The Weekly Book Scan

Smiling Science: How to Grin and Wear It

Meg White — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:28:18 +0000

Darryl Davis salutes your resilience as a real estate professional, being able to make it through the lean years and come out on the other side. He also recognizes that when one problem in real estate is solved–such as a foreclosure crisis–it’s usually followed by other difficulties, such as the inventory shortages that real estate professionals are having to deal with across the country.

Credit: Steven Depolo

“You thought you had to smile when the market was bad?” Davis says. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

But Davis isn’t all about doom and gloom. The speaker, trainer, standup comic, and real estate professional is on a mission to get real estate professionals smiling more.

Davis expects his new book—How to Design a Life Worth Smiling About—to be available by the time NAR’s annual conference rolls around in November. Until then, he’s determined to get the word out about why people should start smiling more. I saw him in action at NAR’s Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo in Washington last week, and I have to admit that I’ve been smiling more ever since.

He cites studies (like this one as published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) that show that smiling actually makes you feel better. Even when you’re having a tough time, a smile can fool your brain into mitigating your negative attitude with natural chemical stimulants such as serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine, Davis says.

“The smile is a trigger, like a light switch, to tell the brain to produce these chemicals,” Davis says. “It tells the brain, ‘Hey, hello! I’m happy down here; give me some of those chemicals.’”

Davis also mentioned studies that found smiling people are perceived as more attractive and tend to have longer life expectancy. But the benefits go well beyond one’s own well-being. Davis says smilers can spread the love like a contagion.

“It gives people permission to smile,” he said. “Our smiling is our tail wagging… it makes you more approachable.”

Davis’ 40-minute talk was part of the Leadership Express sessions at Midyear, created especially for people in leadership positions, including volunteer leaders, association executives, staff and membership. Davis’ message wasn’t exclusively for leadership, but he did acknowledge that wearing a smile as a leader can make an especially important difference in the work environment.

“You can’t lead people if you look like you were weaned on a pickle,” Davis joked. “Smiling is so important to the success of a human being that really it is a leadership tool.”

But what if you just can’t crack a grin? While Davis strongly believes you should “smile, especially when you don’t feel like it,” he’s got a trick up his sleeve for the forever frowny: Bite a pencil. Using those same muscles might just fool your brain into thinking you’re smiling.

Then again, you might look sillier with a pencil in your mouth all day that you would if you just smiled. But hey, whatever makes you happy, right?

Top 10 Real Estate Business Books

Meg White — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:12:12 +0000

After last week’s post underscored the longevity of Gary Keller’s The Millionaire Real Estate Agent as a favorite book for newer agents, I thought it was time to go back and take a look at the top ten business books on real estate again. We used to check in with Amazon more often, but the last time we brought you a best-seller list was back in 2011. For shame!

So, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked by item number one. But there are a few on this list of the ten most popular real estate business books on Amazon this week that I wasn’t expecting.

The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money…It’s About Being the Best You Can Be! by Gary Keller, Dave Jenks and Jay Papasan (Feb 11, 2004)
Other People’s Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made by Charles V. Bagli (Apr 4, 2013)
Home Buying Kit For Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown (Mar 6, 2012)
Buy It, Rent It, Profit!: Make Money as a Landlord in ANY Real Estate Market by Bryan M. Chavis (Apr 14, 2009)
Real Estate License Exams For Dummies by Drei John A. Yoegel (Jan 28, 2005)
What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli (Sep 8, 2008)
Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 2nd Edition by Eric Tyson and Robert S. Griswold (Mar 3, 2009)
Every Landlord’s Tax Deduction Guide by Stephen Fishman J.D. (Dec 28, 2012)
Property Management Kit For Dummies by Robert S. Griswold (Feb 18, 2013)
How to Buy Real Estate Overseas by Kathleen Peddicord (Apr 8, 2013)

In particular, I’m surprised at the fact that there are four books from the “For Dummies” empire here. Then again, we are looking at a list of popularity, not necessarily “brightest insight” or “best-in-class.”

What do you think about these and the other books that managed to get on this list? Or maybe you’ve recently picked up a book that you’d like to see on Amazon’s top ten. Let me know in the comment space below.

