   
CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time!
Want to Hire People With High Emotional Intelligence? Look for These 5 Things
 Learn to identify emotional intelligence when you see it.
Smart employers recognize the value of emotional intelligence in the workplace. In a survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, HR company CareerBuilder found that:
- 71 percent said they value emotional intelligence more than IQ in an employee
- 75 percent said they were more likely to promote a candidate with high emotional intelligence over one with a high IQ
- Emotionally intelligent employees are invaluable because they help build chemistry. Great chemistry leads to great teams. And great teams do great work.
But as an employer, how can you identify emotional intelligence when you see it?
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Why parents should stop blaming themselves for how their kids turn out
 Millions of children have been studied to disentangle all the shaping forces. Studies have followed identical twins and fraternal twins and plain-old siblings growing up together or adopted and raised apart. Growing up in the same home does not make children noticeably more alike in how successful they are, how happy or self-reliant they are, and so on.
In other words, imagine if you'd been taken at birth and raised next door by the family to the left and your brother or sister had been raised next door by the family to the right. By and large, that would have made you no more similar or different than growing up together under the same roof.
On the one hand, these findings seem unbelievable. Think about all the ways that parents differ from home to home and how often they argue and whether they helicopter and how much they shower their children with love. You'd think it would matter enough to make children growing up in the same home more alike than if they'd been raised apart, but it doesn't.
But just because an event doesn't shape people in the same way doesn't mean it had no effect. Your parenting could be shaping your children - just not in the ways that lead them to become more alike. Your parenting could be leading your first child to become more serious and your second child to become more relaxed. Or, it could lead your first child to want to be like you and your second child to want to be nothing like you.
You are flapping your butterfly wings to your hurricane children.
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How to Use Overthinking to Your Advantage
 Some might call it anxiety, others call it power. Here's how you can use your active brain to become more successful.
If you're anything like me, overthinking is a common, if not daily, occurrence.
Your head is spinning a million different directions, filled with thoughts buzzing around. Some believe this pattern of thinking is bad, as if it's a one-way ticket to self-destruction. But in my own life, I have discovered it to be a superpower that, if used correctly, can bring endless opportunities into your life.
For an entrepreneur, the list of decisions is endless: marketing strategies, financial decisions, hiring selections, to name a few. So knowing how to make decisions quickly, and not get stuck in a tornado of rumination, could be the key to your success.
Being entrepreneurial, there is a level of craziness that lives within you. Instead of ridding yourself of this aspect, learn how to manage it and use it to your advantage. After all, this is a characteristic that is truly a gift.
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How to Make People Trust You
 If you were to take the title of this post literally it would be my shortest post ever. That's because you cannot MAKE someone, anyone, trust you. That's not within your control.
But what is within your control is making yourself trustworthy. You have control over doing things that people will feel makes you a safe bet in the trust area. You also have control, complete control, over not doing things that would cause people to lose trust in you.
If you want to be seen as trustworthy then you must honor your commitments. You must do what you say you will do and you must do it when you said you would. Every time you fail in this area you cast doubt on the next commitment you make. It doesn't take long before your commitments are worthless. Remember that... it doesn't take long.
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� | � |  | How to Build Expertise in a New Field
 Better pay, more joy in the job, or prerequisite to promotion? Whatever your reasons for deciding to build expertise in a new field, the question is how to get there.
Your goal, of course, is to become a swift and wise decision-maker in this new arena, able to diagnose problems and assess opportunities in multiple contexts. You want what I call "deep smarts" - business-critical, experience-based knowledge. Typically, these smarts take years to develop; they're hard-earned. But that doesn't mean that it's too late for you to move into a different field. The following steps can accelerate your acquisition of such expertise.
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Adam Grant: Stop Giving Advice and Start Doing This Instead
 Don't refuse to offer others guidance. Just do it differently.
Warren Buffett's father told him not to go into securities. Oprah was warned moving to Chicago would destroy her career. Lyft co-founder John Zimmer was advised to give up on the transportation sector.
These stories of celebrities' being told to not do the very thing that later made them hugely successful are entertaining, but they also illustrate a larger point. Bad advice is incredibly common.
