Yesterday’s post discussed how the world complicates understanding empathy with vague definitions and associating it with neediness and unwanted emotions. Today I’ll describe a simple model to understand empathy simply. A simple model for empathy The model you have for something determines how you understand it and how you use it. I’ll talk about emotions in general and then empathy in particular A simple model for emotions in general Many[…] Keep reading →

You want to improve your empathy because you’ve heard it’s fundamental to leadership, influence, and motivation, but find it hard to define, measure, or see in use, making it hard to improve or learn from others. In other words, empathy is important for working with people, but hard to learn, all the more so for those who lack it most. While I don’t pretend to be the most empathetic person,[…] Keep reading →

Context: Losing your composure hurts you When you lose your composure you don’t get promoted. People don’t follow you if you lose your composure. You lose your ability to motivate or influence them. If you debate or argue with someone and you lose your composure and they don’t—that is, if your emotions become more intense than theirs—you generally lose the argument. People feel emotional reward when someone else’s emotions get[…] Keep reading →

Longtime readers will remember that before burpees I got a rowing machine — see my posts “Best solo workout I know” and “First time sprints” — and enjoyed it, putting in about half a million meters in the first year of using it. I finally it back out of storage and started using it after renovations. I enjoy using it as much as ever. Actually, I’m enjoying it more for[…] Keep reading →

The more I spend time out of school, the more I find value in non-academic things I learned. The more I see people who just work hard—by “just work hard” I mean working hard for other people for a pay check without choosing the job—the more they don’t seem to create greatness or deep satisfaction with their lives. The more I see the great people our society admires don’t seem[…] Keep reading →

The insight below prompted spontaneous applause during a keynote talk I saw at a recent conference. The speaker, whose work brings him sometimes to the White House, was talking about principles of teaching, but you’ll see it applies to managing and leading too. He said he was talking to a teacher about creating assignments and test questions. Teachers perennially face challenges of creating problems that the students haven’t seen before[…] Keep reading →

Do you like feeling anxious? Would you prefer feeling excited to feeling anxious? Did you know that a doctor reading your vital statistics can’t tell the difference between you feeling anxiety and you feeling excitement? I looked it up and have a peer-reviewed paper somewhere confirming that—something like that the two emotions are physiologically concordant, or some academic-speak like that. The point is that your body reacts the same when[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday’s post on very basic but incredibly important instruction schools rarely teach reminded me of another. Everyone evaluates you on your posture Your posture conveys your mood—especially confidence—as much as anything, meaning people judge you on your posture. Maybe a smile, or lack thereof, counts for more. Most healthy people have total control over their posture. Since your emotions and behavior (I consider your body language and posture part of[…] Keep reading →

This lesson is so simple people don’t believe it. The title says it all. You don’t have to talk about what you don’t want to. People challenge it. I guess I should specify the context: casual conversation between people who don’t have authority over each other. At work or in court under oath may be a different story. How many times have you been in a boring conversation going nowhere[…] Keep reading →