Tuesday, November 30, 2010

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes" | Video on TED.com

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes" Video on TED.com

TED - Ideas Worth Spreading

Video: 18:45

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes"

About this talk

William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.

About William Ury

William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars. He's the author of "Getting to Yes."

Why you should listen to him:

William L. Ury co-founded Harvard's Program on Negotiation and is currently a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is the author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No & Still Get to Yes, and co-author (with Roger Fisher) of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, translated into 30+ languages. He is also author of the award-winning Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People and Getting To Peace (released in paperback under the title The Third Side).

Over the last 30 years, Ury has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from corporate mergers to wildcat strikes in a Kentucky coal mine to ethnic wars in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. With former president Jimmy Carter, he co- founded the International Negotiation Network, a non-governmental body seeking to end civil wars around the world. During the 1980s, he helped the US and Soviet governments create nuclear crisis centers designed to avert an accidental nuclear war. In that capacity, he served as a consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House. More recently, Ury has served as a third party in helping to end a civil war in Aceh, Indonesia, and helping to prevent one in Venezuela.

Ury has taught negotiation to tens of thousands of corporate executives, labor leaders, diplomats and military officers around the world. He helps organizations try to reach mutually profitable agreements with customers, suppliers, unions, and joint-venture partners.

Access Content Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/william_ury.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-11-30&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

How risk-taking can help build your business | SmartBlog on Workforce

How risk-taking can help build your business SmartBlog on Workforce

Smartblog On Workforce, Smartblog.com

How risk-taking can help build your business

By Guest Blogger on November 29, 2010 Comments (4)

This post is by Alan and Harriet Lewis, owners of Grand Circle Corp.,which offers travel services to people over 50. Their new book, “Driving With No Brakes,” recounts the leadership lessons they have learned over 25 years and seven continents.

Risk-taking has fallen out of favor in the last two years, the victim of the economic downturn and global unrest. Indeed, the current business mood has become cautious to a fault. Sit tight. … Keep your head down. … Above all, minimize risk. This is what passes for sage advice in today’s business press.

We disagree. In our 25 years as owners of Grand Circle Corp., we have found that risk-taking always advances our business — in every market and in every season. Risk-taking catches opportunity and keeps you nimble. It builds personal courage and corporate resilience. It allows a company to adapt to changing circumstances and grow to its full potential, even in the face of difficulty.

In fact, we have taken some of our biggest risks in times of crisis and change. When 9/11 brought travel to a standstill in Europe and the Middle East, we bought up all the inventory we could find and emerged as the leader in those markets. Similarly, during the recent economic crisis we aggressively cut our prices, cultivated our best customers – and celebrated our third-best year ever.

We believe in “risky business,” and here are four lessons we’ve learned that can be applied to any business.

Risk-taking is not just for leaders. All employees must be willing to take risks to advance the company. Not just the executive team — everyone. Our business requires it. We have more than 30 offices around the world, and each is fully responsible for the development and delivery of trips in its region. Everyone must be ready to lead at a moment’s notice, from anywhere in the world, and that’s only possible if everyone has daily practice taking risks. Risk-taking builds character and employee confidence – a win-win for any company.

Risk-taking requires support. Risk-taking doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and it can be hard for employees to embrace it. Managers can help by specifying what risk-taking looks like in their workplace. Employees should be expected to speak up, ask tough questions of leadership, move forward with decisions without always knowing the outcome, and accept new assignments gladly. At the same time, managers must identify and reward such behaviors. They must teach them. For us, this happens in the office, on team off-sites, and at our annual companywide training, which incorporates risk-taking exercises from Outward Bound and other experiential learning programs. In other companies, risk-taking might look different. For example, employees might be expected to speak in public, lead a cross-departmental team, or go after three new accounts a week. The behaviors may be different, but the support is the same: identify, teach, and reward.

Risk-taking must be embedded in a larger corporate culture. Of course, employees can’t just go off half-cocked, doing any risky thing they please. Risk-taking must be guided by the company’s vision and mission, and bounded by the company’s values. A company’s mission, vision, and values are its greatest assets, but they are worthless if you don’t cultivate them. Leadership must refer to them constantly, and employees must be held accountable to them in performance reviews. When the corporate culture is completely clear, risk-taking will always support the goals of the company.

Risk-taking means you will make mistakes. Every risk-taking organization will make mistakes once in a while. We’ve made lots of them. In the 1990s, we invested $11 million in a computer system that didn’t work for us. Around the same time, we divested financial operations on our overseas offices and got robbed – several times. Mistakes and losses are part of the risk landscape. To succeed as a risk-taking business, you must do two things at a minimum: You must create a safe environment for employees to make mistakes, and, when a risky decision is on the table, you must always be ready with a fast exit plan.

Risk-taking is one of our six core values and has helped build our business in good times and bad. What risk will you take today?

Access Content Source: http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2010/11/29/how-risk-taking-will-boost-your-business/

Monday, November 29, 2010

How To Give Difficult Feedback - Forbes.com

An expert who has studied the matter for decades says you must make it timely, direct and focused on behavior

Susan Adams, 11.23.10, 06:00 PM EST

Excerpt:

Thomas D'Aunno has been studying how people give one another feedback. As a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, he focuses on health care, where the failure to give or take feedback can have life or death consequences.

- [1] First, he says, make that feedback timely. Do not wait more than 24 hours to say something. At the same time, though, make sure you've got your emotions in check before you open your mouth. "Don't strike while the iron is hot," he says. "Emotions always trump cognition."

