Author Archives: Marcia Moran

Teachers Learn A New Trick by RedRover

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How do we go about making sure that our kids learn empathy in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic in school? Sadly, if you talk to today’s teachers, it often gets lost in the shuffle of getting the “real” instruction done. Teachers have so much time to get the nitty-gritty done the time for learning the soft skills fall by the wayside. Yet empathy, the ability to walk in someone else’s place and truly feel what they experience, gives children a way to understand the world differently. That’s where RedRover comes in. This organization has invested in building a program that teaches empathy to third and fourth graders. Empathy Goes to The Dogs… and Cats Let’s suppose we’re part of a class. The teacher tells us that we are trying The RedRover Reading Program today. Everybody becomes involved and you… …

How Do You Find a Job When You Are Blind?

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Meet Rebecca Bridges. Wife. Mother. Management consultant at FMP Consulting. Rebecca has also been blind from birth. Knowing the unemployment rate is 70% for people who are blind, how could she grow up with the hope of finding a job that she would enjoy? Is it luck or is it something else? We have all heard the statistics. According to Simon Sinek, author of Leaders Eat Last, 1 in 3 employees seriously consider leaving their jobs. Of that number, only 1.5% of employees actually leave voluntarily. They feel safer with the job they hate then the unknown. With these types of statistics, I wondered how Rebecca found the courage to fulfill her dream. You Have to Be Better than Anyone Else Rebecca remembers her Dad giving her advice as a little girl when she complained that being blind wasn’t fair.… …

Cultivating Curiosity And Engagement

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This morning a stumbled across statistics that show the challenges with engagement, creativity, and well-being begin in the classroom rather than the boardroom. So, while Positive Business DC’s mission is to research to use science-backed research to improve your company, your culture, and your bottom line, let’s take a moment to see how we can improve the level of well-being with our kids. According to The Future Project,

Hiding When You Should Be Standing Out

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I failed miserably last week. I attended MAVA’s Capital Connection (CapCon) seeking to assess how successful I thought presenting founders and their companies would be long-term based on a single factor: Empathy displayed when they interacted with the event’s attendees. Imagine my surprise when only one CEO manned his company’s booth throughout the two-days presenting founders had to show off to venture capitalists, service providers, journalists (aka me), and others who may be interested in their companies. Kudos go to Gary Tyermann, CEO of Univa Corporation. You stood out. Your counterparts blended in with the crowd. Talk about missed opportunity. You know want I found, Gary? I think you actually fit the bill regarding empathy. I’m going to say you also exhibited stick-to-itiveness and a sense for what’s really important… connecting with others when you get the chance. We’ll call… …

How to Be Relevant in Today’s Workplace

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Few would argue that job functions have changed rapidly in the past several years. New technologies (like social media) have disrupted the marketing discipline. The push to do more with less has caused companies to merge job functions. The list of changes are seemingly endless. Whether you’re a new college graduate, in mid-career, or even planning to leave the workforce in the next 5-10 years, you probably need to brush up your skill set in order to keep pace with the demands of your employer or potential employer. A lot of people expect their companies to provide the training they think they need. While employer-provided training is useful, it’s only part of the story. According to Halelly Azulay, author of Employee Development on A Shoestring and founder of TalentGrow LLC, only 10% of professional training happens in the workplace. Another… …

Upcoming Meetup: Employee Development on a Shoestring

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“Doing more with less” has become a common phrase in the workplace and often has a negative connotation… but it doesn’t have to. Working within constraints nudges people to look for creative solutions, and thus is the focus of Positive Business DC’s February 11 Meetup featuring Halelly Azulay, author of Employee Development on A Shoestring. While classroom and online training are popular and first-in-mind development methods, they can be costly and complex. In addition to possibly being out of reach for budgetary and cost-to-productivity reasons, classroom and online training may not be the only or the best way to address learning needs even when they are available. Employee Development on A Shoestring explores other, non-training ways to develop employees on a tight budget. During the Meetup, Azulay will share the pros and cons of various non-training development methods, consider the… …

FRE to Profit from The Positive

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For those of you who are thinking that there’s a typo in the title… it’s actually not a mistake. On Tuesday, Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin shared insights on how to get more in done 2014 without working more hours. The webinar, entitled Profit from The Positive, took some pages from their book (same title, small pun intended). Attendees gained three practical tools based on the science of Positive Psychology they could apply right away: •  Trick yourself into getting started •  FRE •  FLOW Surprisingly, although Americans work 8 hours longer than their German counterparts each week, we are not more productive. Even with the technological advancements that have happened in the last 50 years, we have gained only a single hour of ‘extra’ time each day to do… well, whatever. It seems like we’re busy. And we are.… …

