by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Stress Management
The point at which what we are given is difficult beyond endurance is a point that pierces and refines the soul. And (though this may be hard to believe) it is possible to be so fluid and centered, so filled with trust in the intelligence of the universe, that even the horror can pass through us and eventually be transformed into light.
—Stephen Mitchell
Genesis: A New Translation of the Classic Bible Stories
Quoted in Psychology Today, December 1, 1996
A quick and novel technique for integrating difficult moods and experiences is here Resistance is Futile on this blog.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | Client Comments
Tony and I have known each other 30 years. Over this time, he has repeatedly been a source of insight, clarity and heart. As a venture capitalist, I hired him to run a portfolio company; as an individual and business person, I continue to benefit from his counsel. It is difficult for me to imagine an individual better equipped with which to explore business problems of any ilk or complexity
—Robert Millstein
Investment Manager
Millstein Advisors, LLC
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
A transformational leadership style, one that conveys a sense of trust, meaningfulness, and individually challenges employees, contributes to greater employee well-being*
- Leading by example,
- Contributing to a common goal,
- Intellectual stimulation,
- Positive feedback for good performance,
- Recognizing the needs of others, &
- Resolving conflict
–Christine Jacobs, University of Cologne
in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
via Transformational Leadership
Has Positive Effects on Employee Well-Being.
*Psychological well-being includes:
-
self-acceptance
-
the establishment of quality ties to other
-
a sense of autonomy in thought and action
-
the ability to manage complex environments to suit personal needs and values
-
the pursuit of meaningful goals and a sense of purpose in life
-
continued growth and development as a person
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
[Our data on hiring at Google show that] what works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up.
Behavioral interviewing — where you’re not giving someone a hypothetical, but you’re starting with a question like, “Give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem.” The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable “meta” information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.
— Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President
of People Operations at Google
in Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
via The New York Times.com
See also, on this blog,
How to Write an Ad to Hire Employees.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Quotes and Aphorisms
[Philosopher Hannah] Arendt concluded that evil in the modern world is done neither by monsters nor by bureaucrats, but by joiners.
That evil, Arendt argued, originates in the neediness of lonely, alienated bourgeois people who live lives so devoid of higher meaning that they give themselves fully to movements. It is the meaning [Adolf] Eichmann finds as part of the Nazi movement that leads him to do anything and sacrifice everything. Such joiners are not stupid; they are not robots. But they are thoughtless in the sense that they abandon their independence, their capacity to think for themselves, and instead commit themselves absolutely to the fictional truth of the movement. It is futile to reason with them. They inhabit an echo chamber, having no interest in learning what others believe. It is this thoughtless commitment that permits idealists to imagine themselves as heroes and makes them willing to employ technological implements of violence in the name of saving the world.
–Professor Roger Berkowitz
Misreading ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’
New York Times
See also my blog post on the MCI Worldcom fraud, Integrity Ebbs by Inches
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Stress Management
Would you like to more than triple the chances that your employees will volunteer to help a colleague or a customer? In just two months. For free.
Easy. Encourage your staff to meditate for 20 minutes per day. That is the conclusion from a recent study.
The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help.
From Grey Matter: The Morality of Meditation
by David DeSteno, Ph. D. in The New York Times
describing research
by Paul Condon, Ph. D., Northeastern University
published in Psychological Science
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
I have great respect for Dan Gallwey; he is a pioneer of coaching and really gets it. Heard him just yesterday on a video from the 70s or 80s, paraphrasing.
When an employee or competitor fails to deliver what you require, start by inquiring into what he sees as the requirement, what he saw in the performance. Growth comes from seeing the world differently, not from being criticized or corrected.
—Tim Gallwey in a conversation with
John Wooden, Red Auerbach,
George Allen, & Werner Erhard
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
One of the things I’ve noticed as a characteristic of the great [athletic] coaches, is that they start with their commitment to a result first and then they’ve looked at the circumstances they’ve needed to deal with from the perspective of the result.
The people who did not make it into the league of the great coaches were often just as articulate, just as smart but they were focused on the circumstances they needed to deal with and then they looked at the result from the circumstances.
— Werner Erhard in conversation with
John Wooden, Red Auerbach,
George Allen, & Tim Gallwey
See also Managing Yourself (from the future) with Specific Measurable Results, on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
The coach whose philosophy I admired most was Amos Alonzo Stagg and he once made the statement he never had a player he didn’t love. He had many he didn’t like and he didn’t respect, but he loved them just the same.
—Coach John Wooden
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms, Stress Management
Because it is possible to create [one’s self,] one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.
Now creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one’s possibilities brings guilt toward one’s self.
–Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety
via Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Creativity | Brain Pickings.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Team Manager Skills
The fraud triangle is a model for explaining the factors that cause someone to commit occupational fraud. It consists of three components which, together, lead to fraudulent behavior:
1. Perceived unshareable financial need
2. Perceived opportunity
3. Rationalization
The fraud triangle originated from Donald Cressey’s hypothesis:
Trusted persons become trust violators when they conceive of themselves as having a financial problem which is non-shareable, are aware this problem can be secretly resolved by violation of the position of financial trust, and are able to apply to their own conduct in that situation verbalizations which enable them to adjust their conceptions of themselves as trusted persons with their conceptions of themselves as users of the entrusted funds or property.1
1Donald R. Cressey, Other People’s Money (Montclair: Patterson Smith, 1973) p. 30.
—The Fraud Triangle.
See also my post on the MCI Worldcom scandal, Integrity Ebbs by Inches.
by Tony Mayo | Client Comments
Tony and I met as I was assessing multiple career opportunities. I appreciated the clarity our conversation brought to my decision making.
—Jean Rosauer
Founder
Fuel Growth Group
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Sales Techniques
In 1966 Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of the landmark book The Three Pillars of Zen, was invited to give a talk at MIT by Nobel Laureate Salvador Luria.
Only six people came.
He gave his talk on Zen meditation anyway.
One of the six became Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., who had his first encounter with meditation that night. Kabat-Zinn is a pioneer in the scientific study of mindfulness and is responsible for teaching meditation to many thousands of people.
What is the right audience? The Zen answer is, the audience you have.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Executive Coaches
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (‘What else could it be?’) I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
–John R. Searle,
MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE, p 44
Published in 1984. I would update Searle with, “At present, obviously, the metaphor is the Internet, the brain as a complex network of adaptive connections.”
Problem is, the brain is not very similar to anything. Comprehension is further hampered by the fact that “the brain” has no clear boundaries. Its behavior requires a body and an external environment. Not to mention the recursive challenge of the brain being the primary tool used to comprehend itself.
by Tony Mayo | Client Comments
My medical practice, Potomac Psychiatry has grown dramatically over the past 3 years. We have secured a constant supply of new patients, a growing team of clinical and office professionals, and successfully launched new specialty services.
In addition to improved financial results for all of us, I also have more fun at work, am writing a book, and enjoy devoting more time to family, travel, and hobbies. I am certain that these results are due to Tony’s executive coaching and the help of his Genuine Success group.
—Dr. Bruce Kehr
President
Potomac Psychiatry
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