Most of us in business today receive somewhere between 50 and 100 emails every day. So how can you get yours to stand out? Your subject line. Creative email subject lines entice interest. They prompt opens. They get read. No matter your job, no matter your market, if you’re using email, half the challenge is …
The power of not yet
Carol Dweck researches the growth mindset — the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems. In her Ted Talk of 2014, she mentions a high school in Chicago that gave students who didn’t pass courses a grade of “Not Yet.” It kept students from thinking the failure was permanent. …
8 ways to build a culture of trust
Trust creates joy and a better bottom line. That’s the perfect summary for – and reason to care about – Paul Zak’s HBR article “The Neuroscience of Trust.” Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer …
How to unstuff your home, office and brain
Most of us have more stuff than we need. Our stuff fills our homes, our workplaces, and our brains. It takes time and energy to manage all this stuff. Managing stuff can actually make us miserable. It can be exhausting to tend, store and organize a lot of stuff. Andrew Mellen’s book “Unstuff Your Life: Kick …
Making bolder, better decisions
We all bring biases to the decisions we make which can cloud thinking and lead to unnecessary mistakes. Common pitfalls include being overconfident, overemotional, and generally using information that suits our interests while downplaying information that doesn’t. In “Decisive,” their book on how to make better decisions, Chip and Dan Heath have created a four-step process …
How to improve your focus
Distraction can be destructive. It wastes time and saps energy. When we’re distracted it’s hard to do our best work, spend quality time with family, and generally enjoy ourselves. While focus is the antidote for distraction, it can be difficult to master. The good news is it can be developed over time. Here are six …
Why being EDGY wins
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by goals. You can’t help but wonder sometimes if you’re way in over your head. It’s a normal feeling. But how we react to that feeling is what makes all the difference. Dan Waldschmidt, author of EDGY Conversations, has studied how ordinary people achieve success against all odds. EDGY is …
Selecting stunning colleagues
Since 1997, Netflix has become famous for its precision and consistent growth. The video streaming giant now has 17 million subscribers and a market cap of $61 billion. A big part of its success is driven by its focus on creating what it calls a great workplace. A great workplace is not free lunches, lavish …
Why you must lean in and how to do it
Three years ago this month, Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook released her trailblazing career manifesto for women – “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.” With hundreds of thousands of women turning out for Women’s Marches all over the country yesterday, I felt it timely to revisit some of Sandberg’s key points …
Stop managing, start coaching
The most successful managers today don’t really manage. They coach. Great coaches give people direction, feedback, and ongoing support. Great coaches keep things simple. They keep feedback brief, and they also tend to ask more questions. Michael Bungay Stanier’s book, “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever” maintains …