Learning Center

According to the Department of Labor, 61.1% of married-couple families in 2016 had both parents working. In my counseling work, and in my role as husband to a working wife, I bear witness daily to the power spouses have to support or undermine their partners. As I enter my 50th year of marriage, still working and still married to a ...

We are all accustomed to receiving instructions for improving our health. We know these directions by heart: eat more fruits and vegetables, get 8 hours of sleep each night, consume less sugar, stay hydrated etc. Somehow these repeated commands fail to inspire many of us to change our behavior, even though we accept their scientific validity and know that we ...

It’s not a shocker to learn that a blog with a name like stress.health.business. (inaugurated in 2012) has featured more posts about stress than any other topic. However, you may be surprised to see how many different dimensions there are to the stress/productivity/health relationship. So, as we commence our 6th year of the blog, I have anthologized a diverse sampling ...

Many organizations try to boost employee productivity by using traditional analytic approaches which focus on strategic planning, goal setting and process efficiency measures. These methods reflect the belief that better systems, planning and processes lead to better employee performance. Other organizations emphasize improving employee benefits, perks, compensation, and schedules as a means to increase productivity. This approach reflects the belief ...

What happens when you have a winning product and/or business strategy but your managers have poor people skills? Lost opportunity is what happens. Failure to capitalize is what happens. Your business loses is what happens. Even the best business strategies do not implement themselves. They require communication, coordination, alignment, and efficiency. In other words, they require leaders with strong people ...

We are forgetful creatures. I’m not referring to the “senior moment” variety of forgetfulness. I’m talking about the habitual forgetting that takes place in the midst of everyday life challenges and stresses, when we “forget” to make those choices that we know will keep our bodies, spirits and relationships healthy. We forget that change can only happen today and not ...

If someone foolishly launched into a litany of excuses and rationalizations around my former colleague Nancy, she loved to proclaim: “If wishes were dishes, the whole world would be a kitchen.” Invariably, she would follow up with an emphatic and melodic: “Woulda! Coulda! Shoulda!”. I was thinking about Nancy when I was assembling this short list of resolutions worth keeping ...

If you take the pleasure of getting things done at work and multiply that by the pleasure of getting better at what you do, the result is improved job satisfaction, higher motivation and diminished levels of stress. It’s a simple formula: we come to work to get something done and when we do our level of well-being and engagement increase. ...

According to a recent survey of senior executives the success rate for major change initiatives is only 54%. Why do so many organizational change initiatives fail? Organizations are certainly aware that their success depends on the ability to change and adapt to rapidly evolving conditions effecting markets, customers, suppliers and competitors. They assign their top management talent, often reinforced with ...

I met Steve Mellor in the mid-1980’s when he was a young HR professional and I was a green EAP consultant. We bonded immediately as allies and comrades learning to make a place for ourselves in the corporate world. Along the way, we also took time to compare notes on the joys and challenges of being husbands and dads. Later ...

“A skilled [feedback] giver is great, but mostly our lives are populated by everyone else, folks who aren’t so skilled, have their own issues, or are too busy to really give us the time we need. If you’re going to take charge of your own learning you’ve got to get good at learning from these people too. A skillful and ...

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” Abraham Joshua Heschel   Harold Ramis died last week. He cowrote and directed Groundhog Day, a ...

The year was 1971, my first as a school psychologist in Michigan’s Willow Run School District. On April 3, the eve of the third anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Willow Run School Board met to consider its options for honoring the life and work of Dr. King.   Dr. R. Wiley Brownlee, the high school principal, ...

Ethel Weiss is the primary (and sole) investigator for the longest running research project in the country on the subject of happiness and job satisfaction. When I tell you that the study is being conducted in Massachusetts you might reasonably suspect that the Harvard Business School or M.I.T. have something to do with it, but they don’t. Ethel’s extraordinary research ...

I usually write about the experience of working. Today I want to write about the experience of not working and the plight of the unemployed. HBO’s heart wrenching documentary, American Winter, offers a compelling primer on the life-changing consequences of being without a job in America.   The film documents the daily personal struggles of 8 families in Portland, Oregon ...

What a joy it is to recycle stuff that has been gathering dust. It’s not just the space it opens up, although that’s pretty satisfying. The best part of repurposing things is that you also silence their nagging challenge: “I have value. Why aren’t you using me?” So it was with pleasure that I cleaned out the area below my ...

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” More than ninety heads of state, and tens of thousands of South Africans, met in a Soweto soccer stadium today to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. What accounts for the deep reverence we ...

Workplaces with high levels of employee stress and anger are increasing their risk for many negative business outcomes including: Employee fatigue, concentration difficulties and diminished problem-solving abilities Diminished quality, productivity and customer service Under reporting of critical business issues (in order to avoid blame) Poor teamwork and coordination among individuals who are resentful and feel that they have been treated ...

The path to perfect is littered with failure and disappointment and should be avoided by anyone seeking self-improvement. Perfect is the enemy of good because perfect is an oversized and complicated fantasy, not an achievable goal. When it comes to making changes in your work habits or your relationships or your health it often pays to think small. I am ...

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Washington civil rights march and Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream speech.” I have listened to that speech countless times and it never fails to inspire me. David Brooks wrote a wonderful tribute in the New York Times yesterday analyzing the leadership approach of Dr. King where “the idea was ...

A few years ago one of our client companies merged with their biggest competitor and they asked us to facilitate some preliminary meetings with the other management group which, until the merger, had been their rivals. There was much anxiety in both management groups about how to merge the two very different, adversarial and extremely competitive cultures. Andrew, a senior ...

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way ...

Maybe you have had the thought, especially in this final phase of cabin fever season: “I am losing it. The parent I want to be is leaving the building and a lunatic is poised to take his place.” This is a true story that took place on a Tuesday night many winters ago. I know it was a Tuesday because ...

            This week’s blog, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, has been published on the WBUR Cognoscenti website. ...

Before color tv and before personal computing and long before the internet, my portal to the outside world was a glossy magazine called TV Guide. Our copy came in the mail every week and I studied it carefully. I couldn’t read yet but I remember being captivated by the cover photos of television celebrities: every week a different entertainer was ...

Many of us have a love-hate relationship when it comes to making changes in our life. We think a lot about wanting to eat better, exercise more, drink less, manage our time more productively, be kinder and gentler with our loved ones, and continually improve our current selves. The desire for self-improvement is a hard-wired component of human nature, an ...

Work-life balance is complicated. It’s an intricate consideration – much more than just assessing personal priorities and learning how to manage our time. It’s an Ideal, a goal and a pursuit that will probably be a little bit different tomorrow than it is today. When we used to talk about balance, it was a conversation rooted in location. Are we ...

Who doesn’t hate the feeling of being stuck? Whether it’s stuck in traffic or stuck in a business meeting that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, the experience of being captive can be excruciating. Frustration and irritation rapidly escalate when we sense that we are wasting our time and missing an opportunity to do something we want to do. The ...

    Companies and nonprofits are attending to workplace culture in greater numbers than ever.  Inspiring stories from companies like Zappos have made their way around social media circles. Further, unless you've been under a rock you know that younger workers have less tolerance for workplace shenanigans by bullies and disagreeable coworkers that others have put up with for years.  ...