Go ahead and ask. You can be more assertive than you think.

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Recently our daughter Annie and I were at the store picking out a card to for her to send to a friend. In the card display was a big section dedicated to Taylor Swift. We examined each card – Taylor Swift looking dreamy, sassy, alluring, or even defiant. Taylor can certainly strike a pose. I asked Annie to pick one.

“I can’t decide,” she said. Then, “Wait, what about that one!”

It was the display poster, the marquee advertising the Taylor Swift section of the greeting cards. “Well, that’s not for sale sweetie. It’s just the banner. You know, the poster for all the Taylor Swift cards.”

Annie says, “Yeah. Can we get it?”

There was also a little sign saying the Taylor Swift card collection was being replaced in a few days. I shrugged, “Let’s ask.” I took the poster from the wall and Annie carried it to the checkout counter.

“I can’t find a price on this,” the clerk said.

I replied, “Yeah, well, it’s..ah…the display poster. But the sign says you are getting rid of the cards in a couple days. Can we have it?” The clerk frowned. “I need to talk to the manager.”

We waited and the manager arrived, looked at the poster, and said. “I’m sorry but we don’t own those banners. The card company does. We can’t give them away.” I turned and saw Annie’s face wrinkle in confusion. “But why not?” she asked.

For a second no one moved. Then the manager said, “Tell you what. If you give us your phone number, we’ll ask the card company and call you if they say you can have it.” I was pretty skeptical, but Annie’s face lit up and she carefully wrote down our phone number for the manager as I said it out loud.

We drove home and I forgot all about it. But Annie didn’t forget. Sure enough about ten days later, the drug store manager called and asked if we still wanted the poster. Within the hour, that Taylor Swift poster was hanging in our daughter’s bedroom.

When in doubt, ask.

People seen by others as getting assertiveness right, often mistakenly think they’ve gotten it wrong.

In a study by doctoral students at Columbia Business School, 57% of those who believed that they were appropriately assertive in their requests and negotiations, were actually seen by the other party as under-assertive, and under-demanding. In other words, more than half didn’t ask for enough.

On the other hand, those who believe that have been overly-assertive and overly-demanding in their requests and negotiations often fall victim to a belief that they have “crossed a line” and gone too far in their requests. The result is that they backpedal, try to smooth things over, and acquiesce to a lesser deal. In the end, both parties often accept a worse deal.

That’s a bummer, because in the study often those who were assertive and demanding were actually interpreted by the other party as being fair and appropriate.

According to the research, you should go for it and ask for a little more. And not back off or feel badly about what you ask for.

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Shawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Does Your Company Have a Mental Dress Code?

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Bafflegab
noun, North American, informal
Meaning: incomprehensible or pretentious language, especially bureaucratic jargon.
“the smooth chairman had elevated bafflegab to an art form”

If we took a time machine back to the 1990s and visited American corporate culture, in addition to wide ties and blocky cell phones, we would also see the Apple Newton in action, and fax machines widely in use. There was the Netscape IPO of 1995, Japan was the king of semiconductors, and the NASDAQ tipped over 1000.

We would also find people talking differently. They didn’t use the word “business model” widely. That term wouldn’t make it’s way out of MBA classes for a few more years, and people were still largely thought of as resources to be applied against goals, objectives and strategies. According to Harvard business historian Nancy Koehn, people weren’t talking about “energy” or “passion” or “purpose” in the way we do today.

Language certainly matters a great deal. The words we use when interacting with one another say a great deal about what we believe and value. But I’ll argue that repetition and overuse of insider language can balloon into an enormous crutch. It’s the reason business bingo exists.

In the 1980s, Pacific Bell publicly abandoned a failed $40 million “leadership development” effort based on the work of former aspiring-mystic-turned-management-consultant Charles Krone. The training program attempted to get everyone in the organization to adopt new, and often fantastical, language to gain efficiency and speed.

