8 Great Tricks for Reading People’s Body Language

Body language provides an amazing amount of information on what other people are thinking if you know what to look for. And who hasn’t wanted to read people’s minds at some point?

You already pick up on more body language cues than you’re consciously aware of. UCLA research has shown that only 7% of communication is based on the actual words we say. As for the rest, 38% comes from tone of voice and the remaining 55% comes from body language. Learning how to become aware of and to interpret that 55% can give you a leg up with other people.

When you’re working hard and doing all you can to achieve your goals, anything that can give you an edge is powerful and will streamline your path to success.

Talent Smart has tested more than a million people and found that the upper echelons of top performance are filled with people who are high in emotional intelligence (90% of top performers, to be exact). These people know the power that unspoken signals have in communication, and they monitor body language accordingly.

Next time you’re in a meeting (or even on a date or playing with your kids), watch for these cues:

Crossed arms and legs signal resistance to your ideas. Crossed arms and legs are physical barriers that suggest the other person is not open to what you’re saying. Even if they’re smiling and engaged in a pleasant conversation, their body language tells the story. Gerard I. Nierenberg and Henry H. Calero videotaped more than 2,000 negotiations for a book they wrote on reading body language, and not a single one ended in an agreement when one of the parties had their legs crossed while negotiating. Psychologically, crossed legs or arms signal that a person is mentally, emotionally, and physically blocked off from what’s in front of them. It’s not intentional, which is why it’s so revealing.

Real smiles crinkle the eyes. When it comes to smiling, the mouth can lie but the eyes can’t. Genuine smiles reach the eyes, crinkling the skin to create crow’s feet around them. People often smile to hide what they’re really thinking and feeling, so the next time you want to know if someone’s smile is genuine, look for crinkles at the corners of their eyes. If they aren’t there, that smile is hiding something.

Copying your body language is a good thing. Have you ever been in a meeting with someone and noticed that every time you cross or uncross your legs, they do the same? Or perhaps they lean their head the same way as yours when you’re talking? That’s actually a good sign. Mirroring body language is something we do unconsciously when we feel a bond with the other person. It’s a sign that the conversation is going well and that the other party is receptive to your message. This knowledge can be especially useful when you’re negotiating, because it shows you what the other person is really thinking about the deal.

Posture tells the story. Have you ever seen a person walk into a room, and immediately, you have known that they were the one in charge? That effect is largely about body language, and often includes an erect posture, gestures made with the palms facing down, and open and expansive gestures in general. The brain is hardwired to equate power with the amount of space people take up. Standing up straight with your shoulders back is a power position; it appears to maximize the amount of space you fill. Slouching, on the other hand, is the result of collapsing your form; it appears to take up less space and projects less power. Maintaining good posture commands respect and promotes engagement, whether you’re a leader or not.

Eyes that lie. Most of us probably grew up hearing, “Look me in the eye when you talk to me!” Our parents were operating under the assumption that it’s tough to hold someone’s gaze when you’re lying to them, and they were right to an extent. But that’s such common knowledge that people will often deliberately hold eye contact in an attempt to cover up the fact that they’re lying. The problem is that most of them overcompensate and hold eye contact to the point that it feels uncomfortable. On average, Americans hold eye contact for seven to ten seconds, longer when we’re listening than when we’re talking. If you’re talking with someone whose stare is making you squirm—especially if they’re very still and unblinking—something is up and they might be lying you.

Raised eyebrows signal discomfort. There are three main emotions that make your eyebrows go up: surprise, worry, and fear. Try raising your eyebrows when you’re having a relaxed casual conversation with a friend. It’s hard to do, isn’t it? If somebody who is talking to you raises their eyebrows and the topic isn’t one that would logically cause surprise, worry, or fear, there is something else going on.

Exaggerated nodding signals anxiety about approval. When you’re telling someone something and they nod excessively, this means that they are worried about what you think of them or that you doubt their ability to follow your instructions. 

A clenched jaw signals stress. A clenched jaw, a tightened neck, or a furrowed brow are all signs of stress. Regardless of what the person is saying, these are signs of considerable discomfort. The conversation might be delving into something they’re anxious about, or their mind might be elsewhere and they’re focusing on the thing that’s stressing them out. The key is to watch for that mismatch between what the person says and what their tense body language is telling you.

