One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself. ~ Galileo Galilei

With so many employees being paid to think, leaders and managers should find ways to cultivate their staffs’ cerebral capabilities to boost workplace performance.

But most leaders wouldn’t know where to start. (photo courtesy freedigitalphotos.net)

The process begins by improving the way knowledge workers process information—not telling them what to do or jumping in to solve their problems.

Leadership practices need to keep up with the realities of organizational life. There’s an increasing gap between the way employees are managed and how they want to be managed. Countless surveys and headlines reinforce this revelation:

• 60 percent of workers are miserable.
• 74 percent aren’t engaged at work.

It’s easy to see how we arrived at this sorry situation. A century ago, most people were paid for physical labor. The dominant management model was master/apprentice, with the master showing his employees how to perform their jobs.

The Industrial Age introduced systems. Process management became the dominant paradigm, with scientific analysis of linear systems for greater efficiency. Employees were trained to follow, unquestioningly, their bosses’ best-laid plans.

Over the last two decades, the most routine business tasks have been computerized or outsourced. As a result, today’s employees are increasingly hired to think. In 2005, 40 percent of employees were considered knowledge workers; for mid-level management and higher, the number is closer to 100 percent.

Modern leaders must increasingly shift management styles to reflect the needs of a more educated labor force. Unfortunately, business schools have neglected to teach leaders and managers how to improve their knowledge workers’ thinking and decision-making skills.

This 1600-word article discusses practical ways to boost performance of knowledge workers through coaching conversations that lead to breakthrough insights and empowerment.
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• Hired to Think
• The Iceberg Model
• Start a Coaching Conversation
• Useful Questions
• Asking Permission
• Advice Doesn’t Work
• Giving Back the Monkey

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Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be but as a spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel. ~ American theologian Tryon Edwards (1809–1894)

How much of what you do is wise? Most of the choices we make each day feel like well-considered decisions. In reality, ingrained habits drive us to act. (Image from The Power of Habit.)

Research has shown that the average person has approximately 40,000 thoughts per day, but 95% are the same ones experienced the day before. Other studies support the notion that 40% of our daily actions are based on habits and routines, not newly formed decisions.

Our habits—what we say, eat and do, and how we organize our thoughts and work routines— have an enormous impact on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness.

People can be highly motivated to achieve goals and make changes in their lives, yet be firmly entrenched in habits.

In the last two decades, scientists have begun to understand how habits are formed, how they work and, more importantly, how we can change them. As New York Times staff writer Charles Duhigg reveals in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Random House, 2012):

1. Before Pepsodent entered the market in the early 20th century, only 7% of Americans had a tube of toothpaste in their medicine chests. A decade later, the number had jumped to 65%, thanks to Claude C. Hopkins’ legendary advertising campaigns. The tooth brushing habit was firmly established.
2. Procter & Gamble turned a spray called Febreze into a billion-dollar brand by taking advantage of consumers’ habitual urge to “breathe happy” and eliminate odors.
3. Alcoholics Anonymous reforms lives and enables people to live free from powerful addictions by redirecting self-destructive habits into constructive routines.
4. By changing one small keystone habit (like safety precautions or tracking in a journal), individuals and companies can influence everyday routines, leading to widespread results.

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• Habits Are Neural Connections
• Habit Loops: Cue => Routine => Reward
• The Golden Rule for Changing Habits

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Teamwork demands shared responsibility, but it also demands individual contributions. It fails if team members shelter behind the consensus. ~ Robert Heller, Founding Editor, Management Today

A recent survey found that 91 percent of high-level managers believe teams are the key to success. But the evidence doesn’t always support this assertion. Many teamwork-related problems remain hidden from view.

Every team thinks it does its best work when the stakes are highest. On the contrary, pressures to perform drive people toward safe solutions that are justifiable, rather than innovative.

Corporations increasingly organize workforces into teams, a practice that gained popularity in the ’90s. By 2000, roughly half of all U.S. organizations used teams; today, virtually all do.

Some teams work together from remote locations, relying on technical communication aids, such as web conferencing and email. Others demand a tremendous amount of face-to-face interaction, including team-building retreats, shared online calendars, meetings and physical workspaces that afford little privacy.

“Innovation—the heart of the knowledge economy—is fundamentally social,” writes prominent journalist Malcolm Gladwell.

Management expert Peter Drucker, who coined the term “knowledge worker,” points out that while people have always worked in tandem, “teams become the work unit rather than the individual himself” in knowledge work.

Working in teams has definite advantages:

• Improved information-sharing
• Better decisions, products and services
• Higher employee motivation and engagement

There are, however, several barriers to achieving great work from teams…

This article summarizes the more insidious problems with teamwork including groupthink, brainstorming traps, workspace deficiencies and creativity blocks.

This is a brief synopsis of an 1500 & 900-word article and Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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• The Hidden Problem
• Groupthink
• The New Groupthink
• The False Benefits of Brainstorming
• Introverts vs. Extroverts
• Evaluate Your Workspaces
• Better Ways to Work in Teams

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“Getting people to welcome feedback was the hardest thing I ever had to do as an educator.”  ― Professor Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Everything is connected today. We need to collaborate with others to succeed in our relationships, life and work. For that, we need to develop the art of giving feedback and critiques. 