- [2] Next, stick to commenting on behavior, not attitude. "What is the behavior you want the person to change?" .... focus on ... offending behavior: Make it clear [what] you want [instead].

When you give feedback... :

Start by setting an agenda. Let your colleague or employee know what you want to talk about. "Bill, could I have a word with you? I'd like to give you some feedback on something I saw at the meeting." Do not start by asking Bill how he thought the meeting went. "That's a huge error," D'Aunno explains. "Then you'll have to directly contradict him."
Next, go straight to your message, without beating around the bush: "Bill, I feel that you mistreated Christina in there. I'd like you to involve her more in the conversation."
Next comes a critical juncture. Elicit Bill's side of the story. Ask him, "What is your reaction to that?" Then listen closely. "This serves an important function," D'Aunno says. "You want to surface the conflict."

- [3] What you do next depends on how Bill reacts to your initial observation [e.g.] that he treated Christina badly. D'Aunno calls your follow-up "situational leadership." ... tone matters.

It's always better if the other person can feel that he's coming up with the solution to the problem, not having it imposed. People are much more committed to their own ideas than to the ideas of others," he observes. One way to get there could be by asking, "How do you think we should fix this?" Even if Bill offers a proposal you don't like, you can at least use it as a springboard.
Sometimes you have to agree to disagree.... "Bill, we disagree fundamentally about how we see things. Here's how I think we should go forward." Don't try to win an argument. Says D'Aunno, "the only thing you can really get at is how Bill treats Christina at the next meeting " [the future, behavior that is expected instead]

- [4] Once you've [A] given your feedback and [B] listened to the other person's story and [C] laid out a game plan, [D] recap the conversation. You might say, "I suggest we try this next time. I understand you don't want to try it, but I'd really like you to."

- [5] At this point, you might also introduce the possibility of consequences: "Bill, I've told you twice how important it is to involve Christina in meetings. If you can't do that, you may be affecting your bonus."

Access Content Source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/23/constructive-criticism-feedback-workplace-leadership-careers-employees_2.html

Sunday, November 28, 2010

How to Endure a Mean-Spirited Workplace - NYTimes.com

The New York Times

Preoccupations

How Bad Apples Infect the Tree

By ROBERT I. SUTTON

Published: November 27, 2010

Excerpts:

Even among the hardiest people, jerk-infested workplaces can take a severe toll. As the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues showed in their article “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” negative people and events pack a disproportionately large wallop on our moods, well-being, physical health and relationships.

Widespread meanness not only damages people; it also increases costs and undermines performance by driving out good employees at alarming rates. Numerous studies have also shown that people respond to demeaning and disrespectful bosses and co-workers by calling in sick more often, making fewer suggestions, working less hard and doing lower-quality work.

One nasty person can bring down a whole group. That can happen because the group members devote more energy to dealing with the bad apple and less energy to the task at hand. Moreover, anger and hostility are contagious, so the whole group can become infected.

When I asked Ruth how she kept her sanity amid the meanness at the company, she told me about some advice she had received as a teenager from a river rafting guide: If you fall out of the boat, don’t fight the rapids. Just rely on your life vest and float with your feet out in front of you. That way, if you are thrown up against the rocks, you can use your feet to push off, and you’ll protect your head and conserve energy.

Ruth explained that she used the Satan’s Cesspool strategy to survive those nasty meetings some 30 years later. Verbal barbs bounced off of her, just as the rocks had bounced off her feet long ago. When the personal attacks, dirty looks and finger-pointing commenced, she stretched out her feet in front of her under the table, and told herself, “I just got thrown out of the boat by these jerks, but I know how to survive.”

Instead of seeing herself as a victim, Ruth felt strong and in control. She shared her strategy with fellow victims in the office, and it helped them endure the slings and arrows as well.

Ruth’s strategy was effective because it enabled her to reframe the nastiness so she could become emotionally detached — to “prevent the poison from touching my soul,” as she put it.

In a healthy workplace, being emotionally engaged is great, but when you can’t escape a disrespectful environment, practicing the fine art of indifference and detachment can help you endure the onslaught.

Detachment can also help you to quell the temptation to respond in kind — and thus avoid fueling a vicious circle of hostility.

The Satan’s Cesspool strategy also helped Ruth to avoid wasting her emotional energy by battling against forces she couldn’t control. She reserved her energy for times when it could do some good, like helping others survive the onslaught and fighting small battles she could win against the worst of the local bullies.

To prevent employees from leaving, as Ruth did, bosses and their organizations may find that it’s more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive. Research suggests that if you lead a group where nastiness is pervasive, you should start by reforming the bad influences and, if necessary, expelling them.

Robert I. Sutton is a Stanford professor and author of “Good Boss, Bad Boss.” E-mail: preoccupations@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 28, 2010, on page BU8 of the New York edition.

Access Content Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/jobs/28pre.html?ref=todayspaper

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Why a Happy Brain Performs Better - HBR IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review

Why a Happy Brain Performs Better - HBR IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review

Why a Happy Brain Performs Better
9:00 AM Thursday November 25, 2010 Comments (4)

Featured Guest: Shawn Achor, CEO of Aspirant and author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work

Access Content Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/11/why-a-happy-brain-performs-bet.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

For better or for worse, happiness is linked to marriage

The Vancouver Sun

For better or for worse, happiness is linked to marriage

By Derek Abma, Postmedia News November 27, 2010

A study led by a University of B.C. researcher proves husbands and wives' moods are closely linked.