Bringing It All Together

The bottom line is that even if you can’t read a person’s exact thoughts, you can learn a lot from their body language, and that’s especially true when words and body language don’t match.

What other body language clues do you look for? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Reason Women Are Smarter Than Men

Trying to compare intelligence and gender doesn't typically yield much in the way of productive discussion, but sometimes research comes along that's worth opening this particular can of worms.

Decades of research show unequivocally that men and women are equal in general intelligence (IQ), but that isn't the case when it comes to emotional intelligence (EQ). There are subtle, and not so subtle, differences in men's and women's expression and understanding of emotions that must be explored and understood.

Gender is a common place for people to assign labels around emotion. Such generalizations have pegged women as everything from the “fairer sex” to overly emotional, and men from emotionally aloof to explosive. You'll find that none of these platitudes are true.

There’s an enormous amount of research suggesting that emotional intelligence (EQ) is critical to men's and women's performance at work. Emotional intelligence is responsible for 58% of performance in all types of jobs, and 90% of top performers are high in EQ.

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -Timothy Leary

Talent Smart has tested the emotional intelligence of more than a million people and it's clear that women have the upper hand. While women's overall EQ score is just a couple of points higher than men's, this is a statistically significant difference that shows that women have greater skill in using emotions to their benefit.

It just doesn't answer the pressing question: why?

To understand why women outscore men, we have to look at scores for each of the four emotional intelligence skills by gender. There's a reliable pattern in the data that points to some interesting explanations for the gap.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is how well you understand your own emotions in the moment, as well as how well you understand your tendencies—the people and situations you handle well and those that push your buttons. This is the one place where men and women have perfectly equal scores. It's also a place where men have been given a bad rap. People often assume that men aren't tuned in to their emotions or don't understand them. Clearly, that isn't the case. Of course, men also have a tendency to hop on this bandwagon—by feigning to have no awareness or understanding of their emotions—in the hope of avoiding any accountability for their actions. Now we know better.

Self-Management

Self-management is what you do with your emotions once you're aware of them. Since you can't make emotions disappear, effective self-management requires channeling your emotions into producing the behavior that you want. This is the one area where men outscored women. I believe that the best explanation for gender differences in emotional intelligence is how we are socialized growing up (reinforced by societal gender pressures we experience as adults). In the case of self-management, men are often expected to be emotionally "strong" and in control of their emotions, which may explain why they outscore women slightly.

Social Awareness

Social awareness is how well you understand the emotions and experience of other people. This requires the ability to tune in to body language and other unspoken signals, since people don't usually come out and say what's going on with them. This is an area where women outscore men by a fairly large margin (statistically speaking). This is also a skill that women are socialized to practice and possess from childhood in ways that men aren't. Right or wrong, women are expected to take care of other people (and are rewarded for doing so). This gives them an upper hand when it comes to social awareness. Men, to their detriment, aren't rewarded for social awareness in the same way that women are, and this carries over into adulthood.

Relationship Management

Relationship management is the pinnacle of emotional intelligence. It requires that you use self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness in concert to better your relationships as you interact with other people. You cannot hope to get the most out of your interactions with other people until you understand your emotions, cue in to their emotions, and use this knowledge to adjust your approach on the fly. Women have a slight edge in relationship management for reasons described in the social awareness section above.

The Advantage

Emotional intelligence presents a significant advantage for women in the workplace. Whether you're a man or a woman, don't just sit back hoping that you're one of the high-EQ types. EQ is a flexible skill that you can improve with effort. To that end, here are a few things that you can do to improve your EQ today:

Limit Your Caffeine Intake

Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, and adrenaline is the source of the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt e-mail. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine’s long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. High-EQ individuals know that caffeine is trouble, and they don’t let it get the better of them.

Get Enough Sleep

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence. When you sleep your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you're awake. Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you're asleep. So when you don't get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think. Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board. It slows your ability to process information and problem solve, kills your creativity, and catapults your stress levels and emotional reactivity. High-EQ individuals know that their self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when they don’t get enough sleep. So, they make sleep a top priority.

