretending to be confident, and ignoring those nagging feelings of self-doubt can offer some temporary respite, but once you’re done putting on a show, being inauthentic to yourself negatively impacts your perceptions of yourself. Imitating confidence and competency has long-term implications. Don’t fake it till you make it, build genuine confidence through action.
The 80/20 manager applies the 80/20 rule to every aspect of their work. They prioritize work that will make a difference, eliminate work that gives an illusion of productivity and double down their efforts on work that actually moves them forward. They achieve extraordinary results with ordinary effort.
Getting laid off and losing your job is hard. It not only hurts you financially but also personally. Left unhandled or dealt with badly, a layoff can make you adopt harmful behaviors that destroy your self-confidence. Handling a layoff well is not only about finding a new job. More than the job hunt, it requires mental strength to deal with the emotions that are bound to run high.
What’s the one big difference between employees who stand out within the first few months of joining and those who struggle to fit in? New hires who do well at work stand out because they own their onboarding experience. Instead of letting the onboarding process in their organization determine where they end up, they get into the driver’s seat, buckle themselves up and get to work.
Busyness creates an illusion of productivity. Being caught inside the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder for you to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in; it’s the time spent creating value. Instead of accepting busyness as a way of life, practice behaviors that will make work more meaningful and impactful without taking a toll on your mental health and personal well-being.
Do you consider the limitations of a situation by focusing on the negatives or see the opportunities in every situation by focusing on areas of growth and improvement? When you’re not operating within the confines and constraints of your own limitations, you no longer see the world as a limited pie but view it as an endless ocean where there’s enough for everyone.
Do you recognize and pay attention to mistakes that limit your career? Those who succeed at work do not have special skills and abilities. They aren’t more intelligent or talented than others. What makes them stand out are the little decisions they make every step of the way. If you’re frustrated that your growth isn’t aligned with your effort, identify the career limiting mistakes you are making.
Do you get mad at work? Are these significant issues that are making you angry or are you losing your cool over small stuff? An enraged mind is in no condition to think strategically. Staying angry makes you prone to poor judgment; it makes you say things you will regret later. Emotional regulation is the key to mastering your negative emotions.
What’s the most important factor that impacts an employee’s motivation at work—the level of trust they feel towards their manager. High levels of trust make them feel valued, energizes them to work harder, and make them persist through difficulties and setbacks. Low levels of trust reverses the equation which negatively impacts their productivity and performance. You can lose trust as a manager if you don’t spend time noticing how you come across to others.
Big goals that are far off into the future can lead to procrastination, promote all-or-nothing thinking and provide momentary happiness without long lasting satisfaction. Instead of major victories with outsized expectations, what if you targeted small wins? Small daily goals that give a sense of progress; work that moves you forward, is fulfilling and rewarding, where each step takes you closer to your destination.
Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions is a phrase used by many managers—even the well-intentioned ones—who believe that it encourages their team members to be creative thinkers, while all it does is promote siloed thinking. The message you want to pass is one of encouragement and empowerment, but instead, it dissuades your team from bringing up problems—problems they find hard to solve or ones that need your support and guidance.
Out of hundreds of things a manager is expected to do, maintaining a healthy relationship with their people is just one of them. And it’s true that a good part of a manager’s job is to invest time in their people and their growth. But a relationship isn’t a one-way street. You can’t have a healthy relationship with your manager unless you are invested in your own growth. People who excel at work don’t blame a poor relationship on their manager. They’re willing to do the work necessary to make it work.
When you get promoted to a new manager, there are lots of questions in your mind. With so many questions unanswered, it’s completely natural to feel unprepared. Your struggles are real. When you started as an individual contributor and got to a lead position, you thought you made it. But now as a manager, you are back to square one. To be effective as a new manager, you’ll need to acquire a set of skills that can only come through practice.
How do you get better as a manager? You can use feedback from your manager, inputs from your team, and outcomes you achieve as a measure of your performance, but by themselves, they do not help you get better. Without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you cannot determine areas that need your attention and the steps you must take to improve. Use these 9 questions that all great bosses ask themselves to improve their team’s performance.