What the 30 Under 30 Are Reading

Meg White — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:11:38 +0000

Last month, I had the opportunity to help document the cover shoot for the May/June issue of REALTOR® Magazine. Because the issue contains the profiles of our 30 Under 30 honorees, we thought we’d invite a few of the new recruits in for a photo shoot.

Interviewing these young practitioners as a writer for the magazine, I learned a great deal about how to shift from recession to recovery, the influence of technology on the industry, and what their local markets are like all across the country. But as administrator of the Weekly Book Scan, I only had one question: What’s your favorite real estate or business book?

More than half of the seven honorees named Gary Keller’s The Million Dollar Real Estate Agent (Rellek Publishing Partners, 2003) as a favorite. So if you haven’t read that one yet, I’d suggest you start there (or if you have, you may want to check out Keller’s latest work, The One Thing).

Here are the other books that these young professionals say influenced the way they see their business and the real estate industry as a whole.

The Richest Man in Babylon (Penguin Books, 1926), by George Samuel Clason
The Champion Real Estate Agent: Get to the Top of Your Game and Knock Sales Out of the Park (McGraw-Hill, 2006), by Dirk Zeller
(7L) The Seven Levels of Communication: Go from Relationships to Referrals (AuthorHouse, 2010), by Michael J. Maher
The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life (Simon & Schuster, 2009), by Ivanka Trump
The Art of Closing the Sale (Thomas Nelson, 2007), by Brian Tracy

Of course, this is just a tiny sample of what our current crop of 30 Under 30 honorees are reading, which is an even smaller sample of the books that young real estate practitioners in general cherish. Let me know what your favorite business and industry books are in the comment section below.

Attitude Before Platitude

Meg White — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:57:37 +0000

Becki Saltzman has arranged a threesome. It involves you, your clients, and her wacky self, and it takes place in her new book, Arousing the Buy Curious: Real Estate Pillow Talk for Patrons and Professionals (Oomau Media, 2013).

Author Becki Saltzman

While the book is peppered with what some may term naughty language and innuendo, perhaps the more shocking element is that she wrote a book that is aimed at practitioners as well as buyers and sellers. What? Didn’t someone tell her not to give up the secret codes?!

But after reading this compendium cover to cover, I can assure you that you can relax. In fact—once you read the client-focused chapter and the client tips scattered throughout the book—you’ll probably want to buy this for all your (not-so-uptight) buyers and sellers. Not only does Saltzman guide clients on how to pick good agents, but she teaches them a whole lot about how to be good customers as well.

OK, back to the naughty bits. This book is not for those easily offended by language. Still when Saltzman writes, “You might be appalled by some of what you read in this book, but I promise that the ideas my potty mouth spouts are valid,” she lives up to the promise. Indeed, her advice is novel as it is solid, and it spans everything from getting started in real estate, to transaction management (from both sides), to handling crazy market fluctuations with grace.

Arousing the Buy Curious, coming to bookshelves in September, is definitely useful. But it’s also hilarious. There are quite a few laugh-out-loud commentaries that I can’t print here. But here are a few that can sneak by:

The word “charming” appears in 72% of all real estate listings, but what does it really mean? After all, people described Ted Bundy as charming.
(On deciding to work within a team:) If companionship is what you’re looking for, join a book club or a twelve-step program.
The better you sniff, the more you will find that the adage “Buyers are liars” should be changed to “Salespeople suck at getting to the truth.” Too bad that doesn’t rhyme.
(On the importance of choosing a good hair stylist:) Hell hath no fury like a woman improperly shorn.

As someone who reads business books for a living, I particularly appreciate her subtle pokes at the genre. At one point she calls biz book authors out for their over reliance on acronyms, categorizing waitstaff’s usefulness as COT (Conveyeors with Opposable Thumbs), SOT (Sort Of Trustworthy), or TBK (The Best Kind). She also peppers sarcastic exercises throughout that seem way more fun (and possibly more effective) than the corny routines I’ve read in some other business books.