Stop Negative Self-Talk in Its Tracks

The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural tendency to perceive threats (inflating the frequency or severity of an event). Emotionally intelligent people separate their thoughts from the facts in order to escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive, new outlook.

Appreciate What You Have

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

Why do you think women outscore men in emotional intelligence? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Bad Mistakes That Make Good Employees Leave

It’s tough to hold on to good employees, but it shouldn’t be. Most of the mistakes that companies make are easily avoided. When you do make mistakes, your best employees are the first to go, because they have the most options.

If you can’t keep your best employees engaged, you can’t keep your best employees. While this should be common sense, it isn’t common enough. A survey by CEB found that one-third of star employees feel disengaged from their employer and are already looking for a new job.

When you lose good employees, they don’t disengage all at once. Instead, their interest in their jobs slowly dissipates. Michael Kibler, who has spent much of his career studying this phenomenon, refers to it as brownout. Like dying stars, star employees slowly lose their fire for their jobs.

“Brownout is different from burnout because workers afflicted by it are not in obvious crisis,”Kibler said. “They seem to be performing fine: putting in massive hours, grinding out work while contributing to teams, and saying all the right things in meetings. However, they are operating in a silent state of continual overwhelm, and the predictable consequence is disengagement.”

Read also--->> Small things people use to judge you

In order to prevent brownout and to retain top talent, companies and managers must understand what they’re doing that contributes to this slow fade. The following practices are the worst offenders, and they must be abolished if you’re going to hang on to good employees.

They make a lot of stupid rules. Companies need to have rules—that’s a given—but they don’t have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order. Whether it’s an overzealous attendance policy or taking employees’ frequent flier miles, even a couple of unnecessary rules can drive people crazy. When good employees feel like big brother is watching, they’ll find someplace else to work.

They treat everyone equally. While this tactic works with school children, the workplace ought to function differently. Treating everyone equally shows your top performers that no matter how high they perform (and, typically, top performers are work horses), they will be treated the same as the bozo who does nothing more than punch the clock.

They tolerate poor performance. It’s said that in jazz bands, the band is only as good as the worst player; no matter how great some members may be, everyone hears the worst player. The same goes for a company. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially your top performers.

They don’t recognize accomplishments. It’s easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Rewarding individual accomplishments shows that you’re paying attention. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you’re doing it right.

They don’t care about people. More than half the people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain that their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate their employees’ successes, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge them, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates. It’s impossible to work for someone for eight-plus hours a day when they aren’t personally involved and don’t care about anything other than your output.

They don’t show people the big picture. It may seem efficient to simply send employees assignments and move on, but leaving out the big picture is a deal breaker for star performers. Star performers shoulder heavier loads because they genuinely care about their work, so their work must have a purpose. When they don’t know what that is, they feel alienated and aimless. When they aren’t given a purpose, they find one elsewhere.

They don’t let people pursue their passions. Google mandates that employees spend at least 20% of their time doing “what they believe will benefit Google most.” While these passion projects make major contributions to marquis Google products, such as Gmail and AdSense, their biggest impact is in creating highly engaged Googlers. Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction, but many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies have shown that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.

They don’t make things fun. If people aren’t having fun at work, then you’re doing it wrong. People don’t give their all if they aren’t having fun, and fun is a major protector against brownout. The best companies to work for know the importance of letting employees loosen up a little. Google, for example, does just about everything it can to make work fun—free meals, bowling allies, and fitness classes, to name a few. The idea is simple: if work is fun, you’ll not only perform better, but you’ll stick around for longer hours and an even longer career.

Bringing It All Together

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

Read also--->> Small things people use to judge you

What other mistakes cause great employees to leave? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Great Ways To Kill Morale

What makes you happy at work? Maybe you have a great boss who gives you the freedom to be creative, rewards you for going the extra mile, and helps you to reach your career goals.

Maybe you have none of the above and are updating your résumé as we speak.

It’s pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something to complain about—few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door.

But managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

Bad management does not discriminate based on salary or job title. A Fortune 500 executive team can experience more dissatisfaction and turnover than the baristas at a local coffee shop. The more demanding your job is and the less control you have over what you do, the more likely you are to suffer. A study by the American Psychological Association found that people whose work meets both these criteria are more likely to experience exhaustion, poor sleep, anxiety, and depression.

The sad thing is that this suffering can easily be avoided. All that’s required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager’s part to give employees autonomy and make their work feel less demanding. To get there, managers must understand what they’re doing to kill morale. The following practices are the worst offenders, and they must be abolished if you’re going to hang on to good employees.

Overworking people. Nothing burns good employees out quite like overworking them. It’s so tempting to work the best people hard that managers frequently fall into this trap. Overworking good employees is perplexing for them as it makes them feel as if they’re being punished for their great performance. Overworking employees is also counterproductive. New research from Stanford showed that productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that you don’t get anything out of working more. Talented employees will take on a bigger workload, but they won’t stay if their job suffocates them in the process. Raises, promotions, and title-changes are all acceptable ways to increase workload. If managers simply increase workload because people are talented, without changing a thing, these employees will seek another job that gives them what they deserve.

Holding people back. As an employee, you want to bring value to your job, and you do so with a unique set of skills and experience. So how is it that you can do your job so well that you become irreplaceable? This happens when managers sacrifice your upward mobility for their best interests. If you’re looking for your next career opportunity, and your boss is unwilling to let you move up the ladder, your enthusiasm is bound to wane. Taking away opportunities for advancement is a serious morale killer.

Management may have a beginning, but it certainly has no end. When blessed with a talented employee, it’s the manager’s job to keep finding areas in which they can improve to expand their skill set and further their career. The most talented employees want feedback—more so than the less talented ones—and it’s a manager’s job to keep it coming. Otherwise, people grow bored and complacent.

Playing the blame game. A boss who is too proud to admit a mistake or who singles out individuals in front of the group creates a culture that is riddled with fear and anxiety. It’s impossible to bring your best to your work when you’re walking on eggshells. Instead of pointing fingers when something goes wrong, good managers work collaboratively with their team and focus on solutions. They pull people aside to discuss slip-ups instead of publicly shaming them, and they’re willing to accept responsibility for mistakes made under their leadership.

Frequent threats of firing. Some managers use threats of termination to keep you in line and to scare you into performing better. This is a lazy and shortsighted way of motivating people. People who feel disposable are quick to find another job where they’ll be valued and will receive the respect that they deserve.

Not letting people pursue their passions. Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction, but many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies have shown that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.

Withholding praise. It’s easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you’re doing it right. This doesn’t mean that managers need to praise people for showing up on time or working an eight-hour day—these things are the price of entry—but a boss who does not give praise to dedicated employees erodes their commitment to the job.

Bringing It All Together

If managers want their best people to stay, they need to think carefully about how they treat them. While good employees are as tough as nails, their talent gives them an abundance of options. Managers need to make people want to work for them.

What other mistakes kill morale? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.https://twitter.com/Arhyel2

Critical Skills You Should Learn That Pay Dividends Forever

The further along you are in your career, the easier it is to fall back on the mistaken 

assumption that you’ve made it and have all the skills you need to succeed. The 

tendency is to focus all your energy on getting the job done, assuming that the rest will 

take care of itself. Big mistake.

New research from Stanford tells the story. Carol Dweck and her colleagues 

conducted a study with people who were struggling with their performance. One 

group was taught to perform better on a task that they performed poorly in. The other 

group received a completely different intervention: for the task that they performed 

badly in, they were taught that they weren’t stuck and that improving their 

performance was a choice. They discovered that learning produces physiological 

changes in the brain, just like exercise changes muscles. All they had to do was 

believe in themselves and make it happen.

When the groups’ performance was reassessed a few months later, the group that was 

taught to perform the task better did even worse. The group that was taught that they 

had the power to change their brains and improve their performance themselves 

improved dramatically.

The primary takeaway from Dweck’s research is that we should never stop learning. 

The moment we think that we are who we are is the moment we give away our 

unrealized potential.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – 

Mahatma Gandhi

The act of learning is every bit as important as what you learn. Believing that you can 

improve yourself and do things in the future that are beyond your current possibilities 

is exciting and fulfilling.