During this expensive and failed experiment of confusion and lost productivity, “task cycle” was an invented term to describe a system of managing a problem. Even the word “interaction” had it’s own impenetrable 39-word definition that employees had to understand.

Pushing people to speak and interact all the same way is the equivalent of enforcing a mental dress code.

There are plenty of annoying popular business phrases out there. “Let’s not try to boil the ocean” means let’s not waste time on something that will take forever. Rowing to Australia would take a long time too, but we don’t say that. Incidentally, the expression “boil the ocean” supposedly came from the humorist Will Rogers when asked how we should deal with German U-Boats during WWI. His answer was to simply boil the ocean, and added that the details of how to do that are up to someone else.

“Out of pocket” sounds silly. It means unavailable. The original intent was to explain a reimbursable expense, as in the cost came out of my pocket. Lord knows how this became reinterpreted to mean I will be unavailable. I searched and searched and found no satisfactory answer.

“Over the wall” needs to be canned too. It means to send something, like a document or a proposal, to a client or a vendor. But metaphorically it’s alienating. The expression suggests we’re dealing with someone foreign, even hostile. Why does it need to be a wall?

“Low-hanging fruit” came out of 1980s restructuring at General Electric. Peter Drucker had been hired by Jack Welch in the early 1980s to help get GE out of a down-cycle (damn, I did it myself!), and they worked together to try to remove corporate jargon from the conversation. Ironically, along the way they created more new terms in an attempt to destroy the old language. In addition to “low-hanging fruit,” that exercise also brought us the terms “rattlers” (meaning obvious problems) and pythons (meaning bloated bureaucracy).

“Burning platform” conjures images of Gandalf and the dragon Bairog fighting over a crumbling bridge above a cauldron of fire. Stop it. Try using the word “urgent” instead.

It goes on and on. Let’s keep this one: “ducks in a row.” I like that one. It’s cute. It comes from the days of pre-automated bowling alleys when humans had to place the bowling pins upright.

Whatever the common bafflegap in your organization, I encourage you to simply your language. If the expression needs explanation to anyone outside your company, you should probably slow down on use of it.

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outthink_book_coverShawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Yes, We Can Ditch the Drama

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“I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.”
– Marilyn Monroe

Few things are as disruptive as repetitive and negative emotional cycles. To find new results, we need to also find new ways of interacting with each other.

According to psychologist Stephen Karpman, there are three distinct roles, or personas, that we can adopt in any given situation. In their most extreme forms these three personas are presented in what he called the Drama Triangle:

  • The Persecutor: The persecutor is a bully who puts people down, blames others, and is driven by anger and resentment. The Persecutor points fingers at others and describes why they are inadequate, or stupid, or ruining everything. The persecutor is bossy and demanding. The Persecutor blames other people, circumstances and events as the cause of the problem.
  • The Victim: The victim is helpless, oppressed, hopeless, ashamed, and powerless. The victim feels constantly misunderstood. As a result, the victim will often refuse to make decisions and remain paralyzed in their helplessness.
  • The Rescuer: The rescuer is the savior, the hero. The rescuer is addicted to saving others, jumping in, and demonstrating how remarkably capable they are. In fact, the rescuer can even feel guilty and anxious if they don’t step in heroically to save another. The rescuer believes that others are lacking, or inadequate, and require the rescuer to save the day.

The interesting thing about these different personas and positions on the Drama Triangle is that once we adopt a particular stance, we often push our partner into an opposing stance. For example, a Victim position from someone may elicit a Rescuer reaction in another. Or a Persecutor may turn someone else into a Victim.

When we adopt one of these particular positions, we not only push our partners into opposing positions, but we also limit our own potential and capabilities. The trick is to first recognize that we are indeed becoming one-dimensional and limiting in our interactions with others, and then shift our conversation to be supportive and constructive.

