The founder and driving force of “Positive Psychology” has summarized his lifetime of research in this accessible book for the lay reader. Though padded with the usual flab of today’s nonfiction–refutations of criticisms most readers have never encountered, tangential personal anecdotes, and repetition–the substance of his findings are practical and enlivening. Dr. Seligman even summarizes the components of a life well lived in a mnemonic acronym.
You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.
–Yogi Berra
Happy New Year!
Or so we have been saying. But will it be happy for you? Will it even be all that new? Or is it just the same stuff on a different date? Is 2012 your future or just a rearranged version of your past?
Try this quick exercise. Pretend it is now January 1, 2013. How are you feeling about 2012? Was it a year of satisfaction or disappointment, growth or decay, health or decline, contribution or frustration? One year from today, what will you wish you had done sooner?
Like most of the people I ask, you have probably retired from the “New (more…)
A small group of leaders in the DC Metro area is interviewing potential new members for their coaching group. Details below or you can download a brochure here: http://tiny.cc/gsvsop
Your organization and your responsibilities can grow only as fast as you do. Participate in Genuine Success: Vitality, Service, and Outstanding Performance (GS:VSOP) to develop your expertise in the only career strategy that is endlessly scalable. Leadership: the ability to get things done with and through other people.
GS:VSOP is a continuing program to provide business people with structure, tools, and support to produce nonlinear, unpredicted, massive results at work while enjoying a high level of personal satisfaction, fulfillment, and vitality.
GS:VSOP’s unique mix of traditional business principles, cutting-edge brain science, powerful one-to-one coaching, and ancient disciplines assures you a productive and profitable experience.
Each month, you will grow as a leader through a full day of group learning with other successful leaders; participate in one-to-one coaching sessions with your group leader; be held accountable for implementing your vision with follow-up sessions and field practice.
Program topics include influence and persuasion, organization and planning, finance, self-management and growth, focus and concentration, integrity, communication, health, and fitness. See brochure for more details.
This program is for leaders who:
Aim to achieve transformational growth & breakthrough results.
Want to improve ROI & speed growth.
Are frustrated with “business as usual” & just know “there’s got to be a better way.”
Are ready to get more done with less stress.
Apply their knowledge to innovate & make things happen.
Strive for a greater clarity & confidence.
Are ready to take bolder action, to employ their talents & resources thoroughly.
You’ll learn why you behave the way you do and how to alter your conversations for greater performance and how to consistently achieve significant measurable organization-wide improvements.
Schedule a conversation with Tony Mayo to find out if this program is right for you by clicking here.
To me, leadership is a journey toward wholeness.
A leader’s journey starts by looking inward to understand, “Why am I here?” and “What is it that I’m here to do?”
–- Joe Jaworski, MIT
Society for Organizational Learning
They are responsible for interpreting the organization’s shared values and principles.
They are senior advisers to everyone in the organization. And,
They are the collective conscience, pushing the organization to reach its goals and live up to its ideals.
The idea that top executives or financial experts should make key decisions is so ingrained in our corporate cultures that it is nearly impossible for leaders to delegate important roles and decisions. Leaders who want to increase joy and success in the workplace must learn to take most of their personal satisfaction from the achievements of the people they lead, not from the power they exercise.
If you have thought about getting a coach, I suggest you start by clicking here to watch my eight-minute video. I cover the most common questions of potential clients. The video is available in HD, so don’t hesitate to click the button for full screen.
For those who prefer reading to watching, here is (more…)
What Makes Us Happy?, in the June, 2009, issue of the Atlantic has attracted a lot of attention. It is an interesting story, or collection of anecdotes, but does it provide any useful guidance for CEOs or their executive coaches?
For a group of people to work smoothly together, each member must understand what constitutes agreement. This understanding is often left in the background, unexamined, as everyone assumes their standards match those of other people. Fundamental to the success of the executive off sites I conduct is helping the group make these assumptions explicit so that everyone is playing by the same rules. If, in fact, everyone has the same standards, we finish this step quickly. If not, time invested early to clarify the ground rules saves a lot of time (and upset) later.
There are two essential parts: clarity and verity. First, everyone must be clear on what is being agreed. Second, the group needs a way to know if agreement has been reached.
Here is the story of one CEO who completed my executive effectiveness course Genuine Success: Vitality, Service, and Outstanding Performance in 1997. Notice how contemporary her concerns sound, twelve years later.
“Everybody is fearful about their jobs,” reports Genuine Success: V.S.O.P. graduate Marta Swymelar, “What will I do if this job gets downsized? We keep hearing: Social Security won’t be there, you can’t depend on your pension plan, you can’t be sure of the stock market…” Like many people sharing these concerns, Marta had some ideas about what she should be doing to protect herself in this insecure era. Returning to school to get an MBA, for example, was (more…)
For more than twenty years, I have led groups and individuals through a powerful goal-setting process with astonishing results: marriages, career changes, doubled incomes, published books, and more.
The two downloads linked from this post include all you need. Use the Specific Measurable Results (SMR) Kitworkbook and podcast to follow the same planning method my executive coaching clients have long employed. Like them, you can create a (more…)
I use a lot of books in the executive training I offer, some of them well-known bestsellers like Flow[Click here to see Tony’s review.], but there is only one book that I advise my clients to read: Breathing Space. Jeff Davidson has filled each page of Breathing Space with insight, practicality, and specific advice. To get your hands back on the controls of your modern life, no book is better.
Life in today’s world is busy, full, and rife with distractions. Satisfaction can easily slip away without special efforts to create an environment and habits that support our own goals and priorities. Fail to do so and your life will–as Jeff Davidson amply demonstrates–be thoroughly colonized by advertisers, entertainers, and co-workers. It has often been said, and is even more true today, that if you are not (more…)
The founder and driving force of “Positive Psychology” has summarized his lifetime of research in this accessible book for the lay reader. Though padded with the usual flab of today’s nonfiction–refutations of criticisms most readers have never encountered, tangential personal anecdotes, and repetition–the substance of his findings are practical and enlivening. Dr. Seligman even summarizes the components of a life well lived in a mnemonic acronym.
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