Still, your time is finite, and you should dedicate yourself to learning skills that will 

yield the greatest benefit. There are nine skills that I believe fit the bill because they 

never stop paying dividends. These are the skills that deliver the biggest payoff, both 

in terms of what they teach you and their tendency to keep the learning alive.

Emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ is the “something” in each of us that is a bit 

intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make 

personal decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is your ability to recognize and 

understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to 

manage your behavior and relationships. Decades of research now point to EQ as the 

critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. It’s a powerful 

way to focus your energy in one direction, with tremendous results.

TalentSmart tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills and found that 

EQ is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all 

types of jobs. Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we've found that 90% of top 

performers are also high in EQ. On the flip side, just 20% of bottom performers are 

high in EQ. You can be a top performer without EQ, but the chances are slim. 

Naturally, people with a high degree of EQ make more money, an average of $29,000 

more per year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. The link 

between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to 

an annual salary. Increasing your EQ won’t just pad your bank account, it’ll make you 

happier and less stressed as well.

Time management. One of the biggest things that gets in the way of effective time 

management is the “tyranny of the urgent.” This refers to the tendency of little things 

that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. When you 

succumb to it, you spend so much time putting out fires that you never get any real 

work done. How many times have you left work at the end of the day, only to realize 

that you didn’t move the important things along even one inch? Learning to manage 

your time effectively frees you up to perform at your absolute highest level, and it 

does so every single day of your life.

Listening. This one should be easy. If we’re not talking, we’re listening, right? Well, 

not exactly. A lot of times, we think we’re listening, but we’re actually planning what 

we’re going to say next. True listening means focusing solely on what the other person 

is saying. It’s about understanding, not rebuttal or input. Learning how to suspend 

judgment and focus on understanding the other person’s input is one of the most 

important skills you can develop.

Listening is a bit like intelligence—most everyone thinks they’re above average (even 

though that’s impossible). A study at Wright State University surveyed more than 

8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as listening as 

well as or better than their co-workers. We know intuitively that many of them were 

wrong.

There’s so much talking happening at work that opportunities to listen abound. We 

talk to provide feedback, explain instructions, and communicate deadlines. Beyond the 

spoken words, there’s invaluable information to be deciphered through tone of voice, 

body language, and what isn’t said. In other words, failing to keep your ears (and 

eyes) open could leave you out of the game.

Saying No. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying no is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say no, you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.

Asking for help. It might seem counterintuitive to suggest that asking for help is a skill, but it is. It takes a tremendous amount of confidence and humility to admit that you need assistance. This skill is critical because the last thing a leader wants are employees who keep on trucking down the wrong path because they are too embarrassed or proud to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing. The ability to recognize when you need help, summon up the courage to ask for it, and follow through on that help is an extremely valuable skill.

Getting high-quality sleep. We've always known that quality sleep is good for your brain, but recent research from the University of Rochester demonstrated exactly how so. The study found that when you sleep, your brain removes toxic proteins, which are by-products of neural activity when you're awake, from its neurons. The catch here is that your brain can only adequately remove these toxic proteins when you have sufficient quality sleep. When you don’t get high-quality deep sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc and ultimately impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix. This slows your ability to process information and solve problems, kills your creativity, and increases your emotional reactivity. Learning to get high-quality sleep on a regular basis is a difficult skill to master, but it pays massive dividends the next day.

Knowing when to shut up. Sure, it can feel so good to unload on somebody and let them know what you really think, but that good feeling is temporary. What happens the next day, the next week, or the next year? It’s human nature to want to prove that you’re right, but it’s rarely effective. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you and the relationship severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right. The vast majority of the time, that means biting your tongue.

Taking initiative. Initiative is a skill that will take you far in life. In theory, initiative is easy—the desire to take action is always there—but in the real world, other things get in the way. There’s a big difference between knowing what to do and being too scared or lazy to actually do it. That requires initiative. You have to take risks and push yourself out of your comfort zone, until taking initiative is second nature.

Staying positive. We've all received the well-meaning advice to "stay positive." The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It's hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well, back when we were hunters and gatherers and living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.

