It doesn’t matter whether your goal is to lose 5 or 50 pounds, quit smoking or stop drinking. New Year’s resolutions and other goals are hard to keep beyond the first month. Change is hard.

Why? Because the brain is tricky. No matter how sincerely we want to break a habit, we have an inherent immunity to change.

This means we’re physiologically “lured” into doing what we’ve always done, no matter how strong our intentions. And yet, some people do succeed. We all know ex-smokers, ex-drinkers and former fatties.

You cannot fix an adaptive problem with a technical solution. A diet, for example, is a technical solution to being overweight: To lose weight, eat less and exercise more. But the problem is much more complex. Unless you change your mindset (an adaptive solution), you won’t sustain new habits.

Einstein said that how you formulate a problem is just as critical as how you solve it. One of the biggest mistakes goal-setters make is applying a technical solution to an adaptive problem. It doesn’t matter how much you change what you do. If you don’t shift the way you think, you’ll revert to doing things as you’ve always done them.

This is a brief synopsis of an 825-word article and Article Nuggets* suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to do work.” ~ Peter Drucker

As any fan of The Office can attest, negative managerial behavior severely affects employees’ work lives. Managers’ day-to-day and moment-to-moment actions also create a ripple effect, directly facilitating or impeding the organization’s ability to function. (photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

The best managers recognize their power to influence and strive to build teams with great inner work lives. In The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Harvard Business Press, 2011), Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer describe how people with great inner work lives have:

• Consistently positive emotions
• Strong motivation
• Favorable perceptions of the organization, their work and their colleagues

The worst managers undermine others’ inner work lives, often unwittingly. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees at seven companies, Amabile and Kramer found surprising results on the factors that affect performance.

What matters most is forward momentum in meaningful work—in a word, progress. Managers who recognize the need for even small wins set the stage for high performance.

But surveys of CEOs and project leaders reveal that 95 percent fundamentally misunderstand the need for this critical motivator.

This is a brief synopsis of an 1300 & 800-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1300-word article includes these important concepts:

•  What Really Motivates Us?
• Facilitating Progress
  • Catalysts
  • Nourishers
• Dealing with Setbacks
• Inhibitors
• Toxins
• The Daily Progress Checklist
• Discovering Your Inner Work Life

(Photo by photostock, freedigitalphotos.net)

Baby Boomers are lingering in the workplace. Economic uncertainty has caused many to remain on the job.

The younger Gen X and Gen Y are growing impatient to ascend to leadership responsibilities, and new graduates are knocking at HR’s door in record numbers.

Until we see the inevitable changing of the guard over the next decade, the workplace will be inhabited by a multigenerational stew. Learning how to work, live and play together is crucial.

Baby Boomers occupy most positions of power and responsibility on organizational charts. Most of today’s corporate management practices still reflect the systems and values of their predecessors, the veterans.

Gen Xers and Millennials aren’t interested in “the way things have always been done.” Rather, they’re single-mindedly focused on what it takes to reach their perceived career destination.

This group shuns past definitions of success: climbing the company ladder and earning the rewards that come with greater responsibility. The company ladder, in their view, is irrelevant.

This article summarizes the four main ways generations differ at work, a must-read at any age.
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This is a brief synopsis of an 1800 & 900-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1800-word article includes these important concepts:

• Who Are the Generations?
• How Are They Different?
• Clash Point #1: How We View Work
• Clash Point #2: Communications
• Clash Point #3: Meetings
• Clash Point #4: Learning
• Issues You Can’t Ignore

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      Clash Points at Work: Geeks and Geezers  – 5 Article Nuggets, blog-style,
first-person pronoun, links

“We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom.” ~ Peter Drucker, management expert

At some point in your career, you may sense a creeping malaise. You’re no longer enthusiastic about the day ahead. Perhaps you’re experiencing a mid-career crisis—the sudden realization that you’re no longer a rising star.

After 20 years of all-too-familiar work, you’re good at your job, but you’re not learning or contributing as much. You seldom feel the challenge or particularly satisfied, yet bills must be paid, bosses remain unpleasant, projects fail, and work stagnates.

You try to focus on your true values and the reasons you initially chose your line of work. But the daily grind has somehow taken over, and your work life has been reduced to reports, data, meetings and managing difficult coworkers.

You may think about switching jobs, but this presents additional risks. A “grass is greener” mentality often leads to disappointments, similar to changing seats on the Titanic.

Welcome to the mid-career challenge. A new career may mean a loss of seniority, lower pay, a geographic move and a new set of problems that closely resemble those you’ve left behind. But staying in a job that seems to be going nowhere, filled with mind-numbing work, means resigning yourself to a lack of growth and meaning.

This article about mid-career challenge asks questions to explore your values and three key personal-development components with your coach or mentor, to rekindle your drive.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 900-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete article includes these important concepts:

• Before Jumping Ship…
• Values in Action
• Know and Manage Yourself
• Update Your Identity

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     The Second Half of Your Career:  ”Has Anyone Seen My Passion?” - 4 Article Nuggets, blog-style, first-person pronoun, links

I love animated videos. Here’s one with a message about motivation, from Dan Pink’s wonderful book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The animator is RSAnimate, and it’s fascinating to watch.

If you’re an executive coach and need content on this topic for your e-newsletter or blogs, here are a couple I’ve written and made available for purchase:

• Rethinking Motivation
• 10 Myths about Motivating People…and the Real Truth
• Once Again, How Do You Motivate People?

Given the results of procrastination – hurried work, mistakes, stress, missed deadlines – it’s a wonder why anyone would put off what can be done right away. And yet who doesn’t let projects slide, especially ones we don’t like doing?

If you find yourself procrastinating on a task, try thinking of it in very specific and concrete terms to encourage you to complete it sooner.

It’s important to not let your mind wander by trying to analyze why you’re stuck and why you’re putting it off. Instead, focus on breaking the project up into small, manageable parts.

This helps get the ball rolling and reduces the size of the task (and the accompanying emotional baggage) so it immediately becomes more doable. Start with something small and then move on to the next step.

This requires that you ignore six things:

1. Your mind
2. Your emotions
3. The clock and the calendar
4. Your stress
5. Distractions
6. Your excuses

This article presents practical steps for finding motivation, focus and concentration to bust out of procrastination.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 950-word personal development article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. ~ W. Clement Stone

Does your life have a clear sense of purpose?

Most people have a fundamental need to seek and find their calling in life, be it through work, hobbies or volunteer activities. While philosophers have long weighed in on the subject, it has recently come under scrutiny by researchers who seek to understand the science behind human happiness and success.

Psychologist Michael Steger and his colleagues at Colorado State University created the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) to measure the presence of meaning in our lives, as well as how much we seek to further our understanding of life’s purpose.

This article presents the MLQ, a five-minute test that will prompt you to think about these important topics, and it can serve as the foundation for discussions with your significant relationships, mentor or coach.
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This is a brief synopsis of a 750-word article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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