The notion of "happy wife, happy life," is given credence by recent research led by a Canadian psychology professor -- and the same seems to hold true for the influence of husbands.

A study led by the University of British Columbia's Christiane Hoppmann, published in the American Psychological Association's Developmental Psychology journal, suggests married couples share notable similarities in happiness levels over their years together.

The report was based on an analysis of existing data initially intended for other research. It compared the self-reported mood patterns of 178 married couples in the Seattle area between 1956 and 1991.

The researchers noted much more similarity in the happiness levels among married couples as compared to random pairings of men and women.

"Not only did spouses report similar levels of happiness when they entered the study, but when there were changes in happiness in one spouse, that did have an effect on the other spouse as well," Hoppmann said Friday.

Hoppmann said it's not surprising to find that husbands and wives' moods are closely linked, but added that it is "novel" to see it documented scientifically like this.

The study also involved researchers from the University of Washington and Pennsylvania State University.

Hoppmann said it adds to a growing body of research that shows just how psychologically linked married couples appear to be.

Other studies, for example, have shown that married people tend to experience similar degrees of deteriorating mental abilities as they age together.

"There is a lot in terms of shared lifestyles, shared stressors that create those outcomes," Hoppmann said.

She said this recent study did not determine whether a person who is happy would have more of an effect in lifting the mood of the other, whether a sad spouse would be more likely drag down the happier one, or whether they would meet somewhere in the middle.

"That's the next step we are going to take," she said. "That's the important question."

The analysis was based strictly on marriages between men and women, so it did not consider same-sex marriages or common-law unions.

However, Hoppmann said her "hunch would be" that a correlation of emotions would show up within all kinds of close relationships.

"If people share important experiences, know each other very well and spend a lot of time over a long period of their lives, then chances are, that's going to have an impact on your respective other," she said.

As well, Hoppmann noted that this research involved couples who were married to the same person for multiple decades, something that has become less common among younger generations.

She said other research has shown less correlation among couple's moods in which the members have been in multiple marriages.

Positive Psychology News Daily » Does it matter whether you live in Hope or in Hell*?

Positive Psychology News

Does it matter whether you live in Hope or in Hell*?

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave on November 26, 2010 – 9:52 am One Comment

Bridget Grenville-Cleave, MAPP graduate of the University of East London, has over 17 years experience in Organizational Change Management, Finance, and Business Strategy, and works as an independent business consultant and coach. She blogs regularly at Workmad. Full bio.

Bridget writes for PositivePsychologyNews.com on the 26th of the month. Her articles are here.

* Hope and Hell are both located in Michigan…

Chicago: City of Big Shoulders

Urban Positive Psychology

One of the aspects of studying positive psychology which really appeals to me is its sheer breadth – the fact that it applies in so many fields of human endeavour and experience. Positive psychology appears in disciplines as diverse as art and design, education, politics, and business. So this new research which looks at urban positive psychology particularly caught my eye this week.

Most of the scientific research related to cities focuses on their geography, history, economy, or politics. Very few studies have looked at them from a psychological perspective. Why does this matter, you might wonder. Can psychology tell us anything interesting about cities and those who live in them anyway?

You’ll be familiar I’m sure with national stereotypes, and the fact that in many countries we distinguish between southerners and northerners, or those who live in the east and the west. Research by Jason Rentfrow at the University of Cambridge, UK, and two colleagues in the US suggests that there are regional variations in personality traits. For example in the United States, there is a concentration of Woody Allenesque neurotics on the East Coast and those open to experience (psych-speak for hippies and bohemians?) on the West Coast. Such geographical variations have been brilliantly mapped on Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City? website.

But do people who live in different cities really have different psychological traits and dispositions? Few psychologists have studied variation across cities before now and those who have have focused on the negatives such as obesity, psychiatric disorders and violent crime. So new positive psychology research into city-level strengths by Nansook Park and Chris Peterson from the University of Michigan is not only interesting, but also very refreshing. As they point out, it’s high time we looked at what’s right with city life!

Seattle: A City of Head Strengths?

Hotspots and Lukewarm Spots?

“No man is an island.” So said English poet John Donne back in the 17^th Century. Interpreted from a psychological perspective this means that we’re all influenced to a greater or lesser extent by our surroundings, whether that’s the family we are born into, the neighborhood we play in, the community we’re part of, or the city we live in.

Previous authors have described cities which are known for their creativity and accomplishment (i.e. cities which are home to a large proportion of wealthy people, an outstanding university, which have made outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences, or to which university graduates flock) as elite, or as superstars, or as hotspots. So what do we call those cities which don’t reside in the higher echelons of such urban league tables? Non-elite? Luke-warm spots? Or how about centers of mediocrity? Richard Florida’s answer was to call such non-elite cities dutiful. But this doesn’t really do them justice.

Hearts in the City

Character Strengths of Cities

As Nansook Park and Chris Peterson point out, even those cities which don’t make the elite/superstar grade must have some good things going for them. They suggest instead calling them ‘kinder and gentler’ cities. Taking a positive psychology perspective on the issue, they used the VIA Inventory of Character Strengths to explore whether strengths differ across cities in the US and the relationship between creativity and strengths. Previous research had identified two important dimensions to character strengths, namely

head strengths – which are intellectual and self-oriented (e.g., creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning)
heart strengths – which are emotional and interpersonal (e.g., forgiveness, gratitude, love, kindness, teamwork)

With this framework in mind, they predicted that head strengths would characterize residents of the elite, hot-spot cities in the United States, heart strengths would characterize residents in the kinder and gentler cities, and that there would be a positive relationship between head strengths and creativity/entrepreneurship.

