Author Shawn Achor has written a fascinating book, The Happiness Advantage, that argues that success is the result of happiness and not vice-versa. Achor presents us with seven principles that demonstrate how we can leverage the Happiness Advantage to improve our productivity and maximize our potential. What is most interesting about Achor's book is that it [...]
Oren Klaff, author of the exciting book Pitch Anything, writes about the science behind creating and presenting a great sales pitch. Not just another book on selling, Pitch Anything describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. Klaff's book is an important contribution to understanding how to make successful sales pitches. The last part of the [...]
There is no doubt that the biggest obstacle to achieving success in organizations is ego. All the training and coaching in the world will be rendered ineffective when ego gets in the way. Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy, presents us with a thorough discussion of ego - what it means and how it [...]
One of the most important contributions of the emerging field of neuroleadership is to inform us that our brains are highly emotional. When a new stimulus is introduced into our environment, it is the emotional brain that clicks on first to determine if the new stimulus represents a threat. If the threat is real, "fight [...]
Charles Duhigg, acclaimed author of The Power of Habit, has written another very useful book, Smarter Faster Better. Duhigg's research, based on neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics, reveals that there are eight core concepts that are the secret to increasing your own productivity as well as that of your team. The eight concepts are: 1.To Generate Motivation [...]
In the early part of the 21st century, a team of brilliant engineers working for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was given the assignment of designing a way to deliver a 5,400 pound entry vehicle carrying a 2,000 pound rover (Curiosity) onto a precise spot on the surface of Mars, a planet that was 140 million [...]
Dr. Jeffrey Young and Dr. Janet Klosko have written a potentially life-altering book, Reinventing Your Life - The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again. The authors describe common negative life behaviors, feelings and patterns called lifetraps, which they describe as "patterns that start in childhood and reverberate throughout life". They write that [...]
Marcia Reynolds, in her book The Discomfort Zone - How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations Into Breakthroughs, writes about five myths that effectively challenge the assumption that employees always reveal to their managers their thoughts, fears, desires and ideas. Reynolds is correct in stating that employees often don't ask for things that are on their minds. Barriers [...]
Neuroscientists have presented us with compelling reasons why, in the business world, we love to spend an excessive amount of time planning. Because our brains crave certainty, we want to make sure that we cross all our t's and dot all our i's before shifting to implementing our plans. Because so many of us are [...]
Marshall Goldsmith, in his excellent book Triggers, identifies fifteen inner beliefs that trigger failure and "sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility" in our efforts to change our behaviors. He writes that we "employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result". These fifteen destructive belief triggers are: [...]