Do you regularly meet your people, give them advice and help them with their growth? You might be doing a lot of things right, but do you also take time to analyze the mistakes that can turn your one-on-one meetings unproductive and leave your employees feeling dissatisfied? One-on-one meetings go wrong not because of lack of effort. They go wrong when you don’t pay attention to little things that are needed to get them right.
High agency is important at every step of the career, but it’s even more crucial as you ascend the ladder and take up a leadership position in an organization. For a leader, vision and ability aren’t differentiating factors anymore. An ambitious vision for the future only sets the direction. It’s the high agency that gives life to that vision and makes it possible. It’s the high agency that sets a leader apart. Learn to recognize and cultivate it.
A leader’s job in any organization isn’t to tell people what to do or be involved in every problem. Their job is to enable their people to make their own decisions, motivate them to build the skills necessary to feel confident, and use their own time effectively to look into the future and solve hard problems. They can do this by shifting from control to context and seeking alignment using the decision tree.
As a manager, there isn’t a rule book for all the decisions you need to make and all the steps you need to take. You will make plenty of mistakes on the way. You will have a hard time getting your ideas heard and convincing others. The uncertainty of your decisions along with the daily struggle to make things happen can be quite taxing on your personal health and mental wellbeing. Practicing self-care as a manager isn’t just necessary, it should be your topmost priority.
What’s more dreadful than receiving difficult feedback? Giving one. Worried that negative feedback will hurt the other person and ruin your relationship is one of the biggest deterrents to avoid saying what you need to say. Giving difficult feedback is the most difficult thing you may have to do at work, but building this skill is like building muscle. It only gets better with practice. It never gets easy, you only get better.
The difference between leaders who push their teams to the ground and those who take their teams to great heights isn’t knowledge, capability, or competence. It isn’t even their motivation and desire to succeed. They both want to achieve success. What sets them apart is the difference in how they handle their ignorance. Their ignorance isn’t limited to their skills and abilities, but also how they come across to others.
We do not conform to cultural and behavioral expectations around us that exist, but to a version we believe exists. Stuck in a vicious cycle of pluralistic ignorance, we continue to support the very behaviors we deem bad. Call it peer pressure, fear of rejection, our desire to fit in, or simply the fear of standing out, we think one thing and do another because we are deluded about other people’s real views and feel compelled to adhere to that delusion.
Although imposter syndrome is linked with feelings of inadequacy and thinking that nothing you do is ever good enough, how it plays out in your day-to-day life and impacts you varies from person to person. Acknowledging what you are feeling is important, but what’s even more important is to pay attention to the underlying behaviors and actions that such feelings tend to evoke. Your feelings of being a fraud can turn you into a procrastinator, perfectionist, overworker, people pleaser, or a self diminisher.
All stress is not bad. Oftentimes, it signals you are doing worthwhile work. That you care about adding value and creating an impact. Stress can also energize you enabling you to put in the effort required to make something happen. But what if your stress is debilitating? What if it gets in the way of making meaningful contributions? What if instead of energizing you, workplace stress sucks into your energy and hurts your motivation?
Failure to get buy-in and have your recommendations shut down can crush your confidence and make it difficult for you to voice your opinion the next time around. Apply these strategies to not only confidently present your ideas, but get your ideas heard and gain support too. Learn to influence the decision and make positive impact on your organization and your work.
What’s the difference between people who end up loving what they do and those who are on an endless pursuit looking for the one thing that will fulfill them only to be left disheartened, dissatisfied, and unhappy? Progress and not passion was the answer I was looking for all along. 3 strategies that have worked for me over the years to love what I do while letting my passion grow behind the scenes for me.
In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower. When collaborating across teams, communication, coordination, visibility, execution speed, and decision-making can turn into a mess. Learn about the cross functional collaboration challenges and the steps managers can take to make it effective.
Authentic leadership goes wrong when leaders try to match their behaviors and actions to an idealized version of an authentic leader and feel exhausted and defeated when they fail to inspire the necessary changes in their teams and their organizations. By getting hung up on becoming their best versions, they fail to show up their authentic versions. To practice true authenticity, knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.
Organizations that thrive are run by leaders who see opportunity in uncertainty, who cut through ambiguity, and those who lead with the mindset to gain clarity. Done right, ambiguity can be exhilarating, rewarding, and mentally stimulating. Done wrong, it can be exhausting, emotionally consuming, and even downright demotivating. Apply these 7 strategies to learn how to deal with ambiguity.