What Does the Data Show?

They calculated the average strengths scores for VIA respondents from each city, then did a factor analysis, excluding four strengths ( bravery, perspective, self-regulation and social intelligence) which could not be assigned to just ‘head’ or ‘heart’. Two factors emerged which accounted for 74% of the variance, being strengths of the head (appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity, curiosity, judgment and love of learning) and strengths of the heart (fairness, forgiveness, gratitude, honesty, hope, humor, kindness, leadership, love, modesty, persistence, prudence, religiousness, teamwork and zest).

According to the research, those cities with the highest head strengths were San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland, and lowest were Arlington, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. Those cities with the highest heart strength scores were El Paso, Mesa, Arizona, and Miami, and those with the lowest were Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Average Scores for Residents in Different U.S. Cities for Strengths of the Head and Strengths of the Heart

The research also found that [1] there is a positive relationship between head strengths and creativity/entrepreneurship (as measured by a combination of the proportion of employees who are for example scientists, engineers, poets, professors, artists and entertainers; the number of patents per head; the presence of hi-tech industries; diversity) and [2] a negative relationship between heart strengths and creativity/ entrepreneurship.

What this suggests is that different cities are good in different ways, and that the quality of urban life shouldn’t just be measured according to the traditional economic indicators of job growth, income and entrepreneurship. We can and should take a broader view of what the good life in cities actually is. You might be interested to know that residents in the kinder gentler cities also reported more positive emotions and more meaning in life.

Taking the research one step further, Nansook Park and Chris Peterson found that head strengths predicted the likelihood of a city voting for Barack Obama, whereas heart strengths predicted voting for John McCain. The most robust predictor of a city’s voting for Obama was love of learning. For McCain the most robust predictors were spirituality/religiousness, forgiveness, and gratitude.

Of course, we don’t know whether it is the city which influences the individual character strengths, vice versa, both, or something else entirely. More research needs to be carried out to help answer those questions.

So why are the strengths of cities important?

Partly because more people live in cities and urban areas than ever before. And not only that - cities are such an important aspect of our daily lives. Their histories and cultures shape us.

Using the framework of head versus heart is a good way to approach urban positive psychology, and to uncover and understand better the strengths of cities. We already know something about the sorts of institutions which encourage head strengths (schools, colleges, universities, centers of professional development and so on) but we know relatively little about institutions which encourage heart strengths. A good starting point, say Park and Peterson, would be to study these kinder and gentler cities.

So which city do you live in, and do your strengths reflect the strengths of your city?

References

Park, N. & Peterson, C. (2010). Does it matter where we live? The urban psychology of character strengths. American Psychologist, 65 (6), 535–547. Abstract.

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The geography of personality: A theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of regional variation in basic traits. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 3, 339–369.

Images

City of Big Shoulders by Creativity+ Timothy K. Hamilton:
The Space Needle at Christmas courtesy of Andrew E. Larson
Heart of the City by 24th Century:

Access Content Source: http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/bridget-grenville-cleave/2010112614863

The Guilty Secret to Giving the Best Gifts - WSJ.com

Excerpts:

What these principles tell us is that the best gifts circumvent guilt in two key ways. [1] They eliminate the guilt that accompanies extravagant purchases, and [2] they reduce the guilt that comes from coupling payment with consumption. That's why gift certificates for dinner, drinks, iTunes, movies and so on are so popular. They not only encourage people to experience something new, they let them experience it without any psychological burdens or the pain of paying.

—Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. His most recent book is "The Upside of Irrationality."

Access Content Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575632483134633158.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Co-worker's snide comment is not a reason to stew - USATODAY.com

USA Today

Co-worker's snide comment is not a reason to stew

By Anita Bruzzese, Gannett

Excerpts:

For many people, finding the right response at the right time is often difficult, frustrating and stressful.

Kathleen Kelley Reardon says you can become more powerful in your exchanges at work as long as you're willing to practice for such interactions.

"We are at least 75% responsible for the way people treat us. So if you don't respond to someone who goes beyond what you consider your threshold of common decency and respect, then you've said that they can treat you that way again," says Reardon, management professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

The key to learning the right comebacks for the right situation is identifying the kind of verbal interaction that best fits your personality, Reardon says. In her new book with Christopher T. Noblet, Comebacks at Work, (Harper Business, $24.99), some of the suggestions for comebacks include these:

• Reframing. If things are getting heated, you can say something like, "This isn't a fight. It's just a disagreement."

• Rephrasing. If you find yourself offended by another person's statement, you can say, "Another way you could say that without getting my back up is.. ."

• Rebuking. You can chastise someone by saying, "If that was meant to be funny, you missed the mark."

• Requesting. Question the other person by asking, "Can you tell me more about what you just said? I may be misreading something here."

• Revisiting. If you've had earlier success with someone but are now failing in your interaction, try: "We've always worked well together. Let's not change course now."

• Retaliating. This is not for the faint of heart and should be used sparingly. A comeback is used strictly to strike at the other person for a comment. You can say, "Since incivility is your style, I have a few choice words for you as well." Then use them.

Always ask the other person for clarification before assuming the worst about a comment, Reardon says.

"Give the other person a chance to do the right thing," she says. "It's truly a generous thing to give someone an opportunity to hear what they said."