For example, the Persecutor is a bully – constantly berating others and assigning blame. To move from a bullying position to a constructively challenging position, the Persecutor can shift their orientation and behavior:

From To
You need to stop making excuses. I am willing to listen to your story for ten minutes.
You will deliver the product on Monday. How can I help meet a Monday deadline?
You are a liar. I ask you to keep your word, or we will no longer have an agreement

Similarly, the Victim is paralyzed by their own fear and inadequacy. To bolster self-confidence and move toward a thriving and fulfilling dialogue, the Victim can shift their behavior and internal dialogue:

From To
Nobody cares or listens to my ideas. I will contribute 1  idea at each meeting.
No one will help my project. I will commit to asking for help.
I am alone and unlucky. I will journal things I am grateful for.

And finally, the heroic Rescuer is also trapped with the belief that only they can save the day, and only they are capable of righting the wrongs, and correcting the inept. This heroic savior is also trapped in a “poor me” pattern of always having to step in and fix the problem.

To move away from being addicted to saving others, the Rescuer needs to move to being a coach to others, instead of solving every problem himself or herself. Here is how the Rescuer can reframe their mindset:

From To
You always need my help. I’ll fix it. I care about you and you can do this.
Tell me all your problems. I’ll listen without making your problem my own.
Don’t worry about it. I got this. Let me show you how to do this yourself.

And the truth is that at any given moment throughout our days, we can find ourselves drifting toward one of these three different mindsets. That’s ok. That’s normal. What’s important is that we identify that disposition, and learn to move out of these destructive personas to more supportive and collaborative ones.

Yes, we can ditch the drama. It’s just a mind shift away.
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outthink_book_coverShawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Are you (or your boss) being poisoned by power?

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Deborah Gruenfeld is a professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford. For years, she and her colleagues have been studying the effects of power – particularly the effect of power disparities in the workplace.

In one small, but powerful, example of her work, they brought together students in groups of three. Of the three students, one was chosen randomly to be the boss, the decider. The other two were asked to create competing solutions to various issues on campus – issues such as making the campus more environmentally friendly, or improving transportation and cafeteria services. The task itself was a distraction. What the researchers were most interested in was the role of power newly bestowed to one of the students.

During the session in which the “boss” is asked to evaluate the quality of the proposals from each of the two other students, the researchers bring in a plate of five cookies. After they each take a cookie, there’s two left. Every culture is aware of the social taboo against taking the last cookie so the cookie that the researchers are watching is the fourth cookie.

Consistently, the newly appointed “boss” was much more likely to take the fourth cookie, and to exhibit “disinhibited eating.” In other words, chewing with their mouth open and leaving more crumbs.

It’s an amusing story, but goes right to the point of what Gruenfeld calls the Power Poisoning Effect. That is, often those newly placed into power tend to:
• Give greater value to their own ideas and initiatives
• Give lesser value to the ideas and initiatives of those around them
• Think that the rules don’t apply to them
• Have greater difficulty controlling their own impulses

High-power individuals talk more, interrupt more, are more likely to speak out of turn, and are more directive of others’ verbal contributions than are low-power individuals.
– Deborah Gruenfeld

Does this remind you of any politicians or executives in the news headlines?

In a similar study about the intoxicating effects of unchecked wealth, professor Paul Piff and his graduate students discovered that people who drove fancy, expensive cars were far more unlikely to yeild to pedestrians at a crosswalk.

Paul and his students monitored hundreds of vehicles over many days, and recorded whether or not they yielded to pedestrians in a crosswalk. Fifty percent of those vehicles classified in the most expensive category (BMWs, Mercedes, Porsche, etc.) failed to yield, while meanwhile none of the vehicles classified in the most inexpensive category broke the law at the crosswalk.

This is not to say that universally only rich people are prone to break small laws, but rather Paul concluded in his research that we all have competing motivations throughout our days. In fact, it’s not wealth alone that prompts individuals to believe they are above the law, but rather the power disparity between themselves and those around them.

Power disparities in the workplace have been directly correlated with workplace bullying, pay inequities, and even sexual harassment.

