It seems that built into the whole idea of New Years resolutions is that they are short-lived. Resolvers start out full of energy and hope – they go on a diet or join a gym. But at some point, say late January or mid-February, most people taper off and find themselves no better off than they started. You can almost hear it in the often sheepish tone in people’s voices when they admit to having made a resolution – as if they are predicting their own failure. What gives?

Change theorists Chip and Dan Heath tell us that making a change is like trying to get an elephant to change course: to be successful, we need to have both the rider (our rational self) and the elephant (our emotional self) on board. The rider provides the reason, plan, and direction, but if the powerful elephant is fearful or resistant, they will go nowhere.

So now it’s two weeks into January. If you made a resolution, how’s it going? If your zeal is waning, here are a few tips to help you stick to your resolution.

• Keep your eyes on the prize. Visualizing the outcome you desire will help keep you inspired and moving forward.
• Be mindful of your reasons for change. Remembering why you are doing what you are doing will also help with motivation. One client tucked a picture of his daughter inside the wrapper of his pack of cigarettes to remind him why he needed to quit.
• Monitor and adapt. Every few weeks or so, take time to assess your performance and adjust your resolution as needed. If you resolved to speed walk three times a week at lunch but have only managed once a week because of meetings, try going in the morning or after work instead.
• Refine your goal. Sometimes our goals turn out to be either not sufficiently specific or unrealistic, making it hard to evaluate your progress or to feel successful. If your resolution was to be a better parent or spouse, try re-framing the resolution to focus on the behaviors rather than the outcome, like spending a specific amount of time together or not shouting.
• If you slip, don’t give up. So you missed a few days at the gym or you overindulged at a party. Don’t beat yourself up or give up. Just get back on the path.
• Acknowledge and reward your successes. The path to your goal may be long and winding, so it will help if you acknowledge milestones on the way. This could be giving yourself a pat on the back or something concrete. One caution, however: do not reward yourself with something that undermines your goal. e.g. don’t reward dieting with food treats, instead do something more aligned with your goal (make a new exercise mix cd, get a massage or pedicure).

Following the above guidelines will help you give your rider the tools to help direct the elephant and will keep your elephant motivated to follow the rider’s guidance. Here’s to a fun ride!

Case in point: a project manager friend of mine just got back from her annual offsite feeling, in her words, “pissed off.” She and her team just completed a multi-million dollar project and have been stretched too thin and called upon to do more with less for so long that many of them are suffering from burnout. But instead of receiving any recognition for their work or acknowledgment of the difficult conditions, they were subjected to a several cookie-cutter workshops on “customer service” and the like. Late in the proceedings, the facilitator finally got around to asking the employees “what’s working and what’s not.” But when one brave soul said that the workload was excessive, she was immediately shut down by her tin-eared manager and no one else stood up with her. At the end of the retreat, she returned home discouraged and determined to put less effort in at work — the opposite of the intended result.

Undoubtedly, management had good intentions in holding the offsite. They wanted to build camaraderie, improve performance, and enhance team alignment behind company goals. They hired facilitators and tried to make it a useful experience. But they missed badly, squandering their opportunity and leaving many employees feeling angry and frustrated — worse than before.

The key to a positive and productive offsite is that it be tailored to meet both leadership’s objectives and employees’ needs. If your company or organization is investing the time and money of holding an offsite, here are some tips to getting results:

• Clarify your goal for the offsite — don’t just do it because it is expected.If your aim is team building — what are the qualities of a strong team ? If you are culture-building — what is the culture you wish to foster and what are the attitudes and behaviors that exemplify that culture? Do you want to rally the troops for a major change — how do you want to involve them in the change?
• Do your homework. Investigate the team’s problem areas and strengths and use this information to develop activities that will leverage their strengths to address their challenges.
• Listen. Provide a safe environment for airing differences and allow for venting, and have a plan for channeling the discussion toward solutions. A good facilitator will help here.
• Mix it up! Don’t rely on lecture format — include break-out sessions, and have participants interact in cross-departmental or cross-rank groups.
• Build in time for experiential learning. For example, if giving and receiving actionable feedback is an area of weakness, offer specific training and practice.
• Ensure that you have good follow-up. If you emerge from the offsite with action items, establish accountability and follow through. You don’t want to find yourself at next year’s offsite talking about exactly the same issues.
• Say thank you. Acknowledge your team and all the work they do.

