In a fascinating research study, Dr Daniel Kirschenbaum from the University of Wisconsin took a group of bowlers and asked them to review their performance after each bowling session.  He divided the group into two groups.     Group 1 reviewed only what they did well and were asked to remind themselves to engage more of the proper behavior.     Group 2 was asked to review their performance and indicate what they had done poorly and remind themselves to avoid making the same mistakes in the following rounds.       Which group of bowlers do you think improved their bowling performance? It probably won’t surprise you that the people shown the “positive” video feedback performed better. But you might be surprised by how much better they did! Amazingly, the bowlers who focused on what they did well showed… …

Rational-choice theory attempts to explain human choice by assuming we are rational choosers, have well ordered preferences, and have information on costs and benefits. It also assumes we compare options on the basis of preference, value or utility. Additionally, the theory says that rational choosers should always be able to express their preferences. A rational decision maker, therefore, will look at all the options, choose the one that brings the most utility, and understand why the choice was made. But in economic theory, there hasn’t been enough study understanding from where our preferences come. Preferences are complicated because it includes human biases as well as culture. Barry Schwarz explores this shortcoming as well as gives us evidence-based advice on how we can make wiser decisions in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. He lays out a compelling case for becoming a Satisfier (one who makes a decision when their criteria is met) over a… …

Did you miss Successfully Setting Boundaries by Mark Sachs? No worries!  We have you covered.  Check out our recording below. Mark give some very specific and usable advice including – Why it might be difficult for you to set a boundary – What you need to tell yourself that can help you set a boundary – The essential steps to being successful in setting them Mark Sachs, an executive coach for over 15 years, works with many leaders in the DC area. Past clients include NASA, National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and dozens of others. He has presented similar boundaries workshops in many organizations, where he gives real-life examples of boundary setting.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.  With this quote the authors of The Power of Being Unreasonable bring us into the world of social entrepreneurship and the men and women who state that this profession chooses them.  It is their calling.  In reading their stories, it becomes clear that in order to be great leaders these entrepreneurs must develop or express almost all of the strengths and virtues listed in Peterson and Seligman’s seminal work in order to be successful in a very risky field.  Some researchers define virtue as “any psychological process that enables a person to think and act so as to benefit both him – or herself and society” and… …

WalletHub published findings of a study by PNAS which found money does correlate with happiness, until about $75,000.  Check out the article here. Where does your state rate?  Dark blue – you are doing good….white? Well, not so much.

Have you ever been asked to do something at work that was so far beyond your abilities that you felt like Sisyphus pushing that rock up a mountain?  But you think that this time it’s different?  If I just analyze how the rock goes up the mountain, if I lift weights, if I push REALLY hard – I’ll be the one to make it up there? Well, a few years ago I was asked to facilitate a full day session on Negotiation Skills.  So I said yes.  And then I panicked.  I know nothing about negotiation skills.  I have never really negotiated for anything.  I lived in New York City so I didn’t own a car.  My broker took care of our apartment.  And in discussions with my husband, I usually win! I was terrified of facilitating something I really… …

            Where does happiness reside?  Happiness resides in groups, dyads and individuals.  In fact, I believe that we cannot be completely happy if we are unhappy in any one of these relationships.  Someone who has many friends and is the ‘life of the party’ but drinks themselves into a stupor when they go home cannot be truly happy.  Likewise, an introvert who is content to sit alone and read for hours but despises being with other human beings cannot be truly happy.  Why?  We all spend a part of our lives alone and with others.  We must find balance.  Happiness can be found everywhere, if you cultivate it. Get Happy in Groups As Csikszentmihalyi points out, the phrase “being alive” in Latin literally means “to be among men” (1990, p. 165).  Human beings are happier… …

93%.  Any corporate communications trainer worth their salt knows (and tells their clients at the beginning of a session) that 93% of what people convey to others are non-verbal.  Participants usually audibly gasp when they learn that only 7% of what they convey is through content, 38% tone of voice, and 55% gestures and body language.  This statistic even appears in a recent article on About.com.  After returning to the original study, Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels (Mehrabian and Ferris, 1967), I found that the reporting of these statistics is inaccurate and broadly over generalized. In the article, the author, Susan Heathfield, wrote:  “One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the… …

Part 7 of our “Cognitive Bias and Leadership” Series – See more here. On our January 16, 2013 blog, I gave an overview of cognitive bias (our tendency to filter information through our own past experiences, likes, and dislikes) and surmised that it can lead to judgments that are faulty.  So much of positive leadership is about good decision making so we really wanted to expand on different biases. In the 7th of our series, I am going to talk about the Mere-Exposure Effect – the tendency to prefer things because we are familiar with them.  What this means is that if you have been exposed to something prior, you will tend to favor it over something to which you have never been exposed…this could be a person, a product, a place, an event – you name it.  In fact, if you have ever been to a concert, I am sure you saw this phenomenon in action.… …

Have you ever tried speaking to a tough crowd?  How about teaching positive psychology to engineers? Jocelyn Davis, of Nelson Hart LLC (@nelsonhartllc) has done just that at the University of Maryland for the last eight years.  So she knows a tough audience.  She shared the example on our webinar that often moves her students.  Imagine that you had a high performance automobile and you ran it for weeks or months in the red zone.  (At this point she says her students have their eyes wide open.)  What would happen to the car?  At some point it would no longer be a high performance car.   You’d have to take it off the track.  Students quickly grasp the analogy that you cannot burn yourself out at work – long hours with no breaks or no vacations, and still be ‘high performance’… …