Small psychological interventions, small changes to people’s values, small nudges in certain directions, can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy.
– Paul Piff, Professor UC Berkeley

Paul suggests that little, but consistent, prompts, and positive social cues, can make a big difference.

He and his colleagues have discovered that small interventions such as showing a short video depicting childhood poverty reminds us of the existence of social inequity in the world and restores empathetic behavior.

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____________________________________________________

Shawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive awesome results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Thank Outside the Box

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storiesofhope

The promotion you just got? A beautiful sunset with your family? That’s amateur stuff to be grateful for. The waiter just refilled your coffee? Oh, how considerate. You thank him. Now you feel warm and thoughtful.

Step up people. Try being grateful for losing a big contract, or your U12 soccer team getting crushed on Sunday. Good. Now go deeper. Your girlfriend just dumped you because the relationship was truly toxic. You write her a heartfelt letter of appreciation and gratitude. We’re getting there. See these events as precious gifts.

This is where the hard learning happens. This is where growth and development and renewal happens. My coaching friend Kirsten argues the greatest team bonding, life learning and development happens after the throes of humiliating defeat.

Did you know that both paraplegics and lottery winners – interviewed one year after their accident or winning the lottery, will both testify to the same personal level of happiness?

Robert Emmons, co-director of UC Berkeley’s Expanding Gratitude project writes, “It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one ‘feels’ grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio.”

If we can summon the strength to reframe a negative experience into a positive one, we can grow in our own self-development. If the relationship really was toxic and we have the strength to see through the emotional pain to be grateful that she was willing to confront it and end the relationship, then we can grow and move on.

The beggar on the street can show us how privileged we are. The cancer that infected our body can show us how grateful we are to be healthy. When we summon gratitude in the face of adversity, we turn meaningless cruelty into growth and strength.

Humor Heals

If the path to appreciating adversity is too great to surmount, or if the searing pain of defeat and rejection is just too powerful to be reflective and generous of spirit, let humor guide you.

Here’s what I mean. When you’re lost in the woods, have run out of water, and nightfall is approaching, tell a joke. Because humor heals. Humor combats fear.

Humor has the power to disengage our fears, and relaxes us. Behind a nervous chuckle is the sentiment, “We’re gonna get through this!” Humor also reduces stress and boosts the immune system.

I’m suggesting that often an easier path to finding gratitude in the face of adversity, strain and setback, is to start by finding humor. Even dark humor might be just the right antidote.

Try what Erik Weihenmayer calls Positive Pessimisms. It goes like this:

“We’ll be sitting out in a raging storm. We’ve gone a month without showers. The wind is driving snow directly into our faces, and I’m wondering what insanity led me to this nightmare in the first place. That’s when Chris will look up with a big cheesy smile on his face and say, “Sure is cold out here…but at least it’s windy.” Another time, we had been moving through the cold for ten hours, and we were all wasted. Chris turned to our team and said, “Boys, we sure have been climbing a long way…but at least we’re lost.” In the Khumbu Icefall, as Chris was halfway across his first ladder over a giant crevasse, he came out with the classic, “This ladder may be rickety…but at least it’s swingin’ in the breeze.”

“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. And swing!”  – Leo Buscaglia

  • Join my Email updates for regular updates on leadership and life

____________________________________________________

Shawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive awesome results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

You Will Feel Happier When You Appreciate Others

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hugging_daughter

Expressing appreciation for someone in your life can change your whole outlook. That’s right. Simply telling someone else how much you appreciate them will improve how you feel.

Jeffrey Froh, professor at Hofstra University, did this cool study in which he and his colleagues tracked students in eleven different classrooms, and divided them into three groups. For just a few minutes each day they were asked to:

  • Group 1. write down things they were grateful for at home and school
  • Group 2. write down things they found to be a hassle and not fun
  • Group 3. a control group they asked nothing of

Here are a few things Group 1 wrote down:

  • “My coach helped me out at baseball practice,”
  • “My grandma is in good health, my family is still together, my family still loves each other, my brothers are healthy, and we have fun everyday,”
  • “I am glad that my mom didn’t go crazy when I accidentally broke the patio table.”

