Group items tagged

By Jeff Haden Shared by Catherine Suer, MSLOC Student "I love setting goals. Unfortunately, my goals don't always love me back. I've tried using silence to accomplish a goal, and I've tried to sneak up on big goals, and although those strategies work, they're hardly foolproof. Fortunately James Clear, an entrepreneur and guy who thinks a lot about goals, habits, and success, has a much better approach to achieving almost any goal--and it's an approach anyone can use."

Forbes By Senia Maymin, Ph.D. and Margaret H. Greenberg March 3, 2014 Shared by Ashley Boehm Punzalan, MSLOC Student "One of our clients, Kevin, had a goal to complete a redesign of his website by the end of the third quarter. However, as a business owner, he never seemed to find the time to focus on it while juggling dozens of other responsibilities. "At the end of each day, it just falls off my to-do list because more urgent things pop up," he told us. As executive coaches, we work with highly successful people like Kevin who are usually quite good at getting things done and getting good results. But … sometimes these same clients find it hard to achieve their more strategic or longer-term goals due to day-to-day demands. Usually, they are missing just one ingredient. The following study gives a hint of the missing puzzle piece."

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It's their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives-consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly. As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees' inner work lives. But it's forward momentum in meaningful work-progress-that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day. The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts-events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy-and (2) nourishers-interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality. Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people's performance. Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Michelle Bavester, MSLOC student recommends this book. She says: "The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile? Her book has a checklist of sorts for making work meaningful and igniting engagement in employees. There's a lot of real-life examples from her research that she uses to illustrate her points as well. It's a great read!"

By Marshall Moore February 18, 2014 Shared by Kelly Ross, MSLOC alumnae and MSLOC Coach in the Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certification program. "Good coaches get results, respect, and awards-just ask the three managers recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But what makes a coach or mentor good? One school of thought says they should hold their mentees to specific performance benchmarks and help them reach those benchmarks by targeting their personal weaknesses. Popofatticus But new research suggests a different tack-namely, to nurture a mentee's strengths, aspirations for the future, and goals for personal growth. Indeed, studies suggest that this positive approach is more effective at helping people learn and change; for instance, it helps train business school students to be better managers, and it is more effective at getting patients to comply with doctors' orders."

Shared by Kim Bayma, MSLOC Student, on Twitter "The ranks of businesses that are certified B Corps are growing quickly. In 2012, when B Lab released its first annual "Best Businesses for the World" list, there were already more than 500 firms that had committed to meeting the nonprofit certifying organization's high social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency standards. By 2013, about 650 companies had achieved B Corp status, including well-known brands like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's. This year has seen even bigger growth, with a total of 970 companies across 60 industries in 32 countries committed to one goal: Redefining business "success" as being about more than just about making the biggest profit."