There are two types of people at work – those who like to make commitments and others who like to keep them. People who like to make commitments don’t pay much attention to how those things fit into their schedule. People who like to keep commitments are careful about their choices. They understand that doing something always comes at the cost of not doing something else.
A sense of control in our life not only rids us of the fear and anxiety that comes with feeling out of control, it’s the single most critical factor in helping us stay productive at work. It’s our internal sense of freedom to know that we have the autonomy to make corrections, drive to be persistent and the power to influence the outcome. Apply these strategies to feel in control, do more and achieve more.
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they sense danger assuming that the danger will pass if they just avoid it long enough. We humans are no different. When dealing with unpleasant information, or information that challenges us in a way that we don’t want to be challenged, we pretend the information doesn’t exist. We bury our heads in the sand just like the ostriches.
Negativity can be contagious. It may not be obvious at first, but it’s easy to get trapped into a negative person’s way of thinking if you are not careful around them. Left unhandled, their cynical, gloomy, and defeatist behavior can emotionally drain you, impact your productivity, and turn you into the very person you hated at first. Learn how to deal with a negative person without going crazy.
Becoming a manager isn’t easy. All the uncertainty and confusion can either leave you disoriented and feeling overwhelmed with a lack of control or you can embrace it and use it as the force to push ahead. You can succeed as a manager by looking beyond all the randomness and chaos to adopting a mentality where nothing can pull you down. You can lead and succeed by practicing these 20 principles.
Are you not getting the feedback you need because others aren’t giving it to you or is it because you aren’t taking the initiative to get it right? Getting the feedback that you need requires taking full responsibility with the belief that you have the power to drive your own growth at work as opposed to blaming someone else for not moving forward.
Delivering bad news to your boss is not exactly fun. Imagining how they would react, what they would say, and how they would judge you can be terrifying and reason enough to try to cover it up. But knowing that with the right strategies you can turn things around and even win their trust and respect, you can get over your fears and take the necessary steps.
Are you in a constant state of frenzy throughout the day moving from one meeting to the next only to be left exhausted, disoriented and grumpy? Don’t let the “too many meetings” and “this is a manager’s life” excuse go on for too long. Get over your own nonsense and start putting some sense into your work
Working with a dominant personality is not fun, but sometimes avoiding them is not an option either. Their authoritative behavior combined with a body language that reeks of dominance can be quite upsetting. When you can’t avoid or quit, what should you do? Learn to work with them
The person who makes it to the top isn’t the one who faces many hardships and obstacles along the way, it’s the one who persists and resists – persists in their efforts and resists the easy path to give up. In other words, it’s not our failure, but our reaction to it that determines where we end up
The simple three-letter word “yet” is the sound of possibility, a positive intervention in our life to help us see straight. The nudge we all need to take control of our life by looking beyond the obstacles in the present to the opportunities of tomorrow. “Yet” carries with it the expectation that we can reach our destination
Strategic thinking is a muscle that we all need to build because using it right at work can be a strategic advantage in your career growth as an individual. You need to cross the boundary of the comfort zone to think about an idea to its extreme without mental guardrails to put it down. You need to uncover new insights that moderate thinking would never surface
Promoting vacation time, taking breaks between work, doing walk-and-talk audio calls instead of video calls to deal with zoom fatigue, and even asking people to have no meeting days are all super useful techniques to deal with the problems of work related exhaustion, but by themselves they are not sufficient to solve the problem of burnout at work. That’s because work overload is just one of the causes of burnout
Irrespective of how much we tell our teams to move past failures and learn from mistakes, we know that it isn’t easy to accept a failure. The expectation to do well at work makes people believe that failure isn’t an option. There’s a huge difference between feelings of disappointment and letting those emotions turn into feelings of devastation. Building resilience as a team is all about understanding that difference
Leadership anxiety can be a good thing when managed well. It can inspire you to question your choices, confront your own feelings and engage proactively with the desire to do better. The problem occurs when you let your leadership anxiety prevent you from seeing the reality of your situation. When you are so caught up in your own anxiety that it fogs your ability to think and see clearly
When your team members are fighting or are otherwise engaged in an uncordial relationship, the rest of the team can’t function very well. Freedom to disagree with others cannot be boundaryless and it cannot come at the cost of creating a toxic work environment for the team. As a manager, it’s your job to define a healthy boundary between constructive disagreements and destructive behavior