After two weeks, the researchers measured their school performance and engagement from both the student’s perspective and the perspective of their teachers. Essentially, they found these students to be happier (by their own account), having more friends, and more engaged in their school work (by the teachers account), and…wait for it… they got better grades – better in comparison to their own previous performance. That’s after only two weeks. The researchers checked in three weeks later after the study was over and found the effects to be still present.

It gets even more powerful when you share your appreciation with someone directly and personally. In a powerful follow up study, students were asked to write a letter to a someone in their life whom they feel they may have never properly thanked. It could be a teacher, a coach, or a family friend.

The kids worked on their letters three times a week, for two weeks. They were asked to elaborate on their feelings, and to be increasingly specific in their writing about what the benefactor did that they were grateful for.

On the friday of the second week, the kids set up a meeting with the person to read the letter, out loud, to that person face-to-face.

According to Jeffrey Froh, “It was a hyperemotional exercise for them. Really, it was such an intense experience. Every time I reread those letters, I get choked up.” The positive outlook, and heightened engagement was still present when the researchers checked in with the kids 2 months later.

Maybe you can’t easily get your kids to write a letter of gratitude to someone in their life? Here’s a small and simple trick I learned from Dr. Karen Reivich, author of The Optimistic Child. Simply finish these sentences:

  • Someone who helped me get through a difficult time is _______
  • Someone who helped me learn something important about myself is _______
  • Someone with whom I can discuss the things that matter most to me is _______

If you can’t get your kids to write letters of appreciation, you can. Model the way. Pick someone in your life and send them a note of appreciation. Be specific. Or even better, pick up the phone or track them down in person and share your message. You will not only make their day, you will feel better yourself.

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outthink_bookShawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive awesome results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hi: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

How to Stop Your Boss From Ruining Your Work

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I had several different bosses during the early years of writing ‘Dilbert.’ They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else.
– Scott Adams

Every evening, all around the world, we come home from work, greet our partners, our kids, and have discussions. Discussions in the kitchen, at the dinner table, and before we go to bed.

Sometimes the topic is school grades, or upcoming trips, or what to bring to the Lowenstein’s barbecue. But often the subject of these discussions is the companies we work for, our colleagues, and our bosses. It’s long been known and understood that the quality of our work culture and our relationship with our bosses can affect our moods, our sense of optimism or despair at work, and even our health.

Toxic work environments, and in particular cruel bosses, have been linked to hypertension, elevated blood pressure, and even heart attacks. One woman I worked with in recent years had kidney stones clinically attributed to the stress of her work environment.

Toxic bosses are also responsible for the disposition of entire teams when they single out individuals for criticism. When a boss quietly and privately pulls someone aside to deliver critical or disparaging feedback, that individual absorbs the critical evaluation and then infects the rest of the team. According to recent studies replicated with teams in China and the United States, each individual criticized then becomes toxic and divisive to other team members. It’s true that asshole poisoning is contagious.

Seven in ten Americans say bosses and toddlers with too much power act similarly. In one study, 345 white-collar office workers described the most abusive and disruptive bosses in their lives as self-oriented, stubborn, overly-demanding, interruptive, impulsive, and prone to throwing tantrums.

Jujitsu: the use of the strength or weakness of an adversary to disable him.

If you work for a bosshole, try a few jujitsu tricks to use their own power against themselves.

Give Them Credit
If you have a boss who needs to be ‘right’ all the time, let them. I don’t mean to suggest you let them sabotage the project by pushing it in a ridiculous direction, but rather practice deep listening. Listen carefully to their ideas, and reiterate them back carefully to clarify what you heard. In the retelling they may, or may not, understand the fallacy of their reasoning. But either way, they were heard and acknowledged.

