The purpose of emotions is to cause a physical response. Think of emotion as “E – Motion,” where the “E” stands for “Evoke” – Evoke-Motion. The next time you’re kind of stewing on something, go do something physical. Evoke motion from your emotions. I think we’ve forgotten that the purpose of emotions was to cause...
Leadership Nudge® 338 – Power Gradient Matters
January 20, 2021by Sandy Wilmer
When an organization creates steep power gradients with things like physical separation, executive dining rooms, and intimidating office size, they limit the flow of information. Information flows inversely proportional to the power gradient. Flatten the power gradient to get the information flowing. I’m here at the RBS headquarters outside of Edinburgh airport at Gothenburg in...
Studies show that when we try to control things that we really cannot control, our blood pressure increases and our bodies release of the stress hormone cortisol. For more happiness and less stress make a conscious choice to give up control. A key part of Intent-Based Leadership is about giving up control. We understand the...
Leadership Nudge® 88 – Stress Performance Curve
February 16, 2016by Sandy Wilmer
Leadership Nudge – STRESS PERFORMANCE The stress performance curve, sometimes referred to as the arousal performance curve can help us understand the effects of stress on our abilities and our teams’ abilities to perform simple physical or complex cognitive tasks. Scientists have discovered that the amount of stress we have affects our ability to perform...
Leadership Nudge – FIX THE ENVIRONMENT, NOT PEOPLE I believe that every human has the potential to do great. We all have a latent superhero within. All too often, however, that superhero never sees the light of day because of fear, bureaucracy, or insecurities we carry with us. Here’s the leader-leader challenge: What if, by...
Leadership Nudge® 71 – Stress Pushes You Down
November 3, 2015by Sandy Wilmer
Leadership Nudge – Stress Pushes You Down Leaders, your mission should you choose to accept it is to stay the leader you want to be even under times of stress. Even when you have a lot to get done, and even when you are under time pressure. Our tendency is to tell others what to...
Leadership Nudge® 48 – What we say matters… Fix the Environment, Not People
April 29, 2014by Sandy Wilmer
The environment matters a lot more than we think. Humans tend to attribute behavior to the person and underweight the impact of the environment. We do this to ourselves. Let’s say you are attending a conference. Maybe you got in late the night before and didn’t sleep all that well. The breakfast buffet has rows...