Learning your type is not just self-knowledge for its own sake; it has a real practical application (that’s why so many Fortune 500 companies use it). Knowing type will likely provide you with insight into your preferred ways of learning, communicating, thinking and interacting with the world. It will also alert you to potential blind spots you may have, and it can help you better understand and communicate with others whose type differs from yours. This in itself is interesting and useful, but when it gets really powerful is when you begin to put this insight to work.

Here’s a personal example: I am an ENFJ. The “N” signifies that I prefer Intuition over Sensing — that is, I like to take in and process information conceptually, I rely more on the big picture than on facts and figures, and I am oriented toward future possibilities more than past experience. However, the majority of my potential corporate clients have an “S” where I have that “N” which means that they prefer the concrete over the abstract. My “F” (Feeling) means that I base my decision-making on personal values and  impacts on people. However, many of my business colleagues have a “T” (Thinking), which means that they base their decisions more on logic and reason. So when I am preparing PowerPoint slides for potential clients, I must recognize that my preferred mode — idea and values driven — may not speak to their needs. Therefore, I need to make sure that I have the data to support my presentation, and that I present the logical case for hiring me because no matter how excited I am about the concept, my audience needs the concrete facts and analysis. (Does this sound like any marriages you know?) Luckily, as a former lawyer I am pretty well-versed in reasoned analysis, so I can speak that language fairly fluently, even if it is not my preference.

In the above example, knowing my type and knowing my audience’s probable type helped me identify some potential blind spots and make sure that I communicated my message effectively. MBTI can also be tremendously useful to teams, whose members can use their enhanced self-knowledge and greater understanding of their colleagues to improve communications, develop decision-making protocols, and increase appreciation of one another’s strengths, and to leaders, who can learn how to communicate their vision to their teams and how to support them in doing their best work. The folks at Myers Briggs have helpfully compiled tremendous resources to help clients use their results in may contexts — leadership, team-building, career development, relationships and more.

If you’re curious, give me a call. I’d be delighted to help you explore your own type and put it to immediate practical use.

For the first half hour of our family outing I skated slowly, holding hands and guiding each of my children as they found their balance and gained confidence. Then I handed my youngest off to my husband and did a few circuits solo. It was bliss to whizz around the ice, weaving in and out of teens, couples, and families in an arena echoing with laughter and barely recognizable classic rock. And that’s when it happened: I slowed down and tuned into the present moment. I saw the colors and lights, heard the scraping of blades on ice, felt and smelled the cool air. My eyes sought and found my two daughters arm-in-arm with their friend and my husband helping my son get up smiling from a fall. At this moment, I was filled with gratitude and felt poignantly aware and utterly alive.

Like many California forty-somethings I have been trying to be more present, both as a parent and as a human being. As physician and author of “Mindfulness for Beginners” Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us, the present moment is the only time you are ever alive. So I have been trying to put aside the smart phone and connect to and appreciate my life. But as I savored the here and now at the rink, I was struck by the fact that its sweetness was heightened by things outside the present moment. My experience had more meaning because I knew that someday in the future my children will grow up and leave, and even sooner than that they will stop holding my hand. It also had more meaning as I recalled the wordless yearnings of my teen-aged self in the ice arenas and roller rinks of my adolescence. This blast from the past and vision of the future made the present all the more precious.

Children are often touted as exemplars of living in the present moment — they are alive to their senses and don’t worry about schedules or taxes or death. While I agree that we can learn from watching children, I am coming to realize that mindfulness is more than just being in the moment. For it is awareness of the transient nature of everything — pleasure, pain, joy, life itself — that helps me to treasure and appreciate the blessings of my life and helps me to get through the difficulties.

Perhaps it is fitting that I should have this experience at Christmas time. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I was visited by past and future and learned once again to count my blessings.

While at first it might sound nice to be in a conflict-free environment, it is actually uncomfortable, because what it means is that people are stifling themselves. Here’s what it looks like: boring meetings where the participants are so disengaged that they don’t bother debating the issues or considering alternatives; ineffectual meetings where nothing gets done and everyone is too nice; office environments in which disagreements are not voiced openly, but indirectly and often in the form of gossip. In each case, the participants avoid the discomfort and risk of open disagreement or conflict. The result: work product suffers, because strategies and plans are not adequately vetted and alternatives not seriously engaged.

