Emotional Contagion and Beyond

Toxic bosses. Debbie Downers. Our language reflects the idea that some people have a real emotional effect on their fellow workers. Now, interesting research not only confirms this idea but adds to it in several important ways: – It’s not just a few people who infect others with their moods; everyone has a measurable impact [...]

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Hire Happy People!

Want your customers to have a better experience? Instead of trying to train your employees to smile, just hire happy people. Apparently, you don’t have to be an expert in reading faces to tell the difference between a real smile and a “social smile.” The latter is what facial coding experts call the smile we [...]

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Some Learn From Mistakes, Others Don’t

In Managing by Mistakes, I wrote about the power of learning from mistakes. Some of the most successful individuals in different fields credit relentless focus on even small mistakes with their high achievement. Researchers at Columbia University divided student subjects into two groups, “grade hungry” and “knowledge hungry” based on a short survey, reports Newsweek’s [...]

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Bad Bosses are Killers

A few weeks ago I created a new category here, “Neuromanagement,” which fits a couple of posts I’ve got simmering on the back burner. While those are geared toward the positive use of neuro-techniques in managing and hiring, there’s a breaking news story about the dangerous physiological effects of bad management. Bloomberg writer Frances Schwartzkopff [...]

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