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Forrest Christian, consultant with The Manasclerk Company, is the author of most of these pages. Unless noted otherwise as written by another author, all of this site's content is Copyright 2002-2010 E. Forrest Christian, Valparaiso, Indiana, USA. All Rights reserved.
Category Archives: Motivation
Being Happy Makes You Less Productive. Sometimes.
Happy workers are better workers, right? Nope. At least not all the time. And maybe not even most of the time. Find out why. [Full Post] Continue reading
Posted in Decision-making, Managing, Motivation, Reviews - Articles
Tagged affect, career, Decision-making, happiness, management, productivity
2 Comments
Don’t Think You’re Smart
One of the remarkable things that Carol Dweck showed is that students who thought that they succeeded because they were smart did more poorly in new tasks. They wouldn’t ask for help because they were supposed to be able to figure it out themselves, or perhaps because they thought that if they asked for help they would be shown as not being smart.
Of course, this can be mixed with a DIY attitude, to make it even worse. I’ll chime in here with a personal story: when I was in college, I wouldn’t go to the math profs’ office hours because I somehow believed that I shouldn’t ask for help. It could have been a result of believing I succeeded because I was smart. It was at least also a part of “don’t ask for help” that was a cultural thing with my family. Compound the latter with the former and you get someone who could have done much better in differential equations than he did. (It didn’t help that I really don’t have a strong aptitude for mathematical thinking, arriving at most of my conclusions through intuition and guesswork.)
So internally you need to think that you succeed because of effort.
Lots of people ignore this advice. This leaves them open to being manipulated by you to your advantage, as long as you are willing to not be the smartest person in the room.
Continue reading
Posted in Motivation, happiness
Tagged Carol Dweck, high potentials, intelligence, life coaching, smart, smartest person
5 Comments
Barbara Fredrickson Talks Positivity on WUNC
Alicia recommended this NPR show in a comment on “Unhappy? Stop Trying to be Happier!“. It wasn’t podcasted yet, but is now.
If you missed it, like I did, here it is, with no added commentary from me. (Maybe…
Posted in Motivation, Reviews - Articles, happiness
Tagged barbara fredrickson, positive emotions, positivity, wunc
1 Comment
Finding a Dime Can Make Your Last Year Happier
Remember things as being happier by contemplating something positive before you write your resume / CV. You can use this to help you feel happier at interviews and other situations. Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Coaching, Motivation, happiness
Tagged Dan Ariely, decisions, happiness, positive emotions, positivity, Predictably Irrational
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Unhappy? Stop Trying To Be Happier
Dan Ariely reports that pursuing happiness can backfire. Trying to be happy doesn’t work. Continue reading
Posted in Coaching, Motivation, happiness
Tagged emotions, happiness, happiness and unhappiness, joy, unhappiness, william james
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Bonuses Backfire
New research shows that bonuses backfire on companies, even blocking common sense. A summary. Continue reading
Getting Rid of the "Dead Wood" at GE
GE’s practice of firing the bottom 10% would have seen as evil leadership by the Romans, who practiced “decimation” only on cowardly or mutinous troops, and even then rarely. Continue reading
Posted in Managing, Motivation, Organizations
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Kinston's & Algie's guide on how managers can approach decisions
For Friday, here’s “Seven Distinct Paths of Decision and Action” by Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie from 1989. This paper describes the seven different approaches to decision-making, but note that it’s really about action. Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Change, Coaching, Computers/IT, Decision-making, GO Conference, Governance, Managing, Motivation, Networks, Ontologies, Organizations, Outsourcing, Overachievers, Quality, Resources, Reviews - Articles, Reviews - Books, Risk Management, Social Network Analysis, Strategy, THEE, Theory, Uncategorized, Underachievers, Warren Kinston, Wilfred Brown, elliott jaques, podcast, requisite organization
Tagged Action, Decision-making, management, Warren Kinston
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The Bros. Heath Explain Incentive Pay Structures
In January, I scored a copy of the Bros. Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die as I was working with an Australian start-up. I commend their book in its entirety — very useful, and it…
Posted in Managing, Motivation
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Luc Hoebeke on Koldo Saratxaga, IRIZAR and Pride in Your Work
A little teaser for the forthcoming Part 2 of my conversation with Luc Hoebeke, the Belgian organizational expert and author of Making Work Systems Better: A Practitioner’s Guide. In this 30-second excerpt, Hoebeke talks about the most important thing Koldo…
Posted in Managing, Motivation, podcast
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Why Work Levels Are Rejected: Others Are Selfish Fallacy
While reading the excellent and highly recommended book by Heath & Heath, Made to Stick, I came upon this passage about Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs:
Imagine that a company offers its employees a $1,000 bonus if they meet certain
…
Posted in Managing, Motivation, Theory
Tagged elliott jaques, maslow, Motivation, requisite organization, stratified systems theory, workers, worklevels
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Power of Intrinsic Motivation
It’s the problem that management wants HR to solve: how do we get these people motivated to do what we want them to do. Even then I knew the answer: the only way to make someone do something that they don’t want to do is to coerce them. You make the reason for them doing it outside them.
There are other ways, of course, but they mean reframing the problem to be sensical to the person. And you have to give them a voice in their own life. Otherwise, you end up with non-motivated workers. Continue reading
Posted in Change, Motivation, Reviews - Books, Theory
1 Comment
Vaill on High-performing Systems
A second kind of evidence to suggest that the evolving success of the system has a powerful developmental effect on the leadership comes from the way members of high-performing systems talk about the early formative period of the system.
…
Posted in Motivation, Organizations, Theory
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Getting Motivated: Reframe the Problem
Here’s a hard learned lesson:
You are not going to change your personality very easily.
Some of you may believe that I am wrong. I would like to see some evidence before you go spouting off. The only way to…
Posted in Careers, Coaching, Motivation
3 Comments
Increase Sales 30% In A Recessionary Flat Market
I wrote the following for another site. It will be pretty heavily edited and changed prior, but I’m pretty pleased with it as is. So I’m posting it here for y’all’s enjoyment.
I will upload the image files later.…
Posted in Managing, Motivation, Organizations
2 Comments
Using Controlling Language to Create Unresponsive External Motivation
How you set limits to others and to yourself (along with your personal interpretation of the limit setting) determines whether your motivation comes from within and works or comes from without and destroys enthusiasm. Continue reading
Posted in Change, Motivation
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