Yasim's Blog

It turns out that a scientist can see the future by watching four-year-olds interact with a marshmallow. The researcher invites the children, one by one, into a plain room and begins the gentle torment. You can have this marshmallow right now, he says. But if you wait while I run an errand, you can have two marshmallows when I get back. And then he leaves. Some children grab for the treat the minute he's out the door. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait. They cover their eyes; they put their heads down; they sing to themselves; they try to play games or even fall asleep. When the researcher returns, he gives these children their hard-earned marshmallows. And then, science waits for them to grow up. By the time the children reach high school, something remarkable has happened. A survey of the children's parents and teachers found that those who as four-year-olds had the fortitude to hold out for the second marshmallow generally gr...

“When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare.” Leading today is what prepares a leader for more and greater responsibility tomorrow. Humanness . Nobody wants to work with a perfect leader. Build collaboration and solidarity by revealing your weaknesses. Intuition . To be most effective, you need to know what’s going on without others spelling it out for you. Collect unspoken data from body language and looks given across rooms to help you intuit the underlying messages. Tough empathy . Care deeply about your employees, but accept nothing less than their very best. Uniqueness . Demonstrate that you are a singular leader by showing your unique qualities to those around you. 1. Great leaders recognize strengths in us that we don't always yet fully see in ourselves. The leader should trust his judgment more than the subordinates. It's the Pygmalion effect: expectations become self-fulfilling. Both positive and negative emotions feed on themselves. Your ...

The power of first impressions is so powerful and so lasting that it is imperative for you to think through your first encounters when entering a new job, a new role, or making new contacts. I was reminded of this by Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer in his HBR.org blog post, Shape Perceptions of Your Work, Early and Often. His general message is that other people can spread your praises better than you can, so be active in making that happen. But he also reminds us that you only have one chance to make a first impression, and the stakes are incredibly high. Perceptions are also self-sustaining because, once people have formed an impression of another, they stop actively gathering new information. Once I know you are smart, I won’t attend as much to every little thing you do which means you can more easily get away with being not so brilliant and I won’t notice. This says to me that it is critical to think through our initial encounters with people. Here are three things...