Bring Them Down to Earth
If you have a boss who paints grand visionary ideas without understanding the detail and the effort involved, ask them to get granular. Let them understand how their great sweeping vision plays out at the execution level of technology, marketing, and product re-design. Ask them who, specifically, they envision doing this work? What resources might need to be made available to cover contingencies, or hire outside help? By helping them understand the real effort involved, they will likely either abandon their idea, or roll up their sleeves and help. Probably the former.

Help Their Incompetence
It happens. Probably too often someone gets promoted to their level of incompetence. They are in over their head and resort to low level management tactics like examining the smallest detail, or scheduling meaningless meetings with no agenda. They are in the weeds. Help them. I know it hurts to think about it, but if you help guide their efforts, communication and help refocus their time and energy they will become an ally, and likely support your initiatives next time you suggest something.

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outthink_bookShawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive awesome results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hi: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Assume Best Intentions

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A young woman is waiting in a busy airport. She has some time to kill so she buys a little bag of cookies and sits down with her book to read. Pretty soon a young man comes and sits beside her and starts reading a magazine. They keep to themselves and after a couple minutes he reaches into the bag between them and takes a cookie.

She can’t believe it. But she’s too astonished to say anything. So she takes a cookie and keeps reading her book. Time goes by and she keeps reading and eating her cookies. But every couple minutes this strange guy keep reaching in the bag and taking a cookie until there’s only one left. Then he takes the last cookie, breaks it in two and offers her half. She can’t believe his guy! She stands up, and without a word to him, walks away and boards her flight.

Sitting in her seat on the plane she takes a deep breath to calm down. Then she reaches into her purse to get her book and finds the bag of cookies she bought earlier.

The moral of course is to be careful with our assumptions. Or better, always assume the best intentions of others.

Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.
– Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepsi

To sharpen your ability to assume the best intentions of others, try these few things each day:

  • Practice mindful listening: Waiting to talk isn’t listening. You’ve had these conversations. You say something and instead of acknowledgement or affirmation you get back a completely different agenda because the other person was simply waiting for their turn to talk. Listen, then reiterate back in your own words. It will deepen the conversation, and the relationship. The other person is likely to say, “Yes, exactly!”
  • Focus on behaviors, not people: Instead of describing a person as (abrasive, fun, mean, weird, interesting…), describe their behavior. People are complex, and the days are filled with stresses and joys. To yourself and to others, describe the behavior of others, instead of belittling them with stereotypes. Moods change.
  • Honor differences and disagreements: We often having meaningless small talk conversations because they are easy. We all show up in the world with our own history, predispositions, and beliefs. And we know if we express those ideas we might create conflict and disagreement. It’s OK. There’s a difference between disagreeing and offending. When we set our defaults to listen and understand, we are more likely to honor and learn from the differences between us.

Sounds simple enough, but there is often a big gap between what we know to be the best thing to do, and actually doing it. Remember to assume the best in others. It can make a world of difference.

Change starts one small act at a time. Try our course Small Acts of Leadership to build action into your life every single day.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

Last summer, my son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

Kindness is the Killer App

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I recently interviewed Gene Klein, 87-year old holocaust survivor, born in Czechoslovakia in 1928. In our interview as he vividly recounted the horrors of the experience, the only time he became emotional and tearful was when he was consumed with gratitude and recollected small acts of kindness – a guard who gave him portions of food, inmates who gave him hope, or a German engineer who protected him briefly from hard labor.

Kindness can be one of the most powerful and enduring gestures we can make to others. I’ll never forget feeling lost and alone at summer camp and a young counselor invited me to sit on his bunk and read Jaws with him. I’m certain that wherever he is in the world, he has no recollection of it. But I do.

Kindness is a hard-wired part of the human identity. Researcher Dr. Michael Tomasello, who studies human behavior, demonstrated that infants and toddlers instinctively show concern and compassion for those in need or distress. In their study, they took 56 two-year-olds and broke them into three groups. All groups witnessed an adult drop an object, and struggle to pick it up.