This isn't just due to ignorance or outdated information, though that's a huge issue. As investor Paul Graham has said, "When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world."
It's also because of systematic biases in how we ask for and dole out advice. Yale research shows people are more risk averse in their recommendations than in their own actions. Doctors recommend more screenings than they themselves get, and financial advisers are more aggressive on their own behalf than when managing clients' money. Other studies show we often seek out advice from those who are friendliest rather than those who are most competent.
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Is Sitting the New Smoking? A Harvard Professor Debunks the Myth, With One Catch
 Sitting at work? Not such a big problem. Sitting when you're not at work? That's another story.
I've written before about the laundry list of reasons that sitting for long periods of time can be really, really bad for you.
Like studies that show sitting all day won't just make you fatter, it can also make you dumber. Or that when you sit for the majority of the day, your risk of cardiovascular disease doubles compared to people who stand. Or that if you sit for more than six hours a day you could be 18 percent more likely to die from diabetes, heart disease, and obesity than people who sit less than three hours a day.
Or that -- and this one is literally a killer -- if you sit for more than 11 hours a day, you could be up to 40 percent more likely to die in the next three years compared to people who sit for less than four hours.
Yep: Sitting is really, really bad for you.
Kind of.
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The Long History of Japan's Tidying Up
 Japan's fastidiousness in matters of cleaning struck outside observers from the earliest moments of contact. Commodore Matthew Perry, whose gunboat diplomacy opened Japan to the West in 1854, marvelled at the organization of the streets in the port city of Shimoda and "the cleanliness and healthfulness of the place." The British diplomat Sir Rutherford Alcock noted "a great love of order and cleanliness" in his "Narrative of a Three Years Residence in Japan," from 1863, and, a few years later, the American educator William Elliot Griffis commended "the habit of daily bathing and other methods of cleanliness." If Marie Kondo's book sales are an indication, Westerners haven't lost their fascination with this aspect of Japanese culture. But her work is just the most recent manifestation of a long tradition of cleanliness, one that reaches a zenith in the ohsoji, the "great cleaning" that is carried out at the end of December in anticipation of the New Year.
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The Psychology Behind Sibling Rivalry
 You can't avoid fighting. You can only hope to contain it.
My 4- and 8-year-old are closer now than they were before the pandemic - I hear the sounds of giggling wafting from their bedroom several times a night. But the more time my girls spend together, the more they fight, too.
The most common battlegrounds for my kids are perceived injustices and jockeying for position. The most absurd instance of the latter was when we were waiting to get flu shots this past fall. The girls got into a brawl over who received the first shot. My older daughter "won" that argument, but it was only as she was walking toward the pharmacist's door that she realized a shot was not actually a prize.
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Starting Your Trading Career? Three Important Requirements For Your Success.
 If you're considering becoming a trader, this simple guide reveals the profit behind the profession.
Being a professional stock trader used to be out of reach for most people. Not anymore. With smartphones, anyone can now potentially turn this hobby into a viable professional career. I should know. I began trading back in 2013 and it's now my full-time profession, along with running my trading communities, Bear Bull Traders and Peak Capital Trading.
Just like starting any new business, jumping in without preparation is asking for disappointment. I've realized there are three things every trader MUST have in place if they want to turn a side hustle into a successful entrepreneurial venture.
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| � | | What Resilience Means, and Why It Matters
 A small but intriguing new survey by a pair of British consultants confirms the importance of resilience to business success. Resilience was defined by most as the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity. But when Sarah Bond and Gillian Shapiro asked 835 employees from public, private, and nonprofit firms in Britain what was happening in their own lives that required them to draw on those reserves, they didn't point to tragedies like the London Tube bombings, appalling business mistakes, the need to keep up with the inexorably accelerating pace of change, or the challenges of the still-difficult economy - they pointed to their co-workers.
A whopping 75% of them said that the biggest drain on their resilience reserves was "managing difficult people or office politics at work." That was followed closely by stress brought on by overwork and by having to withstand personal criticism.