Her sidebars of “Sortafacts” are both helpful and hilarious (One example: “Studies show that the most confident people use their first and last names when making business introductions in person. Online, however, people tend to introduce themselves by the name of their first dog and their current computer operating system.” *). She does include one chapter that harkens back to her training in psychology in a semi-serious way called Bit-O-Science, which applies some of science’s real-world findings about peoples’ reactions in sales situations. It’s informative, and has real citations.¹

The best secret Saltzman gives away is how to do exactly what she’s doing—putting together a collection of smart observations about business and how people work. This is one huge part of creating a business book that actually works, rather than one that is just littered with nice-sounding platitudes.

“Try to apply lessons from outside the world of real estate to your business,” she writes at the end of Chapter 20. “Listen to your own family folklore and learn from the stupid things your family and friends have done. Think like a storyteller so the lessons will implant for longer and on a deeper level.”

Lucky for her brand, she does not reveal the secret to being hilarious and snarky (though she does give plenty of examples of how to mix things up a little). I guess some people are just born that way.

*That would make me “Misha Mountainlion.” It’s got a ring to it, no?

¹ It also cautions people against believing citations.

Because No One Plans to Be Homeless

Meg White — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:45:18 +0000

Hi, Book Scan readers. I spent the first part of last week hanging out with community planners at the American Planning Association’s national conference. Though I haven’t read the book described below, I thought the author (who gave the closing keynote at the conference) had some beautiful thoughts on home ownership that real estate professionals would appreciate. Enjoy! —MW

Early Pearl has a great idea for dealing with an intractable problem. As a homeless 11-year old Chicagoan, she sees all of the sturdy housing stock that stands empty and abandoned in her south side neighborhood and decides to take action.

From the cover of Blue Balliett's new book, Hold Fast

She gets some friends together and, with a few cameras, they snap pictures of these empty houses. They send the pictures—along with their imaginings of how the structures could be transformed into dream homes for kids without anywhere to live—to community leaders in an effort to spark a change in their unfortunate circumstances.

Early is only a character in Blue Balliett’s newest mystery novel, Hold Fast (Scholastic Press, 2013). But there are more than 30,000 kids in Chicago alone who are homeless just like she is, and some 16,000 vacant properties like the ones that Early dreams of inhabiting.

“Kids will easily share their dreams about a home,” Balliett said in her keynote speech at the American Planning Association’s national conference last week. “They never make small plans.”

Balliett, a bestselling author of young adult literature, told planners that she came up with the idea for Hold Fast during the housing downturn, when she noticed a dearth of news stories about the effect foreclosures were having on her target audience.

“The children were invisible,” she said. “I kept wondering about the kids: Who are they and what does it feel like to grow up without a front door?”

Of course, community planners, writers, and nonprofit directors know as well as real estate professionals the value of home when it comes to children.

“What kids need most is stability in their lives and a home provides that… Blue’s book really captured that,” said Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Ed Shurna, who spoke on a panel alongside Balliett at the closing keynote of the APA conference. “The danger is that they are going to stay homeless as adults.”

W. Paul Farmer, executive director and CEO of the APA, called on members to devote more of their attention to this difficult problem.

“As we have become arguably the best-housed nation in the world… we have allowed ourselves to not realize that we have these problems,” Farmer said. “These are, in fact, invisible to many people in the country.”

In a brief Q&A period, attendees asked panelists what they could do to help solve the issue in their local communities.

“Part of the key is to make your community care and take ownership in this problem,” Balliett responded. “Become determined to do something.”

A Real Estate Lion’s Miraculous Tale of Recovery

Meg White — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:43:30 +0000

Dave Liniger, chairman and co-founder of RE/MAX, has a long list of accomplishments. He’s raced cars at Daytona and trained with NASA. He’s parachuted from airplanes and hunted big game in exotic locations around the world. He’s been a police officer and a soldier. How does a guy like that face the idea that he may never walk again?

