In the national bestseller Flow, University of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests two key factors determine our overall happiness:

• Our relations with other people
• How we experience our work

You can improve both areas by bringing humor to work each day.

Harvard Business Review (September 2003) reports that executives with a sense of humor climb the corporate ladder more quickly and earn more money than their counterparts.

A good laugh reduces blood pressure, increases heart rate, massages internal organs and reduces the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood. It boosts blood flow to your brain, which means you learn more, forget less and feed your curiosity.

While the advantages of a good sense of humor at work are many, there is a dark side that can backfire. How can you be funny without being a jerk?

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The complete 1,000 word article includes these important concepts:

• Humor and Creativity
• Humor and Managing Change
• Motivation and Morale
• Humor Strengthens Teams
• The Dark Side of Humor
• How to Add Humor at Work

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Anyone with workplace experience knows men and women process information and communicate differently. Dealing with gender differences can prove challenging, especially for managers and leaders.

Regardless of which industry you’re in or the position you fill, male and female coworkers can experience a shared event and come away with different emotional stories.

We seem to be hardwired this way. Now that neuroscience is becoming more sophisticated, with tools like brain imaging, what are we learning about the gender divide?

Here are the key findings:

1. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention.
2. Men and women process certain emotions differently.
3. These distinctions are a product of complex interactions between nature and nurture.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 1000-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.

The complete 1,000 word article includes these important concepts:

•    Brain Differences
•    Small Talk
•    Giving Orders
•    Asking Questions
•    Mental Disorders
•    ”She’s So Emotional…”

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Teams are the most common business unit for high performance. Although the
word gets used loosely and not always appropriately, there is universal
acceptance that teams create opportunities for high performance results.

The most significant research on groups of people working together occurred in
the 1930′s with the Hawthorne studies. The results revealed that being observed
and having others interested in them was the determining factor that increased
performance for a group of workers. This was called the Hawthorne Effect.

The Hawthorne Effect has importance for executives interested in increasing
results without command and control tactics: pay attention to people and their
teams, express genuine interest in them, give them opportunities for social
interaction, frequent feedback, and stand back and let them perform.

Though it may not seem like anything special, mutual accountability can lead to
astonishing results. It enables a team to achieve performance levels that are
far greater than the individual bests of the team’s members.

Working with a team coach, both individually and with the whole team, can help
define the team purpose, specific goals and mutual accountability and facilitate
communications that lead to high performance results.

Important concepts in the full 2,000 word article:

The Elements of Effective Teams
The Evolution of Group to Team
What the Hawthorne Studies Show about Teams
Emotional Energy for the Team
Specific Goals Provide Clarity and Focus
Mutual Accountability Leads to High Performance Results
Five Essential Disciplines of Effective Teams
Eight Keys to Building Team Performance
Building the Emotional Intelligence of Teams
The Challenge of Working with Virtual Teams
Using Focused Feedback and Follow-up to Build Teams Quickly
Resources on Teams

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When Daniel Goleman wrote his landmark books on emotional intelligence in the 90′s ( Emotional Intelligence, 1995, Working with Emotional Intelligence, 1998), managers in organizations everywhere nodded heads in agreement. Finally, what they knew to be true about dealing with people had a name and was clearly articulated. For the past decade,important research has been done in organizations to show that feelings and emotions have a direct impact on effectiveness, efficiency and ultimately the bottom line.

Currently, the concept is being applied to teams. Looking at the emotional
intelligence of teams is important because most of the work in organizations
today is being done by teams.

Research in the last decade has proven the superiority of group decision-making over that of even the brightest individual in the group. But the exception to this rule is when the group lacks harmony or the ability to cooperate; then decision-making quality and speed suffer.

The important difference between effective teams and ineffective ones lies in
the emotional intelligence of the group.

When people feel good, they work better, are more creative, and they are more productive. Good feelings are like lubrication for the brain: mental efficiency goes up, memory is sharpened, and people can understand directions and make better decisions.

Studies have shown this to be especially true when it comes to teams. This is
because emotions are contagious. When one or two people are in a good mood, it spreads easily to other members.