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The Power of Small Wins
 What is the best way to motivate employees to do creative work? Help them take a step forward every day. In an analysis of knowledge workers’ diaries, the authors found that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life (the mix of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that is critical to performance) than making progress in meaningful work. If a person is motivated and happy at the end of the workday, it's a good bet that he or she achieved something, however small. If the person drags out of the office disengaged and joyless, a setback is likely to blame.
This progress principle suggests that managers have more influence than they may realize over employees' well-being, motivation, and creative output. The key is to learn which actions support progress - such as setting clear goals, providing sufficient time and resources, and offering recognition - and which have the opposite effect.
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Take these 5 things into consideration when you're trying to find your calling
 Psychologists share their findings about those who are trying to find some meaning in life.
If, like many, you are searching for your calling in life - perhaps you are still unsure which profession aligns with what you most care about - here are five recent research findings worth taking into consideration.
First, there's a difference between having a harmonious passion and an obsessive passion. If you can find a career path or occupational goal that fires you up, you are more likely to succeed and find happiness through your work - that much we know from the deep research literature. But beware - since a seminal paper published in 2003 by the Canadian psychologist Robert Vallerand and colleagues, researchers have made an important distinction between having a harmonious passion and an obsessive one. If you feel that your passion or calling is out of control, and that your mood and self-esteem depend on it, then this is the obsessive variety, and such passions, while they are energizing, are also associated with negative outcomes such as burnout and anxiety.
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| � | | How to overcome "functional fixedness" and other biases that get in the way of creativity
 On the evening of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the north Atlantic and sunk two hours and 40 minutes later. Of its 2,200 passengers and crew, only 705 survived, plucked out of 16 lifeboats by the Carpathia. Imagine how many more might have lived if crew members had thought of the iceberg as not just the cause of the disaster but a life-saving solution. The iceberg rose high above the water and stretched some 400 feet in length. The lifeboats might have ferried people there to look for a flat spot. The Titanic itself was navigable for a while and might have been able to pull close enough to the iceberg for people to scramble on. Such a rescue operation was not without precedent: Some 60 years before, 127 of 176 passengers emigrating from Ireland to Canada saved themselves in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by climbing aboard an ice floe.
It's impossible to know if this rescue attempt would have worked. At the least it's an intriguing idea - yet surprisingly difficult to envision. If you were to ask a group of executives, even creative product managers and marketers, to come up with innovative scenarios in which all the Titanic's passengers could have been saved, they would very likely have the same blind spot as the crew. The reason is a common psychological bias - called functional fixedness - that limits a person to seeing an object only in the way in which it is traditionally used.
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The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism
 Socialist-minded millennial heirs are trying to live their values by getting rid of their money.
Lately, Sam Jacobs has been having a lot of conversations with his family's lawyers. He's trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he's hit the age when many heirs can blow their money on harebrained businesses or a stable of sports cars. He doesn't want to do that, but by wealth management standards, his plan is just as bad. He wants to give it all away.
"I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible," he said.
A socialist since college, Mr. Jacobs sees his family's "extreme, plutocratic wealth" as both a moral and economic failure. He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism, and by that he means using his money to undo systems that accumulate money for those at the top, and that have played a large role in widening economic and racial inequality.
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In Bad Times, Decentralised Firms Outperform Their Rivals
 When there’s increased turbulence, delegating power improves sales and productivity, boosting a firm's chance of survival.
Imagine a ship at sea, at risk of sinking in a tempest. Is it better to empower the crew to do whatever it takes to save the ship, or should every decision be made by the captain and top officers? Similarly, what should the optimal form of firm organisation be during a severe downturn? The need to make tough decisions - including layoffs - may favour firms that concentrate power at the top. However, the turbulence and fast-shifting conditions magnify the value of the information held by local managers.
The two views can be compelling. Indeed, in the depths of the Great Recession of 2009, a survey of executives by The Economist Intelligence Unit revealed that decision making had become more centralised in the C-suite. The rationale: to emphasise "projects that provide benefits across the enterprise rather than individual units". But in another report three months earlier, the same publication argued that "companies have to deal with dramatically more uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in the current recession. Success does not come from centralisation."