In late January of last year, Liniger discovered he couldn’t move his legs. What he initially assumed was part of his chronic back pain turned out to be a staph infection that not only ran the entire length of his spine and into his brain stem, but it also spread to his blood, meaning he was septic and in real danger of dying for weeks on end. My Next Step: An Extraordinary Journey of Healing and Hope (Hay House Inc., 2013) is Liniger’s memoir of the next seven months of his life, from feverish hallucinations to drug-induced comas to the long recovery from multiple surgeries and partial paralysis. The book includes short vignettes from family, friends, and professionals who helped care for Liniger in the hospital and through physical therapy.

The book isn’t really about real estate, but the main character might be familiar to real estate pros, even if they’ve never been affiliated with RE/MAX. Liniger has that I’ll-sleep-when-I-die attitude that many successful real estate brokers display through long hours and an ever-present can-do spirit. That kind of determination might lead a person through a tough transaction or office merger, but can it lead a person back from the brink of death?

“I can’t tell you why I’m alive,” Liniger writes at the end of the book. He cites positive thinking, faith in his own strength, luck, and the extensive network of friends and family who were praying for him.

The one thing that abounds in this small volume is Liniger’s advice for anyone going through such a trying physical ordeal (as well as for their loved ones). It was clear from the very beginning of the book that he hopes others can learn and benefit from his story. At the end of the book he admits his purpose for the book:

“As I spent so many nights awake and scared, I desperately wanted to find something I could read to help me understand what I was going through. I wanted a book that inspired me to keep working hard and to motivate me to never give up. I hope this is that book for you.”

I’d recommend this book to anyone enduring a long hospital stay or facing months of PT. But I recommend it even more wholeheartedly knowing that author proceeds from the book will go to three charities: Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and the Wounded Warrior Program.

Real Estate Retrotalk

Meg White — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:06:44 +0000

Real estate is as cutting edge as it is traditional, and the same thing goes for the English language. Just think: When you’re calling a prospect on your cell, you might “dial” in their number, just as you might also “hang up” when you’re finished. But is there a rotary dial on your phone or a cradle within which you can hang the mouthpiece of your telephone? Nope.

Credit: Kim B/thepeachmartini

As a word nerd, I love these contradictions that flavor our everyday speech. In I Love it When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), author Ralph Keyes calls these contradictions “retroterms,” or “verbal artifacts that hang around in our national conversation long after the topic they refer to has galloped into the sunset.”

I Love it When You Talk Retro is a fascinating book by all accounts, and worth a read just for fun. But for Book Scan readers, I pulled out a few of the more real estate-related items for which you might want to know the origins.

Ever encountered an actual skeleton in the closet of one of your listings? Probably not nowadays, but in nineteenth-century England you may have. In the beginning of the era of modern medicine, doctors found that dissecting corpses was a very good way to learn about the human body and disease. However, doing so was illegal. So doctors had to hide the results of such experiments in closets, for fear of punishment. Now, of course, a “skeleton in the closet” is more likely to refer to family secrets than any frightening open house surprises.

Some of the best deals are struck on the front porch. Yet, back when political candidates William McKinley, Benjamin Harrison, and Warren G. Harding used front porch campaigns to connect with fellow citizens, they were derided as lazy by opponents who crisscrossed the country for votes. It was not particularly impressive to give speeches from one’s own front porch, but effectiveness is another measure altogether. Though each front porch campaigner experienced success from their efforts, the phrase is still used as a way to describe lethargic efforts to win people over. Or maybe it’s just a soft sell technique? You decide.

Next time you’re showing off the backyard of an early 20th-century home, don’t offer to take house hunters on a trip to the woodshed. Back when these sheds were used to hold fuel, they were also reportedly a good place for parents to discipline their children. To this day, a trip to the woodshed often refers to being dressed down or punished. Keyes notes that the euphemism has even been turned into a noun, as in “s/he was woodshedded.”

You’d better hope your farm area doesn’t include a Potemkin village, or else you’ll have a lot of explaining to do once the facade recedes. See, this descriptor comes from a tour Russia’s Catherine the Great made of Ukraine in 1787, shortly after her country annexed the area. The Ukrainian governor was so eager to please that he created structures specifically for the event and decorated the place to give it a little more curb appeal. Catherine’s adviser, one Prince Potemkin, joked that perhaps the entire village had been constructed merely to impress the throne. Thereafter, any fake construction created to impress could be referred to as a Potemkin village, or Potemkin-like.

