Yasim's Blog

Events like the recent shuffle at the top of Delta Airlines -- during which both of the internal front-runners were passed over for promotion to CEO -- offer an opportunity for each of us to reflect on how we deal with disappointment, be it professional or personal. I have worked with many people as they face such situations and can offer a few suggestions. First, pay attention to the emotional impact of the disappointment. Do not try to deny, rationalize or minimize it. Let it play out without either suppressing it or acting on impulses to express your feelings in inappropriate settings. You may feel numb at first (“this isn’t happening or “it doesn’t matter”) or experience intense feelings of anger, hurt, or self-criticism. This is all to be expected. Career shocks are events that set a process in motion. They offer an opportunity for both personal and personal development. This is not to deny the fact that they are painful and can be, for a certain period of time, disorienting. The

If you're burning out, undoubtedly you're aware of it. Burnout occurs when you expend more internal resources and energy than you take in. It's not just a matter of working hard, which at the best of times can feel exciting and motivating . Burnout is exhausting — whether you are working hard or not. In the office, a very common pattern of burnout is performance punishment . As a great former boss of mine, Phyllis Mayo, explained it: Performance punishment occurs when you accomplish something in an unbelievably tight time frame and— along with a bonus or a pat on the back — you are rewarded with an even more challenging project with an even tighter deadline. What usually follows is another even more impossible assignment and so on, until sooner or later you fail , or burn out trying not to. The worst part? The performance punishment trap most easily afflicts those who are motivated by challenge and achievement, i.e., the most driven talent with the highest potential.

Change is hard. New Year's resolutions almost always fail. Our method is grounded in the recognition that human being are creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behaviors are habitual, or occur in response to a strong external stimulus. Only 5 percent of our choices are consciously self-selected . In 1911, the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead intuited what researchers would confirm nearly a century later. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism," he wrote, "that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opp osite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." Most of us wildly overvalue our will and discipline. Ingenious research by Roy Baumeister and others has demonstrated that our self-control is a severely limited resource that gets progressively depleted by every act of conscious self-regulation. In order to make change that lasts

How to Develop Your Leadership Pitch Ever see an executive fumble an answer to a question from a reporter, or maybe even an employee? Of course, it happens all the time. There are times when we simply may not want to answer a question, but the key reason for flubs is that we are unprepared to speak. One way to become more articulate is to prepare you in advance. A good lesson for every executive is — be prepared before you speak. Such preparation is not reserved solely for major presentations ; it also applies to impromptu messages that executives need to deliver constantly. I liken these leadership messages to elevator pitches in reference to their brevity (a short ride) but also their importance (selling a big idea). Leadership is about persuasion — convincing others of the soundness of your point of view . Writing out your thoughts is good practice and I believe that doing so is not onerous because managers regularly script their thoughts in email. Here are three tips for pre

The price of leadership is criticism. No one pays much attention to the last-place finishers. But when you’re in front, everything gets noticed. So it is important to learn to handle criticism constructively. The following four-step process, which I included in my book Leadership Gold, has helped when people criticize me as a leader. I would like to pass it on to you. Know yourself —This is a reality issue. Change yourself —This is a responsibility issue. Accept yourself —This is a maturity issue. Forget yourself —This is a security issue. 1: Know Yourself Aristotle said, “Criticism is something you can avoid easily—by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.” Early in my career, I wanted to make everybody happy. It took me a couple of years to realize that if I was going to lead, there would be tough decisions that were going to make some people upset. I asked myself: Do I want to make people happy or do I really want to lead? I understood clearly that I had to begin to know w

Lean times be damned! Use this plan to position yourself for a promotion in 2011. Tired of waiting for better days to arrive so that you can ask for a bump up? Maybe it's time to quit being so patient. In this economy, employers won't be handing out new titles left and right, "but the great news is you can still earn a promotion by demonstrably moving your company toward strategic and financial wins," says Stefanie Smith, principal of New York executive coaching firm Stratex Consulting. The higher you are on the ladder, the more responsibility you have to take for your progression. This plan can help you prove yourself promotion-worthy within the next six months. Step 1: Secure your supervisor's support Arrange a meeting with your boss to make sure he or she is aware of your ambition. "If you don't tell people you want to take on more responsibility, how are they going to know?" notes New York City career coach Roy Cohen, author of "The Wall Str

Here are some tips for the next big storm that hits your office: Take a moment to figure out what's going on. An executive I know experienced a major disruption in service to his company. He was the person in charge and he told me that at the first response meeting everyone started talking at once. The chatter was nervous response — not constructive — so he delegated responsibilities and then called for a subsequent meeting in an hour's time. This also helped to impose order on a chaotic situation. Act promptly, not hurriedly. A leader must provide direction and respond to the situation in a timely fashion. But acting hurriedly only makes people nervous. You can act with deliberateness as well as speed. Or as legendary coach John Wooden advised, "Be quick but don't hurry." Manage expectations. When trouble strikes, people want it to be over right now — but seldom is this kind of quick resolution possible. It falls to the leader in charge to address the size and