How To Stop Stewing in Your Own Juices

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Biochemically speaking, emotions have a shelf life of 90 seconds. They’re designed to be transitory. And yet, somehow when our feelings fall on the negative side (i.e. anger) we seem to get stuck in a loop that can be hard to escape. All too often, we blame these feelings on someone else, when in fact, the answer to breaking the cycle lies within. After 90 seconds, the initial flood of chemicals has completely dissipated. Dwelling on the situation that caused your feelings in the first place keeps powerful, chemicals flowing and you literally stew in your own juices. It takes a little practice, but rather than stewing, you can hit the ‘reset’ button. A Relentless Loop Road Rage offers a prime example of getting stuck in an angry loop. Remember the last person who cut you off? What ran through… …

Improve for The Business Stage Changes the Way People “Listen”

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Thank you to Kat Koppett, who led Improv for The Business Stage earlier today. It was Positive Business DC’s first Webinar and has me thinking about approaching transformation and company culture a bit differently. You can read about my personal epiphany in Modern DC Business. What we’ll cover here takes a completely different flavor—the difference between “yes” and “but.” Linguists will tell you that “but” has strong negative connotations. Someone says “but” and we hear “no.” The word, “and,” however, is inclusive and without limits. Or is it? When discussing improvisational tools used within the context of business, Kat and Shannon (Polly) discussed how the Yes/And exercise becomes misapplied. The rule: You need to see, hear, and receive everything that’s happening and then use an offer—anything your partner says or does—including emotional context and gestures. You accept all that has… …

Mindfulness Increases Your Chance of Promotion

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It appears as if social science and neuroscience are coming to the same conclusions about human behavior… at least in some instances. In a Ted Talk entitled Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are, Amy Cuddy speaks about how adjusting your posture for two minutes will change hormone levels, which will either make you more powerful or less powerful. It’s interesting, because the postures Cuddy highlights are clearly instinctive power or submissive moves. The hormones involved? Testosterone (the dominance hormone) and cortisol (the stress hormone). As people interact with one another, those hormone levels translate to body language. This has serious consequences personally and professionally. As a leader, one of the most important skills I taught my direct reports was how to interpret body language during interviews. Of course, the skill applied to all interpersonal interactions, but it was really… …

PBDC Participate in Massively Multiplayer Thumb Wrestling

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Yesterday, Donna and I journeyed to Richmond, VA to attend WomenEtc. by RichTech. We were originally inspired to make the trip to see Jane McGonigal, gaming guru and Ted Talk serial speaker extraordinaire. Jane’s life work has proven that gaming is not only has positive emotional and physiological benefits, she has demonstrated that gaming can also be used to improve the human condition. We’ll get to that part in another post. Jane’s presentation was everything we imagined it would be… and more. In the beginning, Jane boldly proclaimed that she would be able to get all 500 attendees to experience the 10 positive emotions associated with gaming within 60 seconds. Believe it or not, she did. So, what are those positive emotions, you might ask? 1. Creativity 2. Contentment 3. Awe and wonder 4. Excitement 5. Curiosity 6. Pride 7.… …

Are You An Effective Coach?

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Contrary to popular belief, it appears as if cheering someone on to improve performance does not influence people as much as role modeling does. Studies cited by Harvard Business Review reveal that both approaches improve outcomes. People encouraged by ‘cheerleaders’ increased performance by 22% while those coached by the silent type improved by 33%. When you think about it, these outcomes make sense. It all has to do with setting expectations. A “C’mon, you can do it!” kind of coach frames the experience by counting down to an arbitrary end point. Their focus: Put in just enough time to ‘gut it out to the end.’ Silent trainers come from a completely different perspective. There is no stated end point. Instead, these trainers focus on the discipline needed to do your personal best. Thus, each style produces very different results. You… …

How Empathy Stacks Up As A Critical Success Factor

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With Capital Connection 2013 just around the corner, I’ve been searching for a way to report the action at MAVA‘s premier event from a perspective different from every other journalist. The big ‘aha’ moment came during the drive home today. I’ll try to assess founders’ critical success factor ratio on a single, frequently under-appreciated leadership quality: Empathy. In addition to other things, I’ll spend my time trying to intuit long-term prospects based on the level of empathy each founder appears to express during their interactions with other people—both on and off stage. Please don’t label me a crackpot just yet. The science shows that people in leadership positions who demonstrate high degrees of empathy have a greater propensity to lead rather than manage. In the startup environment, leading with empathy qualifies as a critical success factor that influences the level… …

Natural Artistry Photography Implements Positive Practices

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When we launched Positive Business DC, Donna, Shannon and I wanted to create a resource to help people raise their level of well-being by providing evidence-based research in positive psychology and neuroleadership. And so, we launched the Well-being in The Workplace speaker series. Last week, I featured Natural Artistry in my weekly column for Modern DC Business magazine. As Meetup members Andrew Murdock, Kimba Green, and Cindy Alderton shared their story, I realized that our Meetups are having a much more profound impact than perhaps we realized. Andrew is the owner of Natural Artistry Photography in Frederick, MD. His style strays from the conventional by focusing in on moments when people connect on a fundamentally human level. The vulnerability he’s able to capture and the stories his photos tell reach out and grab your attention. He took photos of the… …

Empathy: Leadership Strength Or Weakness?