Finally, next time a picky city slicker derides one of your listings as located “out in the boonies,” you can take a moment to educate them on the meaning of the term. A shortened version of “boondocks,” this colorful word comes from U.S. soldiers fighting in the Philippine–American War during the turn of the 20th Century. The Tagalog language’s word for hinterlands was “bundok,” which Americans picked up and brought home.

Am I Responsible for the Weather, Too?

Meg White — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:17:30 +0000

Being accountable for one’s actions is indisputably a good thing. But what about your boss’ inability to properly communicate, or a flat tire? Are you responsible for the ramifications of your own bad luck?

Credit: bolandrotor

Local readers may think my headline is in response to the painfully prolonged winter Chicago is experiencing, well into meteorological spring. Actually, this piece comes from two books I happened to read in succession that have two different answers to the accountability question.

In Success Under Stress (which I reviewed a few weeks back), Sharon Melnick argues that holding yourself accountable for things that are out of your control is just going to stress you out and make you less productive:

Every challenge can be divided into two categories—the 50 percent of factors we can control and the 50 percent we can’t. Factors we can’t control include macrolevel forces, such as market trends, technology developments, senior leadership decisions, reorganizations, traffic… Additionally, there are a myriad of microlevel forces we can’t control, such as someone else’s tone of voice or what they write in an e-mail.

Things that are out of your control attract your attention like a magnet attracts metal. However, by focusing on factors outside of your control, you’re setting yourself up for stress.

In Where Winners Live, a new book by Dave Porter and Linda Galliano, the authors argue that if you “adopt a mindset of 100 percent accountability,” then “chances are good that it will work out in your favor.” They compare the days of Vince (who is 100 percent accountable) to that of Katherine (who only accepts accountability for 85 percent):

Occasionally, Katherine reasons, circumstances beyond her control cause her bad results. Take the weather, traffic, the occasional flat tire, or a restless night that left her without enough energy for her day…

Back to Vince. It rains on his way to work as often as it does during Katherine’s commute. But he leaves his house so early in the morning that he has plenty of leeway to deal with weather-delayed slow traffic and still arrives at work on time. He experiences few flat tires and car troubles because he knows a few minutes of preventive maintenance now will save him from losing up to an hour later… He plows through the days when he feels sluggish or has the sniffles, because he knows each day will end at 6pm and he needs to finish his work by then.

Honestly, both of the explanations above make sense to me, in a way. Responsible adults just take responsibility, even when influencing factors are out of their control. Yet, doesn’t it also cause unnecessary stress when we have to take on a burden that isn’t truly ours? And what about when an unfortunate outcome really does belong at the feet of another colleague—if we take responsibility for 100 percent, isn’t that letting some slacker off the hook?

What’s your philosophy? Are you 100 percent accountable all the time, or do you ensure that your half of the situation is 100 percent perfect?

Cultivating Single-Mindedness

Meg White — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:09:22 +0000

I was recently introduced to the music of an Australian rock band called The Beards. There’s a lot to like about them: Their tunes are catchy, they are talented musicians, and their lyrics are terribly witty. But what sets them apart from your average talented, hook-heavy folk-rock is their single-minded focus on subject matter. This band writes and performs songs exclusively about beards and the people who grow them.

Yep, you heard me right. Their third album (Having a Beard is the New Not Having a Beard) features such proto-hits as I Think Beards are Great, The Beard Accessory Store, and There’s Just Nothing Better Than a Beard. I think they’re pretty clear about where they stand on the subject.

The Beards have committed to doing one thing, and doing it extremely well. I think Gary Keller would approve. See, that single-mindedness is the focus of Keller’s new book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.

The best-selling author and Keller Williams International Realty co-founder teamed up with the VP of his company’s publishing arm to write The One Thing, which will be available starting April 1, 2013. Functionally, their suggestion is a good one to follow. It’s important to have a focus in your company, just as it’s important to know what the core of your value proposition is. Even if the whole purpose of your company is creating and selling songs about beards, you’d better be off on a world tour trumpeting your beard songs to the heavens if you want to achieve the kind of extraordinary success that Keller talks about (and, frankly, has experienced himself).

