How Do You Find a Job When You Are Blind?

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.…

Increase Your Leadership Skills by Becoming More Emotionally and Socially Literate

GUEST BLOG: By Drs. Todd B. Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener In January 2010, we phoned each other after watching a PBS documentary called This Emotional Life. There was one scene where a middle-aged husband was recently fired from his job and on top of this, could barely sleep and rarely connected with his wife because of their difficulties parenting a newborn child. What does psychology have to offer to help a person dealing with so many stressors at one time? In this PBS special, a positive psychology coach taught him to keep a journal so that he could record three bits of daily appreciation. Telling someone who is experiencing hardship to be grateful may or may not be the wisest approach. There is certainly research evidence suggesting that daily gratitude can boost happiness but reframing misfortune as opportunity can also come across as invalidating and Pollyanna-ish. Isn’t there more research that could potentially have informed this particular case? We…

Hacking Creativity by Jessica Amortegui

 Join our Hacking Creativity Webinar on September 24 at noon EST.  Register here. I believe everyone has the potential to be creative when given the time, freedom, and autonomy. And, combined witha subtle dose of inspiration,  that creativity may turn into full-blown innovation. In business, creativity used to be reserved for the designers, marketers, and artistic talent that represented the antidote to buttoned-up organizational cultures. In today’s  increasingly ubiquitous “VUCA” environments, where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity have seeped across industry verticals, creativity is no longer reserved solely for the hip folk clad in skinny jeans.  The ability to innovate across the corporate value chain – from strategy formulation to go-to-market execution – is a pre-requisite for market competitiveness. Those who do it best relish an ascent up the corporate ladder with increased reputational capital: they are the leadership game-changers. Armed with this insight, a group of six students from…

Does Corporate Training Have a Lasting Impact?

A Look at Well-Being Measures to Evaluate As a corporate communications trainer I work with many people on a short term basis.  Over a two day session I can see an enormous impact on their personal and professional growth.  Invariably I am always asked, “Does this training really work?”  Aside from the pile of positive evaluations I have received I do not have a scientific answer for them.  Implementing well-being measures can bring scientific rigor to my field and can fine tune the work we do to serve the client in the most effective way possible. I. Corporate Training The company we work with has a policy requiring their high performing women, after a selection process, to take part in our training.  It is this training program that I will be evaluating.  We work with high performing women in cohorts…

Upcoming Meetup: Employee Development on a Shoestring

“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…

How To Stop Stewing in Your Own Juices

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…

Anchoring Bias and Positive Leadership

Part 4 in our “Cognitive Bias and Leadership” Series On our January 16, 2013 blog, we 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 faulty judgments. So much of positive leadership hinges on good decision making, which, of course, affects company culture and workplace happiness. So, let’s expand the discussion. In the fourth of our series, I am going to talk about the Anchoring Bias. This bias is the tendency to favor a piece of information and “anchor on” or favor that information when making decisions, even though it may have no logical relevance to the decision at hand. With the Anchoring Bias, the information becomes our reference point to evaluate and make decisions. And, as you might guess, this can lead…

You can….Profit From the Positive

 There are so many good books coming out these days!  It’s hard to keep up.  But if you still have some beach reading time, I recommend Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business by Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin, Ph.D.  When you can get Tom Rath (author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Strengths Based Leadership) to say:  “Profit from the Positive is one of the most practical and accessible business books I have read in years…. It is rare that a business book compels you to action right away. When you finish reading Profit from the Positive, it will influence your behaviors the next day” you know you’ve hit the jackpot. This book is a no-cost, no-permission guide for boosting individual, team, and business performance. Whether you lead three employees or 3,000, this book shows you how to…

Employee Development on a Shoestring

Here at Positive Business DC we like to promote books that we think are helpful for creating positive businesses.  And one of Gallup’s Q12 (i.e. the 12 things that are the key to having engaged employees) is ‘did you learn something new today?’  Certainly this book can contribute to employee engagement by helping businesses invest in the learning of their employees. It has been estimated that 70 percent of employee development takes place through informal learning, rather than through formal learning events.  Employee Development on a Shoestring by Halelly Azulay, CEO of TalentGrow, offers insights and lessons for leveraging these naturally occurring growth opportunities in developing employees outside the classroom and ‘outside the box’. This hands-on resource delivers specific implementation tools and techniques for developing motivated, engaged employees in today’s “do more with less” business environment. A handy resource for any…

