#HR #RRHH Making love and making personal #branding #leadership

Psychologist John Gottman can predict whether or not a married couple will be together five years later with startling 90 percent accuracy. How does he do it?

He watches them argue.

The ability to engage in healthy, productive debate is not only essential for ensuring a long marriage--it's also the key determinant of high performing teams.

A recently released six-year study cites the ability to manage conflicting tensions as the most critical predictor of top-team performance. Berkeley research shows teams that debate their ideas have 25 percent more ideas altogether and that companies like Pixar embrace healthy debate as a vital part of their performance (in its case to make better films).

When we travel to a country that has a different culture than ours, many of us spend time learning ways to communicate and connect with the people there. We might look up the meanings of common terms and access maps of key attractions.

Similarly, when you first become a manager, it’s helpful to spend time up front connecting and creating a common language with your team. When your team knows how you like to work and how you plan to manage them, they’re able to produce results faster. When you know how each of your direct reports likes to work and communicate, you’re able to save time when setting direction and following up.

Every morning at the construction site down the street from my office, the day starts with a familiar hum. It’s the sound of the regular drone scan, when a small black quadcopter flies itself over the site in perfect lines, as if on rails. The buzz overhead is now so familiar that workers no longer look up as the aircraft does its work. It’s just part of the job, as unremarkable as the crane that shares the air above the site. In the sheer normalness of this — a flying robot turned into just another piece of construction equipment — lies the real revolution.

While it can be difficult to become a great leader and to achieve great things, practicing great leadership is actually quite easy. There is a tendency to overcomplicate or overthink what leadership is, but actually, leadership can be very simple. I have worked with teams all over the world, from dozens of cultures, and from different generations, Baby Boomers to Millennials, and I have found that if you provide these four simple things your team will appreciate you, follow you, and achieve great results.

You call a meeting--everyone groans and trudges to the conference room, already absorbed in their smart phones. Wouldn't a creative and engaging meeting be a nice change? Will that happen?

Probably not--poor communication runs rampant in meetings. But a talented communicator can fix all of the pitfalls of the typical meeting.

A Harvard Business Review study "found patterns of communication to be the most important predictor of a team's success." And what better way to communicate than using the tools of the best communicators around: TED speakers?

Bring the energy and effectiveness of TED into your company's discussions. Leave the useless and dreaded meeting structure behind. Captivate your employees and have them invested in what you're discussing.

Who isn't tired of obsessing over their body and their food? The struggle to break free from yo-yo dieting and self-sabotage is real, and yes I know it sounds a little like an infomercial, but it's actually Sheila Vier's ethos.

After successfully exiting her first company in 2015, she decided it was time to develop a company - SheilaViers.com - to help people recognize that entrepreneurs are still human and that they have all the same issues and insecurities that are human nature.

But part of being the best CEO you can be is feeling powerful in your own skin. That's what Sheila Viers helps her clients capture. I have always tried to empower women through my agency's work, and to do that you have to address issues of health, wealth, relationships with ourselves and others, and even spirituality. It has to be a well-rounded approach to achieve stasis.

Here are Sheila's best practices to manage the tightrope walk of life as an entrepreneur.

If you’ve ever had a miscommunication or failed to comprehend what someone else was trying to say, it could be that your perceptual languages are getting in the way. Discovered by development psychologist Taibi Kahler, perceptual languages are the different processes of how people communicate. The way people communicate often carries more information than the words themselves, says clinical psychologist Nate Regier, cofounder of the communication-coaching firm Next Element.

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions the “secret” to harnessing mental toughness to overcome adversity. The “secret,” I tell them, isn’t a secret but a fact that they don’t want to hear because it’s simple. But simple isn’t easy. That secret is this: make a decision and go with it.

That’s it.

I remember waiting for Hell Week to begin in BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) and students asking the instructors—in a somewhat uncommon cordial setting—what the secret was to making it through five and a half days of constant, nonstop activity. Here’s what the instructors said, “The secret to making it through BUD/S, is knowing you’re going to make it through BUD/S.”

It’s belief.

You need to believe that you’re the type of person who has the skill and will to make that goal happen, and then make it happen. Don’t worry about what’s right and don’t wait for the perfect opportunity because “perfect” doesn’t exist—it’s an excuse to procrastinate.

LinkedIn, once your online resume, has morphed into your opportunity to introduce yourself to others and attract the attention of those who need to know you. However, mindsets are slow to shift, and those who still consider LinkedIn nothing more than a digital resume are missing out on some of the biggest opportunities LinkedIn has ever offered. In a world that is becoming more virtual, with remote work becoming the norm, LinkedIn often delivers your first impression. To make sure you come across as the wildly interesting, compelling, and accomplished person you are, focus on the following six elements of your profile.

The further along you are in your career, the easier it is to fall back on the mistaken assumption that you've made it and have all the skills you need to succeed. The tendency is to focus all your energy on getting the job done, assuming that the rest will take care of itself. Big mistake.

