Emotional Intelligence

Question your assumptions

August 12, 2013
To see what self-awareness has to do with overcoming obstacles, researchers look at how people use it. Take David Chang, who started out with a humble noodle bar, Momofuku. It wasn’t going anywhere. Instead of blaming someone, he subjected himself to a brutal self-assessment.

Leadership through influence

July 29, 2013
Sometimes, being a leader means being the only doctor in a town of 3,400 in rural Georgia. That’s how it is for Howard McMahan, M.D., who’s been seeing the same pa­­tients for more than 20 years, but for whom life would be easier if he closed his practice and took a job at a regional medical center 30 miles away. Still, he stays.

Don’t dwell on your legacy

June 7, 2013
Poor Richard III. After his war-torn bones were found earlier this year in a Leicester car park, the controversial king turned out not to have been quite the deformed viper, toad or hedgehog that Shakespeare called him.

Look for ways to convey gratitude

May 28, 2013
Even if you’re not particularly demonstrative with your emotions, follow the lead of Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and look for opportunities to convey gratitude to your team.

Giving thanks and beating obstacles

May 3, 2013
The victories we’ve achieved in life, says Dr. Alex Lickerman of the University of Chicago, represent more than simply our accomplishments. They provide evidence of our ability to win, which, when we call on it, can steel us against the despair that tempts us when we face obstacles.

Leadership Tips: Vol. 513

May 2, 2013
Make the world as awesome as one YouTube sensation … Know the first rule of the road … Move on from both triumph and disaster.

New wrinkle on personality tests

April 19, 2013
The “H” factor, missing from most models of personality such as Myers-Briggs, refers to honesty and humility. It’s part of a model developed more than a decade ago by two Canadian psychology professors immersed in the “Big Five” personality traits.

Think positive

April 15, 2013

You know how important a positive air is to success and happiness—to the point where, if you don’t feel it, manufacture it. Try these tactics.

Be clear about the why

January 8, 2013
The power of why is what carries you and your team through the grueling, mundane and laborious donkey work of accomplishing your mission. Here’s a metaphor to bring it home.

Watch and listen to everything

December 20, 2012

Arnold Hiatt was visiting Hong Kong in 1990 when he noticed a child wearing an unusual shoe. It closed with Velcro and had a loop on the back, allowing the child to pull it on easily. Within months, Hiatt’s Massachusetts company, Stride Rite, produced a similar model. Lesson: Watch and listen.