Curious Minds at Work

How we think about toughness needs a reset. Too often, it’s been associated with brute forcing our way through things. Ignoring our feelings. Making an outward show of confidence and dominance. The problem is it just doesn't work. Performance coach and bestselling author, Steve Magness, offers another way. He’s done a deep dive on the latest research on toughness and performance. In his book, Do H...

What do you do when a promotion isn't an option? Maybe there aren’t enough positions to go around. It’s not the right moment in your career. Or maybe you don’t want the management responsibilities. In each case, you can feel stuck. But what if there were other options for career growth and development? That’s the case Julie Winkle Giulioni makes in her book, Promotions are So Yesterday: Redefine C...

Is our cultural conditioning holding women back at work? We don’t often notice how we’re culturally conditioned. Like when we walk into a store and the girls’ toys are pink and boys’ toys are blue. It’s a gender norm we may not question.  Now you might ask, in the big scheme of things, how much do kids’ toy colors really matter? But what about actual behaviors, like when girls are playing together...

There are times in our lives where we feel stuck, be it personally or professionally. It might be in our career. It might in a relationship. We’re smart, so we try to think our way out of it. But when we’re really stuck, thinking can turn into ruminating. And the more we think, the more we stay stuck. That’s when the labeling kicks in. The voice in our head labels us lazy, or crazy, or just plain...

Most of us believe that if we're smart, work hard, and hit our targets, we've got what it takes to get promoted. And, in some organizations, we might be right. But, in many organizations, those skills only take us so far. Research shows that there's an additional set of skills, one we don't often discuss. Things like, strategic networking, political intelligence, and likeability. If you're like mo...

In most organizations, moving up means managing projects. And if you want to grow your project management skills, you’ve got a wealth of resources to choose from. Everything from books and podcasts to courses and certifications. What’s much harder to find is information on how to lead a project, not just manage one. It’s the missing piece that may ultimately be more important to your project’s suc...

For the first time in U.S. history, we have employees from five different generations working side by side. With so many different perspectives and life experiences, conflict is inevitable. Unfortunately, this often leads to stereotyping. We classify colleagues as millennial snowflakes, entitled young people, or clueless boomers. When this happens, we miss out on some of the greatest business oppo...

The most successful leaders are always looking for an edge. It could be a competitive edge for their organizations, their teams, even themselves. One of the most effective ways to gain that edge is to notice what others miss. It’s about rethinking accepted wisdom around things like, strategy, planning, and execution. This week’s guest, Roger Martin, is someone who brought that kind of critical thi...

Most of us are productivity junkies. We pride ourselves on how much we accomplish and how long we maintain our focus. But our brains know better. Sooner or later, they start to wander. To the tune of nearly half our waking hours. Moshe Bar, cognitive scientist and author of the book, Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Creativity, argues that we need these...

Research shows our desire to fit in is incredibly strong. If you've ever disagreed with a group, but were afraid to speak up, you know the feeling. It means we go along to get along. Unfortunately, these feelings are the rule, not the exception. Millions of people experience them on a regular basis. It’s a phenomena psychologists call pluralistic ignorance, and it distorts how we see the world. Fr...

The best filmmakers are influencers. They direct your attention using words, sounds, and images, and, within seconds, they’ve got you seeing the world through their eyes.   But you don’t have to be a filmmaker to influence someone’s behavior. Whether you’re managing a team or leading an organization, you have access to influence. It’s in the way you frame a conversation. How you negotiate. When yo...

If someone asked what they should do to succeed in their job, you’d probably have a quick response. You might say something like, just do what you’re asked, get your work done on time, or don’t step on anyone’s toes. But what if the question wasn’t about how to succeed, but how to stand out as the best of the best? These are the high performers Liz Wiseman calls “impact players.” They’re the ones...

Humans have always lived with anxiety. Thousands of years ago, we feared attacks by wild animals. Today we worry whether we’ll have enough money to retire. It’s not the anxiety that matters, but how we handle it. Our responses can often compound the problem. For example, feeling anxious about a demanding customer, we reward ourselves with a pint of ice cream. As the pressure mounts, it becomes a d...

Imagine that fewer people are buying your organization’s product or service. It’s a shift you didn’t anticipate. To fix it, you study the data, identify the problem, and then take steps to address it. Your plan may include changes in marketing or team incentives. What it won’t include is doing nothing or trying to turn things around with one grand gesture. Yet that’s how we often approach meeting...

Why do we grieve, and what happens when we do? For much of human history, answers to these questions have come primarily from writers and thinkers. While they’ve given us powerful language to describe how we feel, they’ve shed little light on the science behind our feelings. Neuroscientists are changing that. Armed with innovative approaches for studying grief, coupled with modern technologies tha...

From time to time, I’ll run across creative ways people are using apps I like. It often prompts me to learn more. I’ll watch some videos, read a few articles and, inevitably, what I discover is that I’ve been accessing just a fraction of what the software can do.  I got that same feeling while reading award-winning science writer, David Robson’s latest book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindse...

Confidence seems elusive. We do something that comes easily and we don’t think twice about it. Or we try something new that’s challenging and we can't stop thinking about our mistakes. It can leave us thinking that confidence is something other people just seem to have. All the time. Performance psychologist Nate Zinsser knows that’s just not true. For decades he’s been working with Olympians, pro...

For women who want a career and a family, we might expect things would be easier today. After all, women have greater access to education and job opportunities. We’ve seen advances in reproductive health. And we’ve made inroads in anti-discrimination laws and policies. Yet gaps in pay and promotions remain a problem. Today’s guest, Claudia Goldin, is a Harvard University economist who’s spent her...

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. We love that feeling of a fresh start. But we hate how our commitments seldom make it to Valentine’s Day. So what if this year we had an expert teach us how to do it right?  Ayelet Fishbach is that expert. She’s a social psychologist at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Sc...

We hear it all the time, that the pace of technological change today is faster than ever before. But what does that really mean, and why does it matter? It means that if you were born in 1920, technologies in your life changed slowly. Think electricity, cars, telephones. At the time, these were huge innovations. But they took over 40 years to reach 3 out of 4 households in the U.S. Compare this to...

Just a few years ago, the possibility of working from anywhere made us wistful. With family and friends, we’d play the “what if” game: What if we could work from home? What if we could live somewhere warmer? What if we could move to another country? When the pandemic hit and remote work made “what if” possible, some responded, “why not?” And that’s when things got complicated. Now we’re faced with...

There are countless benefits to collaboration. We get new ideas. Solve problems more quickly. Produce higher quality work. But too much of anything can turn toxic. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College, has spent time with hundreds of leaders who’ve figured out how to collaborate more effectively. What he learned led to him develop a framew...

We like to think of our identities as singular and stable: I’m an early riser (and will always be), or I’m a foodie (and can’t imagine otherwise). But if we take a step back, we see how we not only hold multiple identities, but how many of these identities change over the course of our lives.  Remember when you were a student? Or a time when you were single? While there are some identities we can’...

How to change someone’s mind. It’s a topic that’s come up a few times before on the podcast. For example, I talked to Jonah Berger about how to make inroads by asking for less. I also spoke with Tali Sharot about how to get further by focusing first on what you have in common. Yet there’s one tip that’s never made the list. And it’s one that’s proven to have an incredible impact. In fact, we’ve se...

We like to think we’re in complete control of the decisions we make. From the sandwich we ordered for lunch to the Netflix show we watched last night. Yet, in each case, we’ve got a hidden partner, one that influences nearly every decision we make. That partner is the designer. Whether we’re reading a restaurant menu or scrolling a website, we’re taking in information that’s been presented to us i...