Category: Article

I found some great Memorial Day weekend reading in this month's Harvard Business Review, and as I travel this weekend I'll be thinking more about one article in particular, The Surprising Power of Questions by Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John. The authors break the issue of questioning down to two main problems: “Most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way.”It reminded me of a question I have addressed to some of my clients:“Are you interested or interesting?” For instance, I have had clients who wanted to be more likeable, but they just couldn't seem to make warm connections with others at work--or, sometimes, even, outside of work.I know that if it feels like someone isn’t interested in me, it’s pretty hard for me…

People love superhero stories in part because we all wish we had special powers beyond the ordinary. Yet every day we overlook or undervalue special talents in ourselves and others that are as useful in our lives as X-ray vision or super strength. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Why Talented People Don’t Use Their Strengths,” author and executive coach Whitney Johnson writes that, based on her observations, the problem is less that we don’t know what we’re good at, but that “we often undervalue what we inherently do well.” That makes us less likely to appreciate those abilities as special, and may also make it less likely that our employers know about them.Johnson identifies our “superpowers” as things we do “effortlessly, almost reflexively, like breathing.” We could all do…

Many of us wonder how better to motivate and influence the people around us. It’s a question I am regularly asked by clients who want to lean in to their leadership, but who aren’t quite sure how to do it.It is an important question, and the answer, I believe, is that people are most drawn to and influenced by a leader's personal authority. If you want to be a great leader (not a bully) and bring out the best in others while being authentic to yourself, you will need to develop that personal authority. It is something a person can carry even if they are not in an obvious position of power; even if they don’t have situational authority over anyone. It's not simple, but the first step, for nearly everyone,…

Strong cognitive skills--those that can be measured with IQ tests, for instance--are always in demand in the marketplace. However, new research by economists finds that employers are also increasingly searching for applicants with other strengths: "non-cognitive" soft skills such as teamwork, collaboration, and oral and written communication skills.This is a strong affirmation for the leaders I know who have been putting in the work to strengthen their self-knowledge, listening skills, executive presence and other aspects of emotional intelligence."Strong cognitive skills are increasingly a necessary — but not a sufficient — condition for obtaining a good, high-paying job," says David J. Deming, an economist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. "You also need to have social skills." One reason for this, he suggests, is that in many jobs there is…

How many times do you leave a one-on-one meeting or conversation with your boss or coworker feeling unsure about just what their motivations were, or what kind of impact you made? “What did they really think about what I had to say?” you might ask yourself. “I wish they weren't so hard to read.” How often do you go over the meeting in your mind, creating a “what if?” scenario, or coming up with stories of what just happened, before deciding to just move on and hope for the best?Situations like this are common at organizations and they are also avoidable, when leaders practice and encourage transparency by being clear, honest and forthright. Transparency in business means sharing information with others, including sharing the impact of others’ words and actions. It can be difficult to…

I recently attended a talk for human resource leaders that brought in Hitendra Wadhwa, a very popular professor at Columbia Business School and founder of the Institute for Personal Leadership (IPL). Wadhwa is a mathematician who has made a study of what makes a great leader. It didn’t surprise me that this scholar found that great leadership comes from the person you are inside, rather than being imposed from the outside, but I was excited to learn that his research offers some quantifying evidence to back up that philosophy, which I share. Letting your inner self be your "guiding light," as Wadhwa eloquently put it, is easy to say, but it's not always clear to each of us how we can bring that about. Wadhwa proposed paying attention to five key aspects of self. I'll…

Reading books is good for you. Even Oprah says so.(Writing books is, too, even if while you're doing it you're not sure if you'll ever finish. Ahem.)Late last summer I finished writing my first book. Among other benefits, that experience gave me even more respect for book authors than I had before. Writing is hard work. Putting your ideas and words out into the world for others to read—and perhaps criticize—is also a challenge. So one of my goals in the New Year, now that I'm done writing my first book, is to read more of other people's books. It’s sometimes hard to carve out time for book reading but I notice that when I do, what I get from a good book reverberates in my life far beyond the time…

A recent study offered an interesting twist on what makes for effective listening. According to research, listeners who hear a speaker by phone, or with eyes closed, tend to more accurately gauge the speaker’s emotions than listeners who are also looking at the speaker by video conference or in person. According to an article in the journal Yale Insights, “The research suggests that simple phone calls might be sufficient for bringing together far-flung colleagues.” This might be good news for businesses that want to cut back on travel for face-to-face meetings. It’s also somewhat of an affirmation of what I’ve noticed in my own work. I do phone as well as in-person coaching, and while I feel confident that I’m gleaning a person’s emotions face-to-face, I have also felt that the phone coaching…