At the root of conflict avoidance is lack of trust (Lencioni’s first dysfunction). If you don’t trust your team, leadership, or the organization, you won’t feel confident that you can speak your mind and receive a respectful hearing.  Disagreeing with leadership, a manager, or a co-worker involves going out on a limb and taking a risk. Members of a trusting team know they will not be punished for having a different view from that of their colleagues. They are confident that their team is robust enough to withstand disagreement and they trust the decision-making process. If, after full debate, their view does not prevail, they also are more likely to support the plan because they have had the opportunity to fully explore the alternatives.

And here’s a bonus: if well-managed disagreement is an indicator of trust, it is also a way to build trust. Teams who have weathered conflicts  come out the other side to find their relationships stronger and more trusting. So the next time a disagreement arises — welcome it as an opportunity to strengthen your team and improve your results.

Here are some of the main complaints about networking, and my responses.

Objection: Networking feels manipulative, like I am using people.

• Expand your perspective and take the long view. It’s not all about you. Networking is relationship and community building, and it is reciprocal. When you connect and form a new relationship with someone, both of your networks expand. This is a benefit to both of you and all your connections. So instead of thinking of networking as an individual and selfish activity, think of it as a collective and mutually beneficial activity.

Objection: I hate to ask favors.

• Get over yourself. It’s okay to ask for help – we all need it at times. Allowing someone to help you strengthens your ties, and everyone benefits. And for the most part, people who accept networking calls are expecting to be asked for something. Just make sure that you know what you want. If your new connection says “what can I do for you?” you should have a clear and specific answer.

Objection: I don’t have anything to offer.

• Develop an offer. This may be concrete, and professionally related – specific services, skills, ideas, or expertise. Or it may be personal – offer to talk to their kid about your alma mater, recommend a great book or movie. If all else fails, do not underestimate the power of simply offering your interest, enthusiasm, and admiration.

Objection: I’m no good at small-talk.

• Forget small-talk. Cocktail party conversations about the weather are utterly forgettable. Instead, ask a big question, be provocative or even slightly controversial. Or if that feels to edgy, just be curious.

Objection: It’s overwhelming, I don’t know where to start.

• Start by making a list, and make the list as far-reaching as you can. Statistically, your weaker ties are more likely to be productive. Be organized – a spreadsheet is good – and include contact information and a place to write notes on your interactions. Once you’ve got an initial list, start making calls or emailing. It gets easier after the first few.

Networking is no longer just the province of job-seekers. Expanding your relationships and extending your reach is a lifelong process. Yes, you need to do it with particular focus when you are looking for a job. But don’t stop there. Continue connecting to others in your field or in an area of interest. Relationship building is an essential part of ongoing professional and human development. It will stand you in good stead when the time comes to make a change. But more importantly, you will enrich your life and the lives of your connections. You may even make some really good friends.

Much has been written about the value of thinking like an owner, but how can leadership create an environment that encourages employees to think like owners?

Some of the elements of “thinking like an owner” are:

• Manage cash flow like it’s your own.
• Value customers, vendors, and employees – all relationships.
• Be passionately committed to the mission.
• See the big picture, take the long view.
• Always strive to improve – product and process.
• Take responsibility/ownership – pitch in where and when necessary.

So how can you engender this kind of owner-like behavior among employees? Here are the basics:

1. Pay people enough and provide adequate resources to do their job – don’t pinch pennies.
2. Provide the right amount of structure to support performance, not impede it – don’t get bogged down in unnecessary bureaucracy.
3. Hire the right people – the right talents and skills for the job, as well as a strong work ethic and commitment to team.
4. Trust employees to exercise their own judgment  – don’t micro-manage.
5. Model good communication and manage your own emotions.
6. Share the credit for success and the responsibility for failure.
7. Recognize and reward owner-like behavior and do not tolerate self-serving behavior at the expense of the team.
8. Listen to your employees and create an atmosphere of open, constructive debate.

In other words, you’ve got to walk your talk and set a good example in everything you do. Your employees will follow.

