Profit from the Positive

Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business

McGraw-Hill, 2013

15 min read

10 take-aways

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What's inside?

Optimism is infectious, so spread some around your company.

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Recommendation

Executive coaches Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin describe direct actions leaders can take to boost their employees’ performance, commitment and productivity. The book offers at least 30 tools managers can implement quickly at little or no cost, including advice on how to improve meetings, revamp your performance-review process and support profitable growth. The authors offer common sense and simple, yet powerful, ideas based on small changes that can make a profound difference. getAbstract recommends this easy and engaging book to leaders who seek practical, inexpensive ways to improve their results dramatically.

Summary

“Positive Psychology”

Positive psychology is not a New Age, feel-good philosophy. Instead, it is a practical, easily applied business approach you can use to spur higher performance and more profitable results in your organization by emphasizing the positive – especially in leadership and team building.

Positive Time and Task Management

To become a better leader, examine how you work and interact with your team. Organize your time and tasks before jumping into projects or significant tasks. Don’t “multitask.” Time lost switching between tasks and ramping back up each time is greater than any benefit you might otherwise realize. The more you plan your day precisely and with great specificity, the more likely you are to use your plan. “To-do lists” work better when you assign a time slot to each task. Avoid the pursuit of perfection – an impossible standard that only causes delay.

Use simple but effective techniques to boost your productivity. People remember more about tasks they’re prevented from completing than those they finish. Leave a job slightly incomplete so you can dive back into it the next morning. This...

About the Authors

Margaret Greenberg is a coach, consultant and former HR executive. Psychologist Senia Maymin is a coach, entrepreneur and former finance executive.

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S. K. 9 years ago

Really a great piece on creating a positive everything. It goes to the strengths of many people which in result will also strengthen mindset and productivity of those you surround yourself with. Simple information, but so to the point.
A. S. 9 years ago

I agree that matching the job to strengths is great. Sometimes though, you have to look for an "almost strength " so you can help your staff grow. I love the recommendation to avoid just hiring for skills. It's way easier to teach a technical skill than to teach caring, optimism and nice! It is great when I can hire a previous student who interned with us as you know so much more about the person than the interview shows.
G. H. 9 years ago

I really liked the idea of looking at each empoyee and matching the job to their stengths. Be positive each morning so that it spreads throughout the day to others. ANd have a task not yet complete so you can finish the next morning to get a jump start of accomplishing a task for the day.

Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin