Curious Minds at Work

We go to the dentist, get our eyes checked, and get our cars inspected. These regularly scheduled health and safety audits let us know how we’re doing. But we rarely audit how we spend our time. Sure, most of us have a calendar. Yet few of us study how these calendar events impact our happiness. We rarely track the connection between what we spend our time doing and how well we’re flourishing. As...

How we think about things can have an outsize impact on whether we achieve our goals. Take, for example, the research we might do to make an important decision. If we’re already committed to a certain way of thinking, it’s likely we’ll only focus on information that confirms what we already believe. It’s what scientists call confirmation bias, and it can cause us to overlook, or even dismiss, info...

Who are you? It’s a question you’ve had to answer if you’ve ever moved, changed jobs, or started a new relationship. And it’s natural that who you are will change with each new experience you gain and new memories you form. The “story of you” will be different. At the same time, our brain is an incredible editor. With limited storage space for memories, it’s got to pick and choose. It does that by...

Work relationships matter more than we think. They can be a key reason we stay in a job or the reason we leave. When they don’t go well, they can consume a lot of our time and energy, both in and out of work. That’s why we need to get better at them. Even the difficult ones, like a boss who takes all the credit or a co-worker who’s perpetually negative. Amy Gallo is an expert on conflict and a con...

What if becoming a better quitter was something to aspire to? Annie Duke thinks it is. She’s a national science foundation fellowship winner and bestselling author who’s used her background in psychology to become a successful poker player and business advisor. Lately, she’s spent time studying the power of quitting, a tool she argues is as important as grit, resilience, and sticking it out. The s...

What if the skills we need to thrive in uncertainty were ones we already had? That’s the case Jennifer Garvey Berger makes in her latest book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead. When life is good, we make time to connect, engage, and create. But when it’s uncertain, stress gets in the way of these healthy behaviors. While we can’t always change life’s complexity,...

Your manager sees it one way. Your colleague sees it another. Both ways are different from yours. Why is that? Well, our brains may have something to do with it. Today’s brain researchers are studying what makes our brains different. They’re finding that these differences not only impact how we interpret situations, but also how well we’re able to focus, learn new things, and adapt to change. They...

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...