Bouncing Back: Myths and Characteristics of Resilience

I have taught resilience to business execs and Army sergeants.  And the same myths come up every time when I ask about their definition of resilience. Resilient people are almost always positive & upbeat. Resilient people know how to go it alone. Resilient people almost never give up. Resilient people tend to be perfectionists.   The reality is that resilient people experience most of the problems that non-resilient people experience. The major difference between a resilient and a non-resilient person is how quickly resilient people recover from failures and setbacks in their life. If physical fitness is the speed with which you can recover from physical stress, resilience is the speed with which you can bounce back from psychological stress. Resilient and truly happy people understand the meaning of “good enough”. They know when to stop and enjoy what they…

Anticipatory Savoring: The IPPA World Congress

I’m flying to Los Angeles tomorrow.  I’m leaving my 2 1/2 year old and my 7 month old (whom I’m still nursing, if that isn’t TMI) and I’m leaving them for four days with my mother-in-law.  And I’m spending a lot of money to go to the 3rd International Positive Psychology Association conference.  (Conferences are expensive!  This one is $740. Not to mention the added lectures and workshops that you can go to before and after the event.) But it will be worth it.  I’ve been to the first two and each time I’m learned as much as going to a graduate level course and made good connections (and gotten jobs) from/with the people I’ve met. The IPPA website as such press worthy quotes as:  ”Presentations, workshops, and poster sessions will feature leading-edge research, as well as applications of positive…

Natural Artistry Photography Implements Positive Practices

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…

Cognitive Bias: Negativity Bias

On our December 10, 2012 blog, we 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 leadership is about good decision making so we really wanted to expand on different biases. In the second of our series, I am going to talk about Negativity Bias – the tendency to give more weight to negative information than positive information. Continue reading

Cultivating Curiosity And Engagement

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%…

It’s already February. Do you know where your New Year’s Resolutions are?

Shannon Polly, MAPP, asks us where are goals are now that we are 6 weeks past our New Year’s resolution. She also recaps our recent Meetup with our Speaker, Caroline Miller, on Creating Your Best LIfe. Continue reading

Inspired to Set Unrealistic Goals

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…

Attitude Drives Self-fulfilling Prophesies

A recent article by Harvard Business Review gives advice about how to keep one’s preconceptions from skewing decisions. According to the article, six behaviors bias a person’s worldview. In particular, confirmation bias reaffirms snap judgments to create self-fulfilling prophesies. If you have a positive outlook on life, then you see endless possibilities and very likely exhibit the drive to achieve incredible accomplishments. You make up your mind and go for things that seem beyond the reach of other people. In contrast, the Eyeores of the world fence themselves in behind self-imposed limitations—and therefore severely limit their potential. They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. But, the science shows that we can actually improve our positivity factor by adjusting how we react to situations. Over time, you can train yourself to have a more positive emotional response when something…

Why We’re Stuck in An Authoritarian Rut

Friday night I went to the Washington West Film Festival to see I AM, a documentary by Tom Shadyac. You know… the guy who directed Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, Patch Adams, and a host of other popular comedies. After an accident that left him suffering with Post Concussion Syndrome and facing the possibility death, Shadyac came to grips with how his values and the way he lived his life differed. Vastly. The discomfort spurred Shaydac to make a movie about his journey to reconcile core values with personal actions. Ultimately, I AM seeks to answer two fundamental questions: 1. What’s wrong with our world? 2. What can we do about it? The movie just may have answered one of the burning questions I’ve been pondering for some time now: Why do American business leaders continue to fail to…

Using Strengths to The Point of Weakness

Because people tend to hire others like themselves, the recruitment process leads to organizational imbalance unless the hiring manager acknowledges and curbs this natural, human bias. A company that has too many people with the same strengths unintentionally creates a blind side (or two) and lacks the strength needed to become successful in the marketplace, much less a market leader Continue reading

The 5-1/2 Secrets of Resilient Entrepreneurs

Thursday, Doug Hensch will kick off Positive Business DC’s “Well-being in The Workplace” speaker series when he reveals The 5-1/2 Secrets of Entrepreneurs. As noted in Monday’s post, Low Startup Ratio Causes Economic Stall and Job Deficit, entrepreneurship drives our economic engine—and we are unfortunately in a slump. Continue reading