Caring for your people and holding them accountable for their work aren’t mutually exclusive. You don’t need to be nice and kind to people to show them you care. And caring for them doesn’t mean you don’t care about the outcomes. Build accountability at work by helping your employees differentiate between taking responsibility and showing accountability
Saying no is never easy. And saying no to your boss may actually backfire like it did in my case. But, saying yes to things you don’t want to do shouldn’t be an option either. You can either choose comfort in the moment by saying yes and then live with the regret afterwards or you can face brief discomfort in the moment by saying no to live a life in which you can feel at ease with your decisions later. Choice is yours
Robert Iger, now Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company is the former CEO of Disney. During his 15 years as CEO of Disney and as President of ABC Television prior to that, he led the company to amazing new heights. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased from $48 billion to $257 billion. Every leader needs to embody his personal leadership lessons
The environment in which your employees operate can place a bound on what they can achieve. A powerful and empowering culture can enable them to achieve transformational results, while troubling workplace attitudes and behaviors can limit their effectiveness and undermine what they can accomplish
From strategy to execution to results, no leader can be effective without the foundations of trust. Trust is the single most critical driver of every leader’s effectiveness and the hidden element in the formula of every business’s success. Trust can only be earned and evolved by consistently practicing positive behaviors over long periods of time
When you meet a new person, you take time to decide if it’s a relationship worth investing in or not. When it comes to your job though, do you apply the same level of due diligence? Companies are after all in some sense similar to people. You can think of a company as a group of people with a shared identity. Spend effort into knowing this identity as you would with any new person. Determine if it’s a relationship worth investing
Being good at what you do cannot make you stand out at work. How you operate and interact with others play a crucial role in your success at work. You need to adopt powerful behaviors that can make you influential, impactful and move you forward. Adopting and practicing these behaviors will bring about the biggest positive change in your work life
Our life is nothing but a sum total of our decisions. From health to relationships to professional and personal growth, our decisions form an integral part of our overall well-being. An understanding of why you make bad decisions will profoundly enhance the success of all your future decision-making by preventing you from making choices you end up regretting
To delegate effectively, managers need to be intentional about the work that only they need to do and create clarity for their team on the rest. They have to learn to invest in those around them by letting go of control. Giving up control can feel hard, but it’s also necessary for growth. It’s the only way to scale for impact in an organization
The secret to getting ahead is not just doing great work, it also requires the ability to navigate office politics, not in an insincere or manipulative way, but rather as a skill to better handle the politics that goes on inside your organization. You simply can’t win people based on logic and rationality
Most managers discard the notion that they could be toxic due to a flawed assumption about what contributes to toxicity. The standard list of toxic behaviors is well known. What misses attention are the subtle behaviors that also impact employees’ well-being. If you are a manager, open yourself to the idea that your actions might be unintentionally contributing to a toxic work environment
What’s more crucial than not promoting the person who isn’t ready for one? The right kind of communication. Because this is where most managers fail to do their job. As the manager fails to communicate, the employees continue developing a chip on their shoulders with their unfulfilled wishes and desires. It amplifies every time they lose an opportunity to get promoted
Effects of the role conflict can vary from person to person. While some learn to deal with the friction that comes with a role conflict and thrive by staying positive and seeking measures to counteract it, others stop functioning and stop being productive by choosing to stay with stress and resentment. Learn to increase your productivity and general well-being when dealing with a role conflict
How can you bring your best to every situation when dealing with the pressure of high expectations? Performing under pressure isn’t some innate talent. Anyone can learn to tackle it. You may have all the expertise, skills and the knowledge to do well, but if you don’t know how to handle pressure situations well, pressure will make you do worse, and lead you to fail utterly
Growth mindset in the workplace shows up when hard work, determination and perseverance are valued over talent. Employees who work for growth mindset organizations have far more trust in their company and a greater sense of empowerment. They welcome challenges which makes them more successful learners and better contributors to their organizations. Learn to promote this mindset