But the hypothesis seems to suffer a bit from the psychological biases of anchoring or focalism (in other words: the tendency to rely too heavily on a past reference or on one piece of information when making decisions). For example: Keller argues that Google’s “ONE Thing” is search. But I wonder what the great web octopus’ analytics, data processing, productivity software, information sorting, mapping and applications tentacles would have to say about that assertion. Doesn’t Google’s success come from the many different ways it touches our lives? To take apart another Keller example: What would Starbucks be if it still only served coffee?

I posit, on rewrite, the addition of a footnote on The Beards. Just a thought.

Still, this is one of the few books where a person can poke holes in the very essence of the author’s argument but still come out of reading it with a great deal of genuine praise.

As I noted earlier, the main argument of having a single-minded focus is quite salient. But another part of my sheer enjoyment of this book comes from Keller’s language. When discussing Stephen Colbert’s coinage of the word truthiness, Keller deadpans: “Life is too short to chase unicorns.”

Keller also has a gift for gentle self- and genre-mockery that helps set this book apart from other CEO-turns-writer productions. Take, for example, how he recalls learning about the fallacy of willpower:

It seemed so simple: invoke my will and success was mine. I was on my way. Sadly, I didn’t need to pack much, for it was a short trip. As I set to impose my will against defenseless goals, I quickly discovered something discouraging: I didn’t always have willpower.

To complement this light touch, Keller uses the last few chapters to illustrate concrete ways to establish this overarching theory of success into the reader’s life. I’m not sure whether these exercises would be able to get Why Having a Beard is Better than Having a Woman on Billboard’s top 40 airplay chart, but it’s worth a shot.

A Script for Ushering Change

Meg White — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:29:48 +0000

When change comes to town, it seems to divide people into two camps: victims and villains. Those who precipitated the change are often the bad guys of the situation. And everyone else seems to be warily looking for their name on the chopping block. Change has the same effect on businesses, which is why mergers and other structural shake-ups can be so damaging to morale and productivity.

Credit: busy.pochi, via Flickr

But they don’t have to be. While reading Sharon Melnick’s new book, Success Under Stress: Powerful Tools for Staying Calm, Confident, and Productive When the Pressure’s On, I came across her seemingly stellar exercise for people who are going through this kind of flux. It’s called “WIN at Change.” While it is intended for the individual, I think that brokers, managers and leaders of all kinds could benefit from it.

The exercise is predicated on Melnick’s theory that if you take responsibility for your 50 percent of any given situation, your stress level will decrease, as you’re holding up your end of the bargain with the understanding that you can’t do it all. I think that’s a key component to this exercise, and I think managers would do well to mention that ideal as an introduction to the exercise. As Melnick says, “It’s tempting to comment negatively on other peoples’ decision or to be fearful of the uncertainty, but the way to stay productive is by managing yourself” (emphasis hers). If nothing else, it should quiet detractors long enough to get through the exercise!

So, here’s what you do. Gather all the stakeholders and hand them two pieces of paper. The first one should be split into thirds, and the second one blank. Here’s your script:

In the first column, I want you to write down each of the implications of this change (or merger, or new organizational system, etc.) for yourself and your unique role within our company. Write them out separately.
In the second column, write how each of these implications makes you feel. What is your gut reaction?
In the third column, write a plan of action that details how you can deal with these implications and your reactions to them from columns one and two. Will you prioritize differently? What actions can you take? What can you control?
On the second sheet of paper, write your new learning plan. What skills, support, and resources will you need to have in order to carry out the plan in column three? How can I—and other colleagues—help you achieve your goals in these areas? Are there resources outside of the organization—such as a coach or mentor—you would tap?

Melnick notes that one of the ideas behind this exercise is to foster what psychology professor and motivation researcher Carol Dweck calls the “growth mindset.” If your agents feel like their skill set is a fixed thing and what they don’t do well is a threatening list, well of course change is going to be difficult, and of course they’re going to feel left behind.

But with a “growth mindset,” they’ll feel like they can learn new things and take control for their role in the situation. And what pairs better with change than growth?