February 28, 2021
Somewhere along the line I absorbed the nearly universal belief that hard work is a defining value of a person’s worth. Intellectually, I don’t buy into this meme – but emotionally I can feel its pull and weight for every hour “wasted” on “non-productive” work. Although the nature of work has changed dramatically since I was a child, the thinking […]
February 19, 2021
Succesful collaboration is built on a high level of emotional literacy. Without the capacity to generate and sustain certain feelings, our ability to collaborate with others is not possible. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workplace, our emotional repertoire has become habituated. Emotional habits are then fueled by our thinking process which is often fixed into patterns. […]
February 5, 2021
Since Part 1 of this article was published it has consistently remained in the blog’s top 10. While I am a very informal student of the science, what I’ve learned has reshaped the way I approach my work. I continue to hope that eventually, this slowly, but surely, organizational leaders will come to realize that many of the beliefs, practices […]
January 27, 2021
The scene – the window from my midtown Manhattan hotel facing an office building. The time – 6 am – the usual time I wake up when working in New York City (unless I can help it!) Years ago, when I started staying at this hotel, the offices were mostly dark at 6 am. But in recent years, more lights in more windows […]
December 1, 2020
Needs are basic to life. Everything we feel and do is in service to our needs. In the moment to moment biological imperative to meet our needs we make choices – thousands of choices. Every choice we make is an attempt to satisfy the need that is most deeply calling us at the moment. Mostly unconscious, this process never stops. […]
September 9, 2020
“The problem with business is that it is afraid of dealing with the business of people.” W. Edwards Deming Honestly, we don’t get it. Why is business still so ignorant about the basics of human dynamics? Awareness of human psychology as it applies to work has evolved at a glacial pace while technology flies by it at the speed […]
August 11, 2020
“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. ” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania There is an important finding in neuroscience that should impact on how every […]
June 11, 2020
How we respond to others is largely a function of habit. Many small, repetitive, automatic responses that grow over a long period of time form habits. Mostly, these reactions are outside of our conscious awareness. They’re built on foundations formed by our beliefs, and in most cases, they stayed fixed, usually reinforcing old beliefs and naturally – old habits. Charles […]