No. Instead, the authors of the study recommend that we adopt a “flexible repertoire of behaviors appropriate to context.” You need not abandon the pro-social behaviors that strengthen relationships and improve job satisfaction. But if you suspect that you may be too “nice” for your own good, you should probably learn to selectively assert yourself, particularly in the areas of salary negotiations, constructive challenge to the status quo, and advocating for yourself. This almost certainly means being less “agreeable” but it does not make you a “meanie.”

Here’s where I have a bone to pick with mainstream coverage of this research. In the WSJ, Rachel Emma Silverman erroneously concludes that the opposite of agreeableness is meanness. But that unnuanced view misses the fact that being “agreeable” involves a collection of qualities. The authors list the following as elements of agreeableness: trust, straightforwardness, compliance, and modesty. But scoring lower than average on these qualities would not necessarily indicate that you are a jerk. In fact, according the the authors, people of lower than average agreeableness are generally amicable, but they occasionally behave in ways that are not agreeable — such as aggressively advocating for their position in a conflict. So you shouldn’t have to choose between being nice and being a boor. You just need to choose your moments to be less modest and compliant.

This advice should help men overcome the perceived deficiency of being “nice.” But what do we tell women, who still face such a huge gender gap in pay? Well, according to the research, asserting themselves might lead to a 5% increase in pay, but still leaves them lagging way behind the men. I really wish I had something more to offer them to close the gender gap, but I don’t.

It is also just one of many beginnings. Since giving birth to my eldest I have been delivering my beloved and precious charges into an ever-widening world: crawling to walking, playdates to sleepovers, preschool to elementary. And so it will continue through taking them to college, helping move into their first apartments, witnessing their marriages, or supporting them in whatever they pursue. If their father and I do our jobs right, they will keep separating from us, leaving us, moving out into the world with confidence and joy. I have a lifetime to practice letting go.

And while I am tearful and a bit fearful as my boy goes out into the world, another part of me is celebrating a different beginning — my own. Today as his world expands, so does my world of possibility. For nine years, care-giving has filled most of my waking hours (and many of what should have been sleeping hours), while I shoehorned my professional life into the margins. Now, I finally have time to devote to my own career — coaching individuals and teams. I am at once eager and anxious. There is so much I want to do, ideas I want to explore, people and organizations I want to serve. Having long lamented the lack of time for growing my business, I can at last pursue my ambition. Yikes! I have work to do and time to do it. Consider me launched.

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 and motivate change. Unfortunately, we often ignore success in favor of dwelling on failures. We seem to be wired for it. In study after study, psychologists have found that there is a “positive-negative asymmetry” whereby “bad is stronger than good.” We pay more attention to bad news; people’s negative characteristics make a stronger impression on us than their positive qualities. It turns out that we even have nearly twice as many words for negative emotions as for positive emotions. This emphasis on negativity can lead to feeling overwhelmed and make it hard to believe that change is possible. And our tendency to focus on big problems (and look for correspondingly big solutions) may blind us to the small solutions that can bring about major change.

The Heath brothers describe one inspiring example of the impact of analyzing success in a malnutrition project of Save the Children in Vietnam. The project leader was given few resources and very little time. Rather than focus on the huge and intractable root causes of malnutrition (poverty, poor sanitation, etc.), he instead found the “bright spots” — the least malnourished children — and studied what their mothers were doing differently from the others. By identifying several specific things these mothers were doing (adding sweet potato greens to their rice, giving more frequent smaller meals) and teaching other mothers to do the same, Save the Children significantly reduced child malnutrition in Vietnam in six months. Instead of spending resources analyzing the problem, resources were invested in identifying existing solutions.

Focusing on the bright spots is not a denial of the negative. Nor is it a mindless exhortation to “stay positive!” It is much more pragmatic. As the Heaths note, often much of what is to be learned from analyzing an obstacle to change — poverty, for example — is TBU: “True but Useless.” Save the Children could not solve poverty, but they could help mothers use their existing resources to improve their children’s nutrition.

Here are some examples that are closer to home:

• If eight out of ten salespeople’s numbers are down, find out what the other two are doing. Is it replicable?
• If you are having trouble sticking to your diet, analyze the times when you do eat well. What circumstances support your success?
• If your kid keeps getting into trouble at school, instead of asking why he or she is misbehaving, ask what’s happening on the good days.

This is just one part of the Heath brother’s approach to change. More to come.