In its original sense, feedback is the exchange of information about how one part of a system is working, with the understanding that it affects everyone else within the system. If any part veers off course, prompt remediation is critical.

Feedback is every organization’s lifeblood — the mechanism that lets people know whether they’re doing a good job or if their efforts need to be fine-tuned, upgraded or entirely redirected. In a marriage, feedback determines whether each partner can adapt to the needs of the individual, couple and family.

Most people, however, are uncomfortable when giving or receiving feedback. It’s one of the most important tasks to master, but we procrastinate and try to avoid it altogether. Problems invariably worsen over time, so we need to use feedback to find solutions that help us adapt and adjust.

In a study of 108 managers and white-collar workers, researchers found that most conflicts were caused by inept criticism (ahead of mistrust, personality struggles, and disputes over power and pay). After harsh criticism, people refuse to collaborate or cooperate, leading to stonewalling and disengagement.

This 900-word article summarizes research on the importance of feedback and makes four suggestions known to work when giving feedback, plus tips on how to receive it.

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• Positive vs. Negative Feedback
• How to Give Effective Feedback
• How to Receive Feedback

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 More than anyone else, the boss creates the conditions that directly determine people’s ability to work well.~ Daniel Goleman, Primal Leadership

Ever wonder why some of the most brilliant, well-educated people aren’t promoted, while those with fewer obvious skills climb the professional ladder?

Chalk it up to emotional intelligence (EI).

 (photo courtesy Salvatore Vuono)

When the concept first emerged in 1995, EI helped explain why people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs more than two-thirds of the time.

In the United States, experts had assumed that high IQ was key to high performance. Decades of research now point to EI as the critical factor that separates star performers from the rest of the pack.

People have been talking about EI (also called EQ) ever since psychologist Daniel Goleman published the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence in 1995. Everyone agrees that emotional savvy is vital, but we’ve generally been unable to harness its power. Many of us lack a full understanding of our emotions, let alone others’. We fail to appreciate how feelings fundamentally influence our everyday lives and careers.

Research by the TalentSmart consulting firm indicates that only 36% of people tested can accurately identify their emotions as they happen. Two-thirds of people are typically controlled by their emotions but remain unskilled at using them beneficially.

This article summarizes the importance of tapping into emotional intelligence to fully engage everyone in the organization for greater creativity and performance.

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• The Emotional Brain
• Defining Emotional Intelligence
• Emotional Intelligence, IQ and Personality
• EI and Performance
• EI and Income
• EI and Leadership
• EI in Chinese Managers vs US
• CEOs Score Low EI
• Ethical Failures
• How to Develop EI

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Why do some people succeed and others fail?

How do they set the stage for the next promotion, highest sales, most votes or stellar performance? 

(photo courtesy Stuart Miles)

Does it take:

• A high IQ?
• Personality?
• Good looks?
• Talent?

Research shows that measures of innate ability (like IQ) poorly predict who succeeds or stumbles. A recent book by Columbia Business School Professor Heidi Grant Halvorson summarizes Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.

“Being successful is not about winning the DNA lottery; it’s about reaching goals,” she writes. “It’s about making smart choices, using the right strategies and taking action.”

Decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their personal and professional goals because of what they do not because of who they are. Luckily, everything they do can be learned, practiced and mastered.

This is a brief synopsis of an 850-word article and Article Nuggets,* suitable for coach newsletters and blog posts. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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• All About the Goals
• True Grit
• 9 Strategies for Successful Goals

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Knowing why you’re here, and who you want to be, isn’t a part-time job. The challenge is to live out what you stand for, intentionally, in every moment. ~ Tony Schwartz, author

Far from being touchy-feely concepts touted by motivational speakers, purpose and values have been identified as key drivers of high-performing organizations. (photo courtesy jscreationzs)

• In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras reveal that purpose- and values-driven organizations outperformed the general market and comparison companies by 15:1 and 6:1, respectively. 
• In Corporate Culture and Performance, Harvard professors John Kotter and James Heskett found that firms with shared-values–based cultures enjoyed 400% higher revenues, 700% greater job growth, 1,200% higher stock prices and significantly faster profit performance, as compared to companies in similar industries. 

Leaders who have a clearly articulated purpose and are driven to make a difference can inspire people to overcome insurmountable odds, writes Roy M. Spence Jr. in It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For.

“Life is short, so live it out doing something that you care about,” he writes. “Try to make a difference the best way you can. There’s an enormous satisfaction in seeing the cultural transformation that happens when an organization is turned on to purpose.”

While a well-designed strategy and its effective implementation are required for business success, neither inspires followers to maintain engagement during troubled times. Purpose must tap into people’s hearts and help them give their best when the chips are down.

In a company without purpose, people have only a vague idea of what they’re supposed to do. There’s always activity and busyness, but it’s often frenetic and focused solely on short-term goals. There’s a lack of direction and commitment to purpose.

This article summarizes the importance of tapping into business purpose to fully engage everyone in the organization for greater creativity and performance and provides questions to help identify true purpose.

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• Lack of Full Engagement
• Energy and Creative Flow
• Finding a Business Purpose
• The Bridge to What Matters
• Making a Difference 

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