That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind's tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These "threats" magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced that the project you're working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life. Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you're going to overcome the brain's tendency to focus on threats.

Bringing It All Together

Research shows that lifelong learning pays dividends beyond the skills you acquire. Never stop learning.

How do you keep the learning alive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Let me Tell you Some Reason Why Smart Leaders Fail

Most businesses are run by highly intelligent people, and when businesses fail it’s usually due to these smart leaders’ boneheaded mistakes. Even when a product—or lack of one—is at the center of the spectacle, flawed thinking by very smart people is often what made things fall apart.

There are far too many examples of this to list them all, but among my favorites is Kodak, a company that invented and then sat on the technology for digital photography because its leadership was afraid it would disrupt their core business (they eventually went bankrupt). And then there’s Xerox, a company that not only failed to capitalize on one of the most game-changing products in history—a desktop computer with a graphical user interface—but they let Apple employees visit the facility and copy their technology. I don’t have to tell you how that one turned out!

It’s easy and even comforting to assume these leaders weren’t paying attention, because this reinforces the idea that such failures could never happen to us. But the truth of the matter is that these leaders were intelligent people with supremely impressive track records. You can bet they were paying attention. So, what happened?

Sydney Finkelstein, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, spent six years searching for an answer to this question. He and his colleagues studied 51 of the business world’s most notorious failures, interviewing CEOs and people from all levels. Finkelstein wanted to understand the inner workings of each business, explore the minds of key executives, and find out what led them to make disastrous decisions.

He and his team found that the poor decisions these smart leaders made were sometimes intentional and sometimes accidental, but they always followed a clear pattern of hubris that ensured even the most successful enterprise could be run into the ground.

Here’s what the leaders in Finkelstein’s study had in common.

They viewed themselves, and their companies, as untouchable.There’s nothing wrong with having lofty goals or a healthy sense of pride, but these leaders took their success for granted. They became so enamored with their ideas that they believed their competitors would never catch up, their circumstances would never change, and no disruptors would ever surface. These unrealistic expectations made failure inevitable. Leaders must continually question their positions, especially when they’re on top.

They couldn’t tell where they stopped and the company began.
The leaders in Finkelstein’s study had high profiles and were obsessed with company image. As a result, they were too busy being the face of the company to effectively lead it. Not only did this lead to stagnation but it also engendered dishonesty and corruption. A leader who sees a company as his own is more likely to hide anything that could tarnish that image, whether it be low numbers or faulty products.

They thought they were the smartest person in the room.Many intelligent leaders know quite well how smart they are. Their identities become so wrapped up in their intelligence that they believe input from others is unnecessary. They make decisions quickly and refuse to answer questions when there’s a misunderstanding. Although this may fit the TV image of a strong leader, making split-second decisions with imprudence often leads to major mistakes. Your chance of failure is heightened when you don’t care to know what other people think.

They surrounded themselves with yes-men and women.Some leaders become so obsessed with loyalty that they expect mindless support for every decision they make. This alienates valuable employees and silences voices that could otherwise help the business succeed. When a leader begins to equate disagreement with disloyalty, or worse—the undermining of their authority—there’s no one left to raise the warning flags.

They drove past red flags and warning signs.Some leaders are so enamored with their personal visions that they’re willing to drive the company off of a cliff in pursuit of them. Many of these leaders solicit input and suggestions, but they just can’t take their feet off the gas. Persistence is a great quality in a leader but not if it means ignoring the facts.

They relied too much on what worked before.Evaluating one’s previous successes and failures can help a business thrive, but the past shouldn’t be the driving force behind a company’s future. Finkelstein’s team found that many failed leaders took one pivotal moment in their careers and continually tried to repeat it, even when their previous strategies no longer made sense. Customer needs, technology, and the competitive landscape can change on a dime. For this reason, successful leaders are constantly adapting to their surroundings.

Bringing It All Together

Finkelstein’s research shows us that most business failures can be avoided. The smartest leaders look deeply at their own behavior to fix potential problems before it’s too late.

Have you seen smart leaders make similar mistakes? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.https://facebook.com/www.mymoney