New research from Stanford tells the story. Carol Dweck and her colleagues conducted a study with people who were struggling with their performance. One group was taught to perform better on a task that they performed poorly in. The other group received a completely different intervention: for the task that they performed badly in, they were taught that they weren't stuck and that improving their performance was a choice. They discovered that learning produces physiological changes in the brain, just like exercise changes muscles. All they had to do was believe in themselves and make it happen.

When the groups' performance was reassessed a few months later, the group that was taught to perform the task better did even worse. The group that was taught that they had the power to change their brains and improve their performance themselves improved dramatically.

The impact of work cultures on the bottom line is a hot business topic. More execs and HR leaders are connecting the dots on how an ecosystem of commonly held values, beliefs, and positive work behaviors drives engagement, innovation, and high performance.

Yet culture doesn't just happen. It takes visionary, servant leadership at the top creating the environment for intrinsically motivated employees to release discretionary effort.

These are selfless leaders who shine the spotlight on others instead of themselves. They have one thing in mind: How do I empower my tribe to reach their potential? You'll find that they are givers--in a personal, leadership, and organizational sense.

The contemporary business world lauds those who are seen as creative. Innovators such as Elon Musk and Jony Ive have become household names. Yet, for many of us, despite our best efforts to be recognized as creative thinkers, our suggestions in meetings are ignored and our pitches to bosses get rebuffed.

If your colleagues have already formed an opinion of you as technically competent but a little staid, it’s going to take a lot to change their minds and get them to listen — a situation that’s especially true for women, who, research suggests, are often unfairly viewed as less creative than men.

In a national report released today, two out of three adults surveyed said they want to spend time with people who aren’t their age, while three in four wish there were more opportunities to get to know different age groups. Why, then, aren’t there more intergenerational programs and initiatives?

Great business leaders should always seek out ways to work smarter, not harder. Efficiency is incredibly important, especially when time is money. Hard work is draining and long hours keep you away from your family and social life. It's important to keep a healthy balance between your work and personal life, so it only makes sense that you would want to find better ways to get things done. Here are five tips on how to work smarter, not harder:

We love talking about what millennials know. As a group that’s become the dominant force in the workforce, we applaud their smarts on tech, social media, and even the age-old practice of branding. Yes, millennials might arguably be one of the overall most intelligent generations to come around. However, that’s not to say they still don’t have a lot to learn, especially when it comes to face-to-face communication.

As the generation that grew up with communication becoming more efficient via digital, their biggest strength could also be a critical weakness. While the way they say things has become more direct, their messages sometimes lack. Why?

Because as one of the first to grow up in a digital world, they’ve been afforded a privilege not found in our day-to-day.

Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want to change careers. Maybe you want to get fit, or gain a new path, or in some way take your life in a new direction.

To do that, sometimes all you need is a little push, a little nudge. A little burst of motivation and inspiration.

Here are fifty of those nudges.

Pick the one that makes your skin tingle, your heart race, your motor rev, and place it somewhere you'll see it every day: your monitor, your screen saver, your background, and let it help take you to the place you've always wanted to go.

Geeks—the two of us might fit the profile. Yes we have tendencies to contemplate things that probably shouldn’t be contemplated. We question. We prod. We poke…at everything. And, we’ve been known to engage in long, seemingly meaningless conversations about random things like: “Is the love of curry a genetic disposition or a socially experiential acquisition?” Or, what is the real meaning of the word “of?” That’s a valid question, right? Or, is it just geeky?

Being geeky, according to research by Imgur, is actually cool in today’s world—especially among Millennials. In fact, 60% of the 83 million Millennials consider themselves geeks compared to just 38% of GenXers and Boomers. And, the study also shows that geeks are the trendsetters and influencers (84% of geeks say people look to them for advice while only 60% of non-geeks say they get asked for advice).

This is, of course, welcome news for all of us who happen to randomly know Peter Parker’s height and weight (yes, we’re referring to the fictional character who turns into Spiderman). But, more than that, it’s also welcome news for all of us who geek-out about our own work—passionately probing to innovate, improve, dissect, and lead others to the discovery of their best selves.

Google is currently testing driverless cars in Arizona. The two of us had lunch one afternoon in Scottsdale and watched the noticeable cars (with their rooftop honing devices) pass by our restaurant. As the car passed we heard a gentleman at a nearby table say, “Not a chance I’d get in that car.”

As unnerving as driverless cars may seem, change can be hard for many people to accept. We often fear the worst — that music videos would be the end of radio, and tablets would eliminate traditional books. Just consider how many people find it concerning every time Apple changes its charging cord on the iPhone. Yes, it’s concerning. But, we adapt…because we have to.

Change, in all areas of life, can be daunting, and especially at work where our natural tendency is to find a groove that works for us. Still, the resistance to change can be dangerous — as the way we work, the when we work, and the things we work on are consistently in a state of flux.

As an entrepreneur your level of success ultimately boils down to your consistent ability to turn problems into profit. Starting a business is simple, but rest assured that there is no such thing as an easy business when it comes to operating day in and day out.

Get ready to use these tips below the next time the "fit hits the shan".

Don't wait until the week before your annual review to start collecting data and anecdotes that demonstrate your worth.