Burnout at Work Isn’t Just About Exhaustion. It’s Also About Loneliness !

  More and more people are feeling tired and lonely at work. In analyzing the General Social Survey of 2016, we found that, compared with roughly 20 years ago, people are twice as likely to report that they are always exhausted. Close to 50% of people say they are often or always exhausted due to work....

Match Your Motivational Tactic to the Situation.

  How do you know if you are selecting the right motivational strategies to convince your employees, peers, and even yourself to work smarter and harder? Behavioral scientists have been researching the different ways people motivate themselves and others for decades. Their experiments have shown, for instance, that people work harder when they get feedback,...

When Trust Is Easily Broken, and When It’s Not

  “I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself,” Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth Bennet in a pivotal moment in Pride and Prejudice, before famously admitting: “My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.” Plenty of people would agree with Mr. Darcy on matters of...

The Right Way to Fire Someone !

You’ve decided it’s time to let the low performer on your team go. You’ve covered your bases in terms of documentation, and you’ve coordinated with HR. But now you have to have the dreaded conversation. What’s the best way to deliver the news? Who should be in the room with you? What do you say...

How to Get Excited About Topics That Bore You. !

  I used to be the prototypical young mathphobe: I flunked or barely passed any math course I was forced to orbit. For me, graduating from high school was thrilling in that I would never have to touch a math or science book again. Math not only didn’t make sense but was also worthless and painfully frustrating; the same went...

Life is Luck — Here’s How to Plan a Career Around It ???

Daniel Kahneman has claimed the following as his favorite equation: Success = talent + luck Great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck Kahneman’s implication is that the difference between moderate and great success is mostly luck, not skill. Chance plays a much greater role in our careers than we might wish or...

To Build Your Resilience, Ask Yourself Two Simple QuestionsQuestions !

  In an era where business keeps moving faster, it is no small wonder that resilience has become the new must-have executive skill. While executives have always known about the personal benefits of being resilient, they haven’t always recognized that it is also needed for the sake of their teams and organizational health. Take Susan, the CEO of...

How To Improve Your Ability to Learn ??

  On the surface, John looked like the perfect up-and-coming executive to lead BFC’s Asia expansion plans. He went to an Ivy League B-school. His track record was flawless. Every goal or objective the organization had ever put in front of him, he’d crushed without breaking a sweat. But something broke when John went to...

When to Skip a Difficult Conversation !!

Leaders know that they’ll occasionally need to give tough feedback to their employees, colleagues, and clients. And yet, no matter how skilled or experienced they are at it, most would also do anything to find a way out. As Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen explain in their book, Difficult Conversations, this internal struggle is natural: “If we try...

What Does Professionalism Look Like?

When we talk about “professionalism,” it’s easy to fall back into the “I know it when I see it” argument. For Emily Heaphy, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Boston University, and her colleagues, this isn’t a cop-out. The notion of being seen as professional may be central to how we define success in the U.S....