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Last week, Arlington Economic Development’s Business Investment Group sponsored Empathy in Business, a panel discussion with Ángel Cabrera, President of George Mason University, Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Carly Fiorina, CEO of Carly Fiorina Enterprises (and former CEO of HP), and Julie Rogers, President and CEO of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. Jonathan Aberman, Managing Director and Chairman of Amplifier Ventures, moderated the discussion. If you can find the discipline and energy to listen, you may learn why things failed and then make better decisions. — Ángel Cabrera It appears as if there are two camps when it comes to empathy as it relates to leadership: 1) those who think it’s a “squishy” emotion that makes a leader weak; or 2) those who think it’s a quality required to lead people effectively. For the… …

Cultivating Curiosity And Engagement

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This morning, I stumbled across statistics that show challenges with engagement, creativity, and well-being begin long before people enter the workforce. So, while Positive Business DC’s mission is to use science-backed research to help people improve their companies, culture, and the bottom line, let’s take a moment to see how we can improve the level of well-being with our kids. According to The Future Project, students lose interest in school at an alarming rate due to disengagement, lack of fulfillment, and lack of motivation. (Sounds familiar, right? Research tells us that people need autonomy, mastery and purpose in order for their jobs to be fulfilling. It should come as no surprise that students are motivated by the same needs and emotions as adults.) Disengagement •  80% of students ‘don’t see how school contributes to their learning and growth’ •  60%… …

Inspired to Set Unrealistic Goals

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The people who attended the January 31 Positive Business DC Meetup at Teqcorner understand why unrealistic goals produce far greater fulfillment than the goals we typically set. Caroline Adams Miller gave several very powerful examples of how unrealistic goals are not only attainable—they also set the stage for achieving remarkable things that change a person’s life in unexpected and ultra rewarding ways. Surprisingly, only 20% of people set challenging goals. How does Caroline approach goal setting differently from other life coaches? For one thing, she holds a MAPP (Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology) from the University of Pennsylvania. Caroline was one of the first people to go through the program. In doing so, she conducted the foundational research on the intersection of goals and happiness. Caroline discovered that a lot of what we’ve previously been led to believe about goals… …

Interesting Conversations on LinkedIn

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If you’re somewhere in the management chain and not yet a member of either the Leadership Think Tank or Harvard Business Review groups on LinkedIn, you’re missing out on some very interesting conversations that get to the core of well-being in the workplace… or perhaps lack thereof in many American companies. One of the questions being debated on LinkedIn this week is as follows: If your employee makes a mistake, do you accept responsibility? Fascinated by the discussion thread, I scrolled through all of the comments and got a good sense for what people had to say about responsibility, accountability, and throwing subordinates under the bus. While I didn’t do a tally, it struck me that a rather large percentage of the comments had a strong authoritarian flavor, many with advice on the process and education needed to avoid mistakes… …

Procrastinating on Happiness

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“Never do today what you can put off ’til tomorrow.” —Aaron Burr, Jr. I know a bunch of procrastinators that seem to live by Burr’s words. And yet, why would anyone want to delay leading a happy, fulfilling life? It turns out we don’t put off achieving happiness intentionally, but it is a by-product of the all too common ‘I’ll be happy when’  mindset. You know, when people think that they’ll achieve a greater level of satisfaction when they: Get married Find a boyfriend/girlfriend Receive a much anticipated promotion Lose weight… The list goes on. Also known as the arrival fallacy, this mindset actually produces much less satisfaction than expected because people have primed themselves for the achievement and it is already factored into their general state of happiness. When a person hits the longed-for target, they realize there’s something else… …

Focus, Discipline, And Grit: Hallmarks of Great Leaders

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That successful entrepreneurs have to be gritty is not news. Tenacity and perseverance enable founders to accomplish goals that may take years to achieve. People who start businesses that endure surmount a host of challenges (like wondering how to generate enough cash to keep the doors open and also feed themselves) along the way. Focus, discipline, and tenacity are also hallmarks of great leaders. Little demonstrates a leader’s grittiness more than the ability to effectively navigate a disaster. The movie, Apollo 13, demonstrates crisis management and gritty leadership at their best. Leadership Lessons from Apollo 13 Remember the scenes where disaster after disaster happen? The life-threatening drama begins when Jack Swigert replaces Ken Mattingly as pilot a few days before Apollo 13’s scheduled lift off. Bringing Swigert on disrupts the team’s chemistry, cohesion, and levels of trust. Then, the oxygen… …