Why Teams Should Argue
Strong teams include diverse perspectives, and healthy working relationships and successful outcomes hinge on honest communication. But there are ways to make sure you “fight right.” See also “How to Fight in a Productive Way.”
Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople
If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.
Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I’ve also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.
Mike Christian on Mindfulness and Mental Energy
We’ve all come to work exhausted, or under the weather, or while experiencing some sort of physical pain. We power through it as best we can, unaware that our brains are redirecting critical resources to manage these issues. It’s a process that enables us to cope. But as Mike Christian, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, has found, these efforts take a toll on our performance. When our mental energy is depleted, we are less able to exhibit control over our emotions and behaviors ....
This Is the Number 1 Sign of High Intelligence, Ac...
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sits atop one of the most successful companies of our time, not to mention a personal fortune of some $150 billion. I think we can all agree that by any meaningful definition the guy is pretty smart. It's also obvious he has a talent for surrounding himself with other smart people who can help make his vision reality.
How does he find them? It's a question he addressed when he stopped by the Basecamp offices a few years ago, the company's founder, Jason Fried, reports on the Basecamp blog. And the answer Bezos gave was the exact opposite of what most folks would expect.
A 6-Part Tool for Ranking and Assessing Risks
Developed during World War II, CARVER (then one letter shorter and known as CARVE) was originally used by analysts to determine where bomber pilots could most effectively drop their munitions on enemy targets. It can be both offensive and defensive, meaning it can be used for identifying your competitors’ weaknesses and for internal auditing ....
The Chairman of Nokia on Ensuring Every Employee Has a Basic Understanding of Machine Learning — Including Him
I’ve long been both paranoid and optimistic about the promise and potential of artificial intelligence to disrupt — well, almost everything. Last year, I was struck by how fast machine learning was developing and I was concerned that both Nokia and I had been a little slow on the uptake. What could I do to educate myself and help the company along?
As chairman of Nokia, I was fortunate to be able to worm my way onto the calendars of several of the world’s top AI researchers. But I only understood bits and pieces of what they told me, and I became frustrated when some of my discussion partners seemed more intent on showing off their own advanced understanding of the topic than truly wanting me to get a handle on “how does it really work.”