Important concepts covered in this article:

Elements of Emotional Intelligence
The Importance of Teams in Organizations
Three elements of successful teams
When personalities clash
Feeling good and the bottom line
How is emotional intelligence developed?
How assessments can facilitate understanding
Building self-managing teams
Using a team coach to build E.I.
Four Cluster’s of Emotional Competency
Resources on Emotionally Intelligent Teams

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Political savvy is a vital competence for any executive, but it’s not taught
in leadership or grad school courses. In fact, the term “office politics” has
received a bad rap. (Words like “Machiavellian,” “manipulative” and
“conspiratorial” come to mind.)

Tales of political sabotage, power plays and turf wars are part of any
organization’s history. Nonetheless, political competence is the one skill
everyone wishes to have more of—but no one talks about it.

Until recently, few books explained how to use political competence to build
one’s career, improve a team’s results or boost the company’s bottom line.
Samuel B. Bacharach, director of Cornell University’s Institute for Workplace
Studies, recently published Get Them on Your Side. Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman have written Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success.

Political competence is the “ability to understand what you can and cannot
control, when to take action, who is going to resist your agenda, and whom you need on your side. It’s about knowing how to map the political terrain and get others on your side, as well as lead coalitions,” according to Prof. Bacharach.

Many individuals have good ideas that, if implemented, could yield positive
results for their companies. Sometimes, these ideas fall flat because the
leaders who propose them cannot gain support from key people.

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The full, 2000 word article discusses these concepts:

Defining Political Savvy
Ignore at Your Own Risk
Three Phases of Political Competence
    1. Map Your Political Terrain
    2. Get Others on Your Side
    3. Make Things Happen
The Political Analyst
The Consensus Builder
Reducing Risk through Politics
The Politically Competent Leader
Two Political Styles
Organizational Savvy Continuum
Resources

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After years of reengineering, downsizing and optimizing operational
efficiencies, companies are now focusing on new ways to generate distinctive
competitive advantages. Strategic planning is back, but with a difference: it is
no longer the domain of the CEO and senior executives.

Smart organizations are changing the way strategy is handled. To keep the
planning process close to the realities of markets, today’s strategists say it
should include key customers, end-users and suppliers. Such a key element is a
revolutionary step in strategic planning but necessary to help produce what
customers really want.

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, authors of The Strategy-Focused
Organization, are the originators of the Balanced Scorecard, a system for
measuring strategic performance. They emphasize the importance of making
strategy “everyone’s everyday job.”

Today, strategy is the concern of everyone from the top down through middle
managers, team leaders, and front-line employees. And it is even more so at the
critical interface between customer and company, i.e. customer services, sales
and marketing.

Important concepts covered in the full 2,000-word article:

Why Strategy Is so Important
How it Misses the Boat
Where Should We Put our Efforts (and Why)?
What Do We Bring to the Table?
Do our Capabilities Suit our Position?
How Strategy Is a Continuous Process
Failure to Execute
Measuring Strategy and Fallacies
The Balanced Scorecard
Resources on strategy

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“It is not the most intelligent of the species that survive the longest,  it is the most adaptable.” — Charles Darwin

In order to be persistently successful, people and organizations need to adapt
continually to their environment. This requires information from the
environment. The more open the feedback loops, the more effective the adaptation
and change can be. Few leaders have truly open and honest feedback within their
organizations.

CEO disease : not seeing the impact a leader’s mood has on the organization.

Symptom : when the leader has near-total ignorance about how his or her mood and
actions appear to the organization.

Sometimes there is fear in sharing information due to a leader’s style. People
do not want to be shot as the messenger. Many people want to appear upbeat and
optimistic and do not want to deliver negative information. Whatever the
motives, the result is a leader who only has partial information about what’s
going on around him.

How should leaders seek out the truth? It is clear that it is up to leaders to
actively cultivate feedback if they are to acquire the information they need to
make changes.

Executives who work intensely with an executive coach understand how much effort
this can take.

Receptivity to feedback is clearly an important gateway to learning and
practicing strategies for personal improvement. Staying out of defensive modes
is essential to moving on and practicing new behaviors. These strategies are not
easy and work best when guided by an experienced coach. Unless leaders get data
about the quality and effectiveness of their interactions, they become prisoners
of the status quo.

Important concepts in this article:

CEO disease
Lack of reliable feedback at the top
Successful leaders seek out negative feedback
Using 360-degree assessments
Looking at the gap between ideal and real
Feedback That Works
Seeking out learning opportunities and practice
Practicing with an executive coach
Leadership Styles in a Nutshell
Resources on Feedback and Emotional Competencies

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