One group of toddlers was allowed to intervene and try to help the adult. Toddlers in another group were held back from helping by their parents. The third group watched as another adult stepped in to help. The group that showed the highest distress and concern was the group that was restrained and not permitted to help. Over ninety percent of those toddlers who were permitted to help, attempted to.

Another thing: kindness is contagious. It turns out both positive and negative behaviors are contagious. Bullying begets bullying. Teasing begets teasing. But Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have been studying community behaviors and found that positive prosocial behaviors spread much more rapidly than negative behaviors.

Not only that, researcher David Buss studied 10,000 people in 37 countries to figure out the most powerful attractor for those looking for a mate. Money? Yes, somewhat. Beauty? Yes, it matters – more to men than women. Intelligence? Yes, right up there at #2.

But the #1 characteristic desired around the world when looking for a long-term relationship was kindness and compassion to others. Reach out. Practice kindness every day. It will make you and everyone around you happier and healthier.

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SmallActs-3DShawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, a company building powerful human and digital learning experiences based on the work of best-selling authors. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? Let’s talk.

Last summer, my son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Grab a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

Does your boss have a sense of humor?

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Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.

– Sue Murphy

Forty years ago Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, had been given six months to live. He’d been diagnosed with a painful, degenerative disease of the spine. Although Cousins was in constant agony and succumbing to paralysis, he checked himself out of the hospital (which he deemed “no place for sick people”) and moved into a hotel.

He began taking high doses of Vitamin C and prescribing himself a regular regimen of intense laughter. Watching Marx brothers videos and stacks of his favorite funny movies, he laughed and laughed every day. He discovered that the periods immediately following intense laughter had the strongest effect in easing his pain, and calming his mind.

He recovered from his illness and went on to write several books on the healing power of laughter.

Even though constant disruptive laughter is the bane of every elementary teacher, the benefits of laughter are now well known. It wasn’t always that way. In the mid-18th century, Lord Chesterfield, a public advisor on morality, proclaimed: “In my mind there is nothing so ill-bred as audible laughter.” In 1903, psychologist William McDougall wrote that situations which incite laughter are essentially unpleasant.

But we now know that laughter increases blood flow, reduces stress, decreases risk of heart attacks, and boosts your immune system. Even the insurance giant AIG ran TV ads proclaiming that laughing will add eight years to your life. And that information comes from their actuaries, who should know.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’

– Dave Barry

In the workplace, fun environments rank higher in terms of reasons to stay with a job than money, gifts, and even recognition.

If you are a boss, or have a boss (which is everyone) who have the power to lead by example and set the workplace tone, you should know the killer advantages of creating a fun workplace:

Humor Builds Trust
Humor breaks through false pretenses, helps eliminates communication barriers, and creates an environment in which people feel more authentic and expressive in their ideas. The reason is that humor builds trust. In one study, people who measured high in terms of how often they initiated humor, and appreciated humor in social settings, were considered more trustworthy.

Humor Strengthens Leadership
Bosses who use humor as part of their leadership style are not only proven to build more cohesive teams, they are also perceived as better leaders and managers. Team members also report to their colleagues greater work satisfaction and higher approval ratings of managers who use humor in their interactions.

Humor Enhances Creative Thinking
Quite a few studies have demonstrated that laughter and humor not only enhances creative thinking by reducing the fear of expressing ideas publicly, but even improves memory and retention. If you want a more productive meeting, start with a joke. Not the teasing or ridiculing kind, but what researchers call “Affiliative Humor.” It’s the kind of joke that is non-threatening to any single member of the group, but instead works to demonstrate we are all coping together.

A final word of advice: There is a wrong kind of humor – a kind of humor that is divisive and destructive. It’s the kind of humor that is intentionally demeaning, derogatory, or rude.

For humor to have a positive, and powerful effect in our work, it needs to be inclusive, and remind the group of who we are, what we are doing, and how we do things.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

– Darynda Jones.

Keep laughing.