Anita Bruzzese is author of "45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy ... and How to Avoid Them," http://www.45things.com/. Click here for an index of On the Job columns. Write to her in care of Gannett ContentOne, 7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22107. For a reply, include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Access Content Source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/workplace/bruzzese/2010-11-17-learn-the-right-comebacks_N.htm

Happy People Are Healthier, Psychologist Says

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2006) — Happiness and other positive emotions play an even more important role in health than previously thought, according to a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine by Carnegie Mellon University Psychology Professor Sheldon Cohen.

This recent study confirms the results of a landmark 2004 paper in which Cohen and his colleagues found that people who are happy, lively, calm or exhibit other positive emotions are less likely to become ill when they are exposed to a cold virus than those who report few of these emotions. In that study, Cohen found that when they do come down with a cold, happy people report fewer symptoms than would be expected from objective measures of their illness.

In contrast, reporting more negative emotions such as depression, anxiety and anger was not associated with catching colds. That study, however, left open the possibility that the greater resistance to infectious illness among happier people may not have been due to happiness, but rather to other characteristics that are often associated with reporting positive emotions such as optimism, extraversion, feelings of purpose in life and self-esteem.

Cohen's recent study controls for those variables, with the same result: The people who report positive emotions are less likely to catch colds and also less likely to report symptoms when they do get sick. This held true regardless of their levels of optimism, extraversion, purpose and self-esteem, and of their age, race, gender, education, body mass or prestudy immunity to the virus.

"We need to take more seriously the possibility that positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," said Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon.

The researchers interviewed volunteers over several weeks to assess their moods and emotional styles, and then infected them with either a rhinovirus or an influenza virus. The volunteers were quarantined and examined to see if they came down with a cold. This was the same method Cohen applied in his previous study, but with the addition of the influenza virus.

Cohen collaborated on the study with Cuneyt M. Alper of the Department of Otolaryngology at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; William J. Doyle of the Infectious Disease Unit at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; and John J. Treanor and Ronald B. Turner, M.D., of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Access Source Content: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061108103655.htm

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Study Finds Age Not Finances Drives Retirement Timing for Pre Retiree Boomers

WorldatWork - NewsLine

Study Finds Age, Not Finances, Drives Retirement Timing for Pre-Retiree Boomers

Nov. 11, 2010 — When is it time to retire? According to results of a quarterly Charles Schwab survey, 46% of 50- to 60-year-olds have a target date or age in mind, 38% have a target nest egg in mind, and 34% have neither of these.

To understand how people actually behave when it comes to subjective targets, Schwab also surveyed a group of retirees. Nearly half (47%) say they actually did retire when they reached their target date or age; another 27% said they retired once they had reached their financial target; and 38% of retirees said they had neither a financial nor date or age target in mind leading up to retirement.

"Although we tell our clients there really is no magic number — in terms of age or size of nest egg — for retirement, thinking about these targets can be a great catalyst to kick-start retirement planning and initiate an honest discussion about expectations," said Stacy Hammond, director of Real Life Retirement Services for Charles Schwab. She said those thinking about retirement should explore ways to make it work for them as individuals — by adjusting timing, cutting back on expenses or continuing to work part-time.

Schwab's latest retirement pulse survey also checked in with Baby Boomers about their feelings on Social Security and found that, compared to the general population, 50- to 60-year-olds have far higher expectations for Social Security in retirement:

Counting on Social Security to supplement retirement savings: 55% of 50- to 60-year-olds vs. 37% of all Americans.
Not counting on Social Security to be a source of income in retirement: 26% of 50- to 60-year olds vs. 46% of all Americans.

Access Content Source: http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimComment?id=44877

The Heart of Innovation: 50 Awesome Quotes on Vision

Mitch Ditkoff - Idea Champions - Heart Of Innovation Blog

November 18, 2010
50 Awesome Quotes on Vision

1. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney

2. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now." - Goethe

3. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo

4. "It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau

5. "You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." - Ken Kesey

6. "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens." - Carl Jung

7. "The empires of the future are empires of the mind." - Winston Churchill

8. "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

9. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift

10. "Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?' - Max DePree

11. "Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb

12. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Alan Kay

13."Where there is no vision the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18

14. "Vision without execution is hallucination." - Thomas Edison

15. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." - Warren Bennis

16. "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise." - Robert Fritz

17. "Create your future from your future, not your past." - Werner Erhard

18. "To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind." - Seneca

19. "You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." - Alvin Toffler

20. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act.: - Anatole France

21. "A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it." - Soren Kierkegaard

22. "A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there." - David Gergen

23. "The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." - Theodore Hesburgh

24. "Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way." - Abraham Lincoln

25. "Dreams are extremely important. You can't do it unless you can imagine it." -George Lucas

26. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill

27. "Pain pushes until vision pulls." - Michael Beckwith

28. "Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action." - Warren Bennis

29. "The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." - Buddha

30. "Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." - Kenichi Ohmae

31. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." - Peter Senge

32. "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield." - Warren Buffett

33. "A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

34. "The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes

35. "You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry." - Gertrude Stein

36. "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein

37. "I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's were the fun is." - Donald Trump

38. "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

39. "People only see what they are prepared to see." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

40. "The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision." - Helen Keller

41. "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." - Jack Welsh

42. "A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

43. "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton

44. "The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." - John Scully

45. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau

46. "Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

47. "Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy." - Rumi

48. "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain

49. "In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles." - - David Ben-Gurion

50. "The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating most of these quotes.

