As a teenager in Israel, Dan Ariely suffered life-threatening burns over 70% of his body when a magnesium flare, used to illuminate battlefields, exploded. While he was overcoming his injuries during an extremely long and painful recovery process, he began to ask questions - of himself as well as human behavior in general.
Not words that many of us want to hear – but seriously, if you’ve had enough life experience, you know that it’s true. And the ground-breaking research done over the past 40 years by the folks at Gallup backs it up. As human beings (and managers) we each have talents, behaviors and thought processes that come to us easily, with little to no effort, what some would say are “second nature”. There are others, however, at which we will never excel, no matter how much we practice and work to improve.
What really works if you want to communicate effectively? It’s not necessarily what you would think, according to Adam Grant, our #3 TED Talk for our management video countdown.
Amy Cuddy wasn’t supposed to become a successful scientist. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to finish her undergraduate degree. Early in her college career, Cuddy suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, and doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree.
It’s no secret. Managing people well is one of the more challenging jobs of a business leader. Human beings are inherently unpredictable, relationships require proper care and feeding – which sometimes means having difficult, what many would say are very unpleasant conversations.
BuildDirect.com is a mid-market company that’s put together a great Growth Strategy over the past few years that’s taken them to over $150M in revenues. A student of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits”, Jeff Booth, their CEO, has done an amazing job of developing and refining their Strategy using the tools from “Scaling Up” with his team, in particular the Seven Strata (Chapter 7 for those of you with the “Scaling Up” book) but has also created an empowered and engaged workforce in the process.
