For the second episode of my podcast series, “Leadership Biz Cafe”, I’m pleased to welcome Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. Teresa is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Steven is a developmental psychologist whose writings have appeared in such illustrious publications as the Harvard Business Review and The New York Times.

In this episode, we discuss their research findings which serve as the basis for their new book “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work”.

Over the course of the discussion, Teresa and Steven describe:

• What is inner work life and why leaders need to pay more attention to it.
• What is the progress principle and why does it matter in today’s work environment.
• Why leaders need to provide employees with responsibilities that create a sense of purpose or meaning.
• How experiencing setbacks can be more damaging to employee morale than leaders realize.
• What actions leaders should avoid to prevent a loss of productivity from their employees.
• What leaders should be managing, as opposed to what they think they should be managing, to encourage productivity in their organization.
• What two other factors leaders can employ to improve employee performance over the long-term.
• How leaders and employees can help facilitate a shift toward the creation of meaningful work.

As I told Teresa and Steven during our conversation, “The Progress Principle” is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year on leadership and improving an organization’s productivity. I invite you both to listen to this podcast and to check out their book to find out why I so thoroughly enjoyed reading “The Progress Principle”, as well as talking with them about the discoveries they made through their research on the challenges employees face in today’s workplace.

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast:

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Buy Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s book “The Progress Principle” on Amazon.com (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers)

One of the common themes I’ve written about on my blog is the key role focus plays in our ability to be successful. But how many of us are actually focusing on what we want to accomplish, as opposed to focusing more on the things we’re trying to avoid? That’s the premise behind the book “Seeing Red Cars – Driving Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization to a Positive Future” by Laura Goodrich.

Goodrich starts her book examining why 70% of the thoughts we have on any given day revolve around issues we’re trying to avoid or things we don’t want. Referring to findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, she points out that this tendency toward an avoidance focus is the result of two factors. The first being the social conditioning we received growing up, where well-intentioned parents and teachers taught us not to do certain things out of fear of a negative outcome (“Be careful! You might fall and hurt yourself!”, “If you don’t study this well, you won’t pass this test”), not to mention the common tendency to feel we’re undeserving or incapable of achieving certain goals.

The second factor behind our tendency to focus on avoiding things or situations is our real-life experiences where we encounter something negative or traumatic, leading us to focus on ensuring we don’t do anything that might lead us to a similar situation again.

This doesn’t mean that we have to remain a hostage to our past and not elevate ourselves to a point where we can be more proactive instead of apprehensive in our efforts. After all, recent studies Click here to continue reading »”Coffee House Book Review – “Seeing Red Cars” By Laura Goodrich”

The beginning of July often marks for many the official start of summer, with children being off from school for the summer break paired with the warmer weather and sunny skies that marks this time of the year. This is also typically the time of year where most of us would start making preparations to take advantage of the vacation time we’ve earned through the contributions and efforts we’ve made for our organization. Unfortunately, there’s a growing trend among both employees and leaders to forgo taking any breaks from work in order to deal with the growing demands filling their plates.

For many leaders, the idea of forgoing their vacation would appear to be ‘the right thing to do’ in order to show solidarity and understanding for the growing pressures/demands faced by those they lead. Indeed, the apparent rise in criticism being directed towards leaders – both in the public and private sectors – who do elect to take some time off work would appear to reinforce the thinking that it’s better to stay on the job and to keep pressing ahead until better times return once again.

While this might make all parties feel better through reinforcing the notion that we’re all in this together, the reality is that such decisions are actually more harmful than beneficial for your organization and your employees. If you’re thinking of skipping out on taking time off from work this summer, here are four reasons why should reconsider this in terms of how this decision might impact your team and their future effectiveness. Click here to continue reading »”4 Reasons Why Your Boss Should Take A Vacation”

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of co-hosting the weekly #LeadFromWithin tweetchat with Lolly Daskal. The subject of my chat was “The Role of Empathy in Leadership” and I have to say I was gratified by both the level of participation and depth of contributions/insights which arose during the discussion (click here to download a PDF copy of the chat transcript).

Although I’ve written previously about the importance of empathy in leadership, I want to use last week’s talk as an opportunity to delve into this issue more, sharing some of the points I provided during the talk, as well as some of the insights proffered by the various participants. Here are the ten questions I asked participants as we discussed the role empathy plays in leadership.

1. What does empathy mean?

“Empathy means I demonstrate concern for & listen to reach understanding of others ideas & feelings.” – @scedmonds

In order to appreciate the role empathy plays in leadership, we first need to have a clear understanding of what empathy means. Most times, we tend to confuse empathy with sympathy; that to be empathetic means agreeing or relating to the feelings another person has regarding a given situation or individual.

However, what empathy really means is being able to understand the needs of others. It means that you’re aware of their feelings and how it impacts their perception. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with how they see things; rather, being empathetic means that you’re willing and able to appreciate what the other person is going through.

2. Why does it matter for us to understand the needs of others?

“By understanding others we can develop closer relationships.” – @TerriKlass

At first glance, this might seem a tad altruistic, but there are tangible benefits that are derived from Click here to continue reading »”Empathy in Leadership – 10 Reasons Why It Matters”