Who Are We?Idea Champions is a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. We help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference

Access Content Source: http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2010/11/50_awesome_quot_1.shtml

The Heart of Innovation: Change Your Title

Mitch Ditkoff - Idea Champions

Heart Of Innovation Blog

November 24, 2010
Change Your Title

What new title do YOU want to see on your next business card? What name more creatively describes what you really do at work?

When I co-founded my company in 1986, I had two business cards made. One said "President." The other said "Archduke." Whenever I gave clients a choice, they always wanted the Archduke card.

In time, I gave all the Archduke cards away and never re-ordered them -- in a pitiful attempt, I think, to seem more professional.

Fortunately, everything comes full circle. Last night, while enjoying a wonderful concert in my hometown of Woodstock, my next title was suddenly revealed.

Director of Public Elations (and, no, I did not forget the "R".) In a flash, not only did I get an insight into what my focus will be for the next few years, I also discovered an entirely new field.

Cirque du Soleil is a perfect example.

Gracefully walking the high wire of the Experience Economy, they know their success is intimately connected to their ability to elate the public -- to uplift, inspire, and activate joy.

Southwest Airlines also understands this.

Theirs is a corporate culture founded on delight. Even Starbucks and Barnes & Noble have gotten into the act. Both of them know their product needs to be more than coffee and books, but a feeling -- a sense of well-being, ease, and community.

In a word, elation.

And so, I decided to share my title-changing revelation with my colleagues -- the "Senior Consultant," the "Webmaster," the "Chief Technology Officer," and the "Director of Operations."

I asked them to tell me what new titles they'd like. Here's what they told me:

- Chief Enlightenment Officer
- Princess of Possibility
- Head of Lettuce
- Webmaster of My Domain
- Director of Whatever Needs Directing
- Duke of URL
- Head of Steam
- Lord High Minister of Depth and Feared Wielder of the Reality Check

How about YOU?

What new title do YOU want to see on your next business card? What name more creatively describes what you really do at work?

---------------------------------

Quote of the Day

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
Hannah More

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Monday, November 22, 2010

Best Cities to Move to in America - Yahoo! Real Estate

Best Cities to Move to in America

By Cindy Perman, CNBC.com

Oct 27, 2010

Intro & Excerpts:

As reproted by CNBC.com and appearing at Yahoo, A recent study from Sperling's BestPlaces.net reports the 10 best cities to relocate to today.

The list takes into consideration a range of data points like cost of living, crime rates, the number of colleges and how healthy the population is, as well as access to museums, shows, sporting and other events, and perhaps most importantly, stability.

Here are the Best Cities to Relocate to in America:

1. Pittsburgh, PA
2. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
3. Omaha, NE/Council Bluffs, IA
4. Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
5. Austin-Round Rock, TX
6. Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA
7. Madison, WI
8. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN
9. Denver-Aurora, CO
10. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN

Access Content Source: http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/best-cities-to-move-to-in-america.html

Geoff Vuleta Says 100-Day Plans Build Consistency - NYTimes.com

New York Times

Published: November 20, 2010

This interview with Geoff Vuleta, C.E.O. of Fahrenheit 212, an innovation consulting firm in Manhattan, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Excerpts:

Q. Talk more about that list.

A. It’s made up of really simple things. What were the things that went wrong in the last 100 days? Let’s get rid of those. You want to nail your pain points and go, “O.K., what needs to be done to make sure that doesn’t happen again?” So that’s part of it.

And what do you want to do about your brand? How are you going to advance “thought leadership?” Not all projects are born equal — there are some that are grander than others. What are you going to do to invest in those? Who’s going to take responsibility for them?

And then there’s all the personal growth stuff, which everybody includes on their list. You want to advance. You want to grow as a person. There are things you want to get better at. But the thing that’s material about the list is that the company has agreed that those things are important.

Q. That’s not an easy list to write.

A. It’s a bit goofy to do it the first couple of times because people obsess over how they’re going to do something or what they’re going to do. It isn’t about any of those things. It’s only about an outcome. It’s only about what will have been achieved within the 100 days or at some point during the 100 days.

So the 100-day plan meetings start off with you actually reporting on yourself. You stand up with your 100-day plan, and there’s no wiggle room on it. They’re outcomes. You did them or you didn’t do them. You’re enormously exposed because you offered to do it, and you’re going to do it. Fahrenheit has only had to fire three people because the 100-day plan sorts it out beforehand.

Q. What’s the thinking behind that list?

A. As I said earlier, people want to be led, they want to know what they have to do, and they want to know that what they do is important. You need a mechanism for that to be there and to totally trust it, so that it’s not just words.

There’s nothing that I’m doing that anybody wouldn’t understand or appreciate, because everything’s exposed to everybody else. Everybody can see what everybody else is doing. If stuff happens that prevents you from being able to do it, you lean in quickly and either take it off your list or replace it with something else.

One of the truisms about life is that if you’re working in a void for any period of time, human nature says you’ll view it negatively. You get scared; you begin to believe that what isn’t there is probably bad. Never give people a void. Just don’t, because instinctively they’ll think something is awry. So at no point does anybody in the company not know what everybody is doing in the company, what they’ve committed to, and what the company thinks is important.

Q. And why 100 days?

A. It works brilliantly, because you can never be more than 100 days wrong as a company. You’ve got to allow time for people to feel the pain of getting something wrong. And when you create a competitive environment that has total transparency like we do, you won’t do it twice. You just won’t.