So who should be in charge: the crew or the captain?
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| � | | Leadership Is Like Engineering: You Need to Start with Why
 To address user challenges, they must first be understood. These principles of why, what and how also apply to management, especially in turbulent times.
In times of uncertainty, it is crucial for leaders to rally around the why behind their mission. There is a tendency to overlook the why when decisive action is needed, but it is essential to steering the course of the business. The why illuminates what needs to be done and how it can be accomplished. The why gives the whole team a sense of purpose. As Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted as saying, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
Over the past decade, my perspective on leadership has been guided by one simple mantra: Start with why, inspired by the book of the same title by Simon Sinek. In my time as an engineer, starting with why was fundamental to tackling every new product or feature. Starting with why meant understanding the pain points of the user and defining the success criteria for addressing the pain points. From there, we could specify the functionality needed (the what) and set a plan for developing the product (the how). As I became a leader, I found that these same principles apply to management - always, but especially in turbulent times.
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How to Successfully Market a 'First-of-Its-Kind' Product With Confidence
 Customers are often willing to forgive a few bumps along the way when your product is brand new as long as they know you are working on improving the user experience.
When it comes to launching a product, finding ways to stand out from the competition is essential. For many e-commerce platforms, differentiation comes from finding elements that make your product unique from others that are similar to it -- such as creating a "minimalist" wallet, for example.
But what if you are introducing a product that is truly new? That nobody else in your industry has attempted? In this case, the challenge isn't proving that your product is better than or different from your competitors'.
Instead, you have to give customers a compelling reason to try out something they've never considered before. By homing in on some marketing fundamentals, you can get your product off to a quality start. Some tips:
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How to Help Your Spouse Cope with Work Stress
 Even if you're able to leave your projects and worries at the office, your spouse or partner may have difficulty doing so - and that stress can rub off on you. How can you help your partner cope? For starters, you need to listen. Show engagement and empathize. Figure out what they need from you. Sometimes they may just want to vent; other times they may need your advice. If you're unsure of your role, ask, "Do you need my help? Or do you just want to be heard?" Play career coach - but do so judiciously. If you get a sense that your partner is misreading a situation at the office or is stuck in a rut, ask questions to broaden their perspective. Whatever you do, never compare your spouse's stressful day to your own. Stress endurance is not a competition.
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| � | | The Best Tech Podcasts for Software Developers in 2021
 Podcasts are a great way to learn about tech on the go. They can expose you to a broad array of tools and concepts.
Since I started learning to code back in 2012, I have listened to thousands of hours of technology podcasts - usually while exercising or commuting. Many of these podcasts are still going strong. And this article will focus on these time-tested learning resources.
A note before we get started: before you start tweeting at me about how I left off your favorite podcast, note that I intentionally excluded most business- and news-focused podcasts. Instead, I've zeroed in on podcasts that are run by developers, and with developers in mind as the core audience.
I can say with confidence that all of these podcasts are solid. If you are a developer, or are interested in becoming a developer, these podcasts will entertain you and enlighten your commutes. Enjoy.
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To Find Meaning in Your Work, Change How You Think About It
 A wonderful New York Times article from 2007 recounted the 20th annual "Operator's Challenge" - aka the "Sludge Olympics" - a competition for New York sewage treatment workers. The participants compete to show skill in their work, and often do so with great passion. Emily Lloyd, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said of the work the competitors do, "It's tough work. It's frequently unpleasant work. And they're terrific at it." And as you read the article, you note the pride the competitors have in their work and the purpose they find in doing it well. One man, George Mossos, noting how anonymous their work can be, is quoted saying, "It's enough to serve the public."
Why is it that some people can be extraordinarily well-paid and work in pampered settings but feel empty, while others can work in the sewers of New York City and feel fulfilled? Part of the answer is purpose.
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 | TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives |
It's normal to get a sinking feeling when one of your employees says, "I have something to tell you." No manager wants to hear that someone on their team has another job offer in hand. But how should you actually respond to the news? Should you counteroffer? Or just accept that they're moving on? And how can you tell if the employee is just bluffing to get a raise? 
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