Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
The question “If You Had Only ONE Job Interview Question to Ask” was posed this past May. The suggestion merits revisiting based on an aside Carol Dweck made this past week when I caught her presentation at my son’s grade school, Marin Country Day School.
Dweck’s research – which has more depth and vigor than I’ve distilled here – has pointed to the existence of two types of mindets – that of a “fixed” mindset and that of a “growth” mindset in children as well as adults.… Read the rest
40 people – including me – who coach leaders and teams as I do, got to spend an evening with Jim Kouzes Tuesday night. It was food for the mind and food for the soul.
Kouzes, along with colleague Barry Posner, authored the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, which has over 1.8 million copies in print. The duo has also been active in doing field-based research, utilizing a leadership inventory they developed, which now has a database of over 1M respondents.… Read the rest
The current edition of BusinessWeek trumpets a “Lost Generation” of 16-24 year olds – and notes, “The continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard—damaging both their future and the economy.” The article talks about the drag on future earnings, as well as the experience of a similarly aged generation of Japanese youth from the 1990’s.
No doubt that the impact of the recession is hard on this group – but is the prognosis true?… Read the rest
Stealth mode is mounting a comeback. It disappeared for awhile in the aftermath of the dot com crash but there are signs of its return, even with a swagger in things like Craigslist job advertisements (“We’re a hot new start-up, still in stealth mode, operating quietly . . .” and hubris too (“We always get a tremendous response to these postings.”)… Read the rest
While the exact formula for what makes someone successful in work over a period of time is still cloudy, the outlines through research are taking shape. Those outlines can begin to inform who you hire, who you work with, and – if you’re prone to introspection – what your own personal profile looks like.
These trends and factors didn’t just pop-up today: in some cases, as in the importance of emotional intelligence, they’ve been building for decades as the old control and command models of management gave way to greater teamwork and collaboration norms.… Read the rest
The voice at the other end of the voicemail sounded sincere and the message they left earlier about the possible job sounds great. But is too good to be true just that: too good to be true?
And can you trust the recruiter who left the message?
The short answer is “maybe”. And here’s more.
I spend my work life coaching people and teams to up their performance game, and one of ways to enhance performance is to improve the ability anticipate what’s coming down the pike.… Read the rest