Access Content Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/business/21corner.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Dan Ariely » Blog Archive Good Decisions. Bad Outcomes. «

Irrationaly Yours Blog

Dan Ariley

Good Decisions. Bad Outcomes.

Nov 21

If you practice kicking a soccer ball with your eyes closed, it takes only a few tries to become quite good at predicting where the ball will end up. But when “random noise” is added to the situation—a dog chases the ball, a stiff breeze blows through, a neighbor passes by and kicks the ball—the results become quite unpredictable.

If you had to evaluate the kicker’s performance, would you punish him for not predicting that Fluffy would run off with the ball? Would you switch kickers in an attempt to find someone better able to predict Fluffy’s involvement?

That would be absurd. And yet it’s exactly how we reward and punish managers. Managers attempt to make sense of the environment and predict what will result from their decisions.

The problem is that there’s plenty of random noise in competitive strategic decisions. Predicting where the ball will go is equivalent to deciding whether to open a chain of seafood restaurants on the Gulf Coast. The dog running off with the ball is the BP oil spill. When the board reviews the manager’s performance, they’ll focus on the failed restaurants. The stock is down. The chain lost money. Since the manager’s compensation is tied to results, he’ll incur financial penalties. To save face and appear to be taking action, the board may even fire him—thus giving up on someone who may be a good manager but had bad luck.

The oil spill example is an extreme case. In the real world, the random noise is often more subtle and various—a hundred little things rather than one big thing. But the effect is the same. Rewarding and penalizing leaders based on outcomes overestimates how much variance people actually control. (This works both ways: Just as good managers can suffer from bad outcomes not of their own making, bad managers can be rewarded for good outcomes that occur in spite of their ineptitude.) In fact, the more unpredictable an environment becomes, the more an outcomes-based approach ends up rewarding or penalizing noise.

In the last year I’ve asked many board members how much of a company’s stock value they think should be attributed to the CEO’s strength, and the answer is surprising. They estimate that you’ll get about 10% more stock value, on average, from a good CEO than from a mediocre one. Implicit in that estimate is the understanding that many outcomes are outside a leader’s control.

We can’t entirely avoid outcome-based decisions. Still, we can reduce our reliance on stochastic outcomes. Here are four ways companies can create more-sound reward systems.

1. Change the mind-set. Publicly recognize that rewarding outcomes is a bad idea, particularly for companies that deal in complex and unpredictable environments.

2. Document crucial assumptions. Analyze a manager’s assumptions at the time when the decision takes place. If they are valid but circumstances change, don’t punish her, but don’t reward her, either.

3. Create a standard for good decision making. Making sound assumptions and being explicit about them should be the basic condition for getting a reward. Good decisions are forward-looking, take available information into account, consider all available options, and do not create conflicts of interests.

4. Reward good decisions at the time they’re made.Reinforce smart habits by breaking the link between rewards and outcomes.

Our focus on outcomes is understandable. When a company loses money, people demand that heads roll, even if the changes are more about assuaging shareholders than sound management. Moreover, measuring outcomes is relatively easy to do; decision-making–based reward systems will be more complex. But as I’ve I said before, “It’s hard” is a terrible reason not to do something. Especially when that something can help reward and retain the people best able to help you grow your business.

This post is based on my column at HBR

Dan Ariely (dandan@duke.edu) is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins, 2008).

Access Content Source: http://danariely.com/2010/11/21/good-decisions-bad-outcomes/

Friday, November 19, 2010

Three Ways to Make Your Team Smarter | BNET

Three Ways to Make Your Team Smarter BNET

BNET.com

Three Ways to Make Your Team Smarter

By Margaret Heffernan November 17, 2010

Why can you puts lots of smart people into a team - and they come up with lousy ideas? And why is it that our star performers do not necessarily create star teams? Is it even possible to improve the collective intelligence of a team? That’s the question that a team of academics set for themselves.

Being a team themselves, of course they believed in collective intelligence but the harder question was: can it be measured? Is there a group equivalent of IQ? Can the collective intelligence of the group as a whole go above and beyond the abilities of the individual group members? And, if it can, what factors contribute to making a team smarter?

In two studies with 699 people, teams were set tasks which involved solving visual puzzles, brainstorming, making collective moral judgments, and negotiating over limited resources. The same tasks were given to individuals and then to teams. The collective intelligence of the group (which they called “c”) far out-performed the average intelligence of individual participants. That makes sense; it’s why we do team work in the first place. But what the researchers most wanted to know was: what predicted “c”? What was it that might give any particular group greater collective intelligence?

Their findings are intriguing, provocative and profound. Collective intelligence is not strongly correlated with the average or the maximum individual intelligence of group members. Packing your teams with one, or a few, super smart people may not help you. Furthermore, group cohesion, motivation and satisfaction also did not determine group performance. What did make a difference were:

Social sensitivity of group members: Teams in which members understood each others’ mood did better than teams that lacked that sensitivity.
Equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking: The groups where a few people dominated the conversation were less collectively intelligent than those where participants more equally shared the floor.
The proportion of women in the group: The researchers thought that this finding might be connected to the other two, since women tended to do better on sensitivity tests and be good at taking turns.

These findings are important to everyone who isn’t a hermit. They have powerful implication for the skills we seek when hiring and for the tools we use for collaboration. It means that the colleague who does all the talking isn’t just annoying - he may, quite literally, be lowering the tone of the conversation. More importantly, the researchers argue it may be easier to raise the collective intelligence -”c”- of a group than the IQ of an individual because how smart a group is depends on its membership.

