No More Mister Nice Guy?
Nice guys earn significantly lower salaries than less agreeable men (though still more than women, regardless of their agreeableness) reports a new study by Timothy A. Judge, Beth A. Livingston, and Charlice Hurst in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Whether you are surprised or unsurprised, dismayed or vindicated, you may be wondering whether this information should lead you to try to change your workplace behavior or persona. Bottom line: if you want to get a raise, should you act like a jerk? No. Instead, the authors of the study recommend that we adopt a “flexible...
Read MoreLearn from Success
“Learn from your mistakes.” How many times have you heard this? It’s good advice, as far as it goes. The lessons of our failures are valuable — burn your finger once and you learn to steer clear of the hot stove. But how often have you conducted an autopsy of a success? What might you learn if you did? Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s reader-friendly book “Switch — How to Change Things When Change is Hard” invites us to devote more attention to our successes — both for what we can learn about how to solve a problem and to help avoid overwhelm...
Read MoreLearning from the Seventh Circuit — the Art of Being Influenced
The New York Times’ recent article about Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood, a “left-leaning woman in a world of right-leaning men,” highlights her ability to influence her colleagues — most notably conservatives Judge Richard Posner and Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook. Her skills as a persuader make her an attractive potential Supreme Court nominee to Democrats like me seeking to replace retiring Justice Stevens with a jurist who can influence Justice Kennedy to side with the more liberal wing of the high court. Enormous credit is due the extraordinary Judge Wood,...
Read MoreTaking Your Game to a Bigger Arena
I am just back from a trip to New York to pitch my old law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell, on the value of coaching and try to persuade them to include coaching in their associate development and retention program. I’ll cut to the chase: I was unsuccessful. My lack of track record in a firm setting, management’s structural concerns, and the current economic climate all conspired to make my proposal a non-starter. And while I feel disappointed, I’m not crushed. I don’t feel like a failure. I actually feel proud of myself. So what’s that about? It’s...
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