But most important of all, it reinforces everything everyone has ever said about the case for greater gender diversity at all levels of an organization: namely, diversity makes companies smarter. And this work wasn’t published in a magazine for managers, HR professionals or women. It appeared in SCIENCE. In other words, it isn’t wishful thinking. It’s peer reviewed, analyzed and tested as stringently as possible. It’s based on real experiments and hard data. There isn’t a manager in the world who doesn’t need to read it.

Access Content Source: http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-strategy/three-ways-to-make-your-team-smarter/892

Will Focus Make You Happier? - Edward Hallowell - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review

The Conversation

Will Focus Make You Happier?

12:13 PM Thursday November 18, 2010
by Edward Hallowell

A November 15 article in the New York Times cited a recent study from Harvard happiness experts Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, who used an iPhone app to contact some 2,200 individuals and get a total of roughly 250,000 replies as to how each person was feeling and what they were doing at the time they were contacted. Not surprisingly, the people who reported the highest levels of pleasure were having sex when contacted (not sure what they felt after being interrupted). And they were highly focused on what they were doing, at least prior to the interruption.

The surprise came from the 99.5% of people who were not having sex when contacted. Nearly half of them reported that their minds were wandering when contacted; in other words, half of them were not focused on whatever it was they were doing. Those who were focused reported significantly higher levels of happiness than those who were not.

As an expert on ways to achieve peak performance as well as expert on attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.) and the crazy busy pace of modern life, this study caught my eye. So...unless we're having sex, half of us at any given moment are not focused on what we're doing. Not only does such lack of focus lead to unhappiness, it also leads to errors, wasted time, miscommunication and misunderstanding, diminished productivity, and who-knows-how-much global loss of income (there'll be a study on that soon, no doubt).

All of which cries out the question, why such rampant lack of focus? And what remedies can we apply?

One might suggest we all take Ritalin for our culturally-induced A.D.D., but not only would that be medically inadvisable, we're pretty much already doing the equivalent. Just look at the lines at Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, not to mention the sales of Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and the rest.

But why such lack of focus in need of so much caffeine? If Killingsworth and Gilbert had done their study 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago, would they have found the same results? At any given moment, have half the minds in the USA — or the world — always been wandering? Or is this a new phenomenon?

My money — and available research — says it's new, or at least it's grown worse of late. 30% to 40% of people's time in the workplace is spent tending to unplanned interruptions, and then reconstituting the mental focus the interruption caused. I'm sure that was not the case 20 years ago simply because the tools of interruption were not so plentiful. And all the distraction has created blocks in thinking and feeling deeply. We're being superficialized and sound-bit.

Through my lectures, I've had the chance to ask thousands of people, "Where do you do your best thinking?" Rarely do I get the response, "At work." The most common response? "In the shower." The shower is one of the last places left where we're not often interrupted. But who knows, maybe the next hot gift item will be a waterproof BlackBerry.

If technology lures us to lose focus, I also believe a deeper conflict is at work, one that indeed was in force 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago as well. It is the paradox that even though we are never so happy or productive as when we are intensely focused in a given activity, we also avoid and resist entering such focused states. But why? If modern research demonstrates the great rewards of focus, why would anyone resist it?

Simple physics. Nature tends toward disorder. Focus imposes order. So focus requires energy. It requires work. It can hurt. People often avoid pain and work. We humans have mixed feelings about expending energy, even if we know it will bring us pleasure. For example, in the Harvard study, the second-rated activity in terms of happiness was physical exercise. And how many of us avoid that?

So what's my solution to the problem of fractured focus?

First, recreate boundaries that technology has broken down so that you have some time actually to think when you're at work. Turn it off. Close the door. Don't jump online the minute you feel frustrated or vexed. Push on. Grapple with the problem. Go deep. Persist. Don't allow intrusions into the precious process of creative thought.

Second, try to spend as much time as you can at the intersection of three spheres: [1] what you're good at, [2] what you like to do, and [3] what adds value to the world, i.e., what someone is willing to pay you to do. At the intersection of those spheres lies a land of joy and productivity that can successfully compete with force of entropy, of disorder, that tilts us all toward lassitude. When you infuse work with pleasure, then you want to work, even though it hurts at times.

So, since you can't have sex all day, and no one can exercise for much more than an hour or maybe two, pick tasks that you have skill at, that you like to do, and then set the bar just a little higher each day. Focus will follow. And with focus, you'll gain both pleasure and success.

Edward Hallowell, MD, is a psychiatrist, served as an instructor at Harvard Medical School for 20 years, and is the director of the Hallowell Centers in New York City and Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has written two popular Harvard Business Review articles and authored eighteen books, including the national bestseller Driven to Distraction, that have sold millions of copies. His forthcoming book, Shine, is due out in January from Harvard Business Review Press.

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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

About this talk

About William Ury

Why you should listen to him:

Monday, November 29, 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Preoccupations

How Bad Apples Infect the Tree

By ROBERT I. SUTTON

Published: November 27, 2010

A version of this article appeared in print on November 28, 2010, on page BU8 of the New York edition.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

For better or for worse, happiness is linked to marriage

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Happy People Are Healthier, Psychologist Says

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Monday, November 22, 2010

Best Cities to Move to in America

Friday, November 19, 2010

Three Ways to Make Your Team Smarter

Will Focus Make You Happier?