How to by

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

You may have more to gain by developing your gifts and leveraging your natural skills than by trying to repair your weaknesses. Here is a systematic way to discover who you are at your very best. Most feedback accentuates the negative. No wonder most executives—and their direct reports—dread them. Traditional, corrective feedback has its place, of course; every organization must filter out failing employees and ensure that everyone performs at an expected level of competence.

But too much emphasis on problem areas prevents companies from reaping the best from their people. Why should a natural third baseman labor to develop his skills as a right fielder? This article presents a tool to help you understand and leverage your strengths. Called the Reflected Best Self RBS exercise, it offers a unique feedback experience that counterbalances negative input. It allows you to tap into talents you may or may not be aware of and so increase your career potential.

To begin the RBS exercise, you first need to solicit comments from family, friends, colleagues, and teachers, asking them to give specific examples of times in which those strengths were particularly beneficial. Next, you need to search for common themes in the feedback, organizing them in a table to develop a clear picture of your strong suits. Third, you must write a self-portrait—a description of yourself that summarizes and distills the accumulated information. The RBS exercise will help you discover who you are at the top of your game.

For information on a virtual seminar with two of the authors of this article, visit conferences. Informally, the sting of criticism lasts longer than the balm of praise.

Multiple studies have shown that people pay keen attention to negative information. For example, when asked to recall important emotional events, people remember four negative memories for every positive one. No wonder most executives give and receive performance reviews with all the enthusiasm of a child on the way to the dentist. Unfortunately, feedback that ferrets out flaws can lead otherwise talented managers to overinvest in shoring up or papering over their perceived weaknesses, or forcing themselves onto an ill-fitting template.

Ironically, such a focus on problem areas prevents companies from reaping the best performance from its people. The alternative, as the Gallup Organization researchers Marcus Buckingham, Donald Clifton, and others have suggested, is to foster excellence in the third baseman by identifying and harnessing his unique strengths.

It is a paradox of human psychology that while people remember criticism, they respond to praise. The former makes them defensive and therefore unlikely to change, while the latter produces confidence and the desire to perform better. Managers who build up their strengths can reach their highest potential.

This positive approach does not pretend to ignore or deny the problems that traditional feedback mechanisms identify. Rather, it offers a separate and unique feedback experience that counterbalances negative input. It allows managers to tap into strengths they may or may not be aware of and so contribute more to their organizations. During the past few years, we have developed a powerful tool to help people understand and leverage their individual talents.

The RBS exercise is but one example of new approaches springing from an area of research called positive organizational scholarship POS. Just as psychologists know that people respond better to praise than to criticism, organizational behavior scholars are finding that when companies focus on positive attributes such as resilience and trust, they can reap impressive bottom-line returns. Positive organizational scholarship POS is an area of organizational behavior research that focuses on the positive dynamics such as strength, resilience, vitality, trust, and so on that lead to positive effects like improved productivity and performance in individuals and organizations.

The premise of POS research is that by understanding the drivers of positive behavior in the workplace, organizations can rise to new levels of achievement. For example, research by Marcial Losada and Emily Heaphy at the University of Michigan suggests that when individuals or teams hear five positive comments to every negative one, they unleash a level of positive energy that fuels higher levels of individual and group performance. Kim Cameron, a POS researcher, has demonstrated how this positive approach has helped the workers at Rocky Flats, a nuclear site in Colorado, tackle difficult and dangerous work in record time.

Kaiser-Hill, the company in charge of the cleanup, replaced a culture of denial with one that fostered employee flexibility and celebrated achievements. The result was that employees developed new procedures that were fast, smart, and safe. POS does not adopt one particular theory or framework but draws from the full spectrum of organizational theories to explain and predict high performance.

To that end, a core part of the POS mission is to create cases, tools, and assessments that can help organizations improve their practices. In this article, we will walk you through the RBS exercise step-by-step and describe the insights and results it can yield. Before we proceed, however, a few caveats are in order. First, understand that the tool is not designed to stroke your ego; its purpose is to assist you in developing a plan for more effective action.

If you are too burdened by time pressures and job demands, you may just file the information away and forget about it. To be effective, the exercise requires commitment, diligence, and follow-through. It may even be helpful to have a coach keep you on task. Used correctly, the RBS exercise can help you tap into unrecognized and unexplored areas of potential.

Armed with a constructive, systematic process for gathering and analyzing data about your best self, you can burnish your performance at work. The first task in the exercise is to collect feedback from a variety of people inside and outside work. By gathering input from a variety of sources—family members, past and present colleagues, friends, teachers, and so on—you can develop a much broader and richer understanding of yourself than you can from a standard performance evaluation.

Having retired from a successful career in the military at a fairly young age and earned an MBA from a top business school, Robert accepted a midlevel management position at an IT services firm.

Despite strong credentials and leadership experience, Robert remained stuck in the same position year after year. His performance evaluations were generally good but not strong enough to put him on the high-potential track. Disengaged, frustrated, and disheartened, Robert grew increasingly stressed and disillusioned with his company. His workday felt more and more like an episode of Survivor. Seeking to improve his performance, Robert enrolled in an executive education program and took the RBS exercise.

As part of the exercise, Robert gathered feedback from 11 individuals from his past and present who knew him well. He selected a diverse but balanced group—his wife and two other family members, two friends from his MBA program, two colleagues from his time in the army, and four current colleagues. Robert then asked these individuals to provide information about his strengths, accompanied by specific examples of moments when Robert used those strengths in ways that were meaningful to them, to their families or teams, or to their organizations.

Many people—Robert among them—feel uncomfortable asking for exclusively positive feedback, particularly from colleagues. Accustomed to hearing about their strengths and weaknesses simultaneously, many executives imagine any positive feedback will be unrealistic, even false.

Some also worry that respondents might construe the request as presumptuous or egotistical. But once managers accept that the exercise will help them improve their performance, they tend to dive in. Within ten days, Robert received e-mail responses from all 11 people describing specific instances when he had made important contributions—including pushing for high quality under a tight deadline, being inclusive in communicating with a diverse group, and digging for critical information.

The answers he received surprised him. As a military veteran and a technical person holding an MBA, Robert rarely yielded to his emotions.

But in reading story after story from his respondents, Robert found himself deeply moved—as if he were listening to appreciative speeches at a party thrown in his honor. The stories were also surprisingly convincing. He had more strengths than he knew. A critical step in the Reflected Best Self exercise involves soliciting feedback from family, friends, teachers, and colleagues. Below is the feedback Robert, a manager we observed, received from a current colleague and from a former coworker in the army.

One of the greatest ways that you add value is that you stand for doing the right thing. For example, I think of the time that we were behind on a project for a major client and quality began to slip. You called a meeting and suggested that we had a choice: We could either pull a C by satisfying the basic requirements, or we could pull an A by doing excellent work.

You reminded us that we could contribute to a better outcome. In the end, we met our deadline, and the client was very happy with the result. One of the greatest ways you add value is that you persist in the face of adversity.

I remember the time that we were both leading troops under tight security. We were getting conflicting information from the ground and from headquarters. You pushed to get the ground and HQ folks to talk to each other despite the tight time pressure. That information saved all of our lives. You never lost your calm, and you never stopped expecting or demanding the best from everyone involved. In this step, Robert searched for common themes among the feedback, adding to the examples with observations of his own, then organizing all the input into a table.

Instead, he was struck by their uniformity. The comments from his wife and family members were similar to those from his army buddies and work colleagues. Robert suddenly realized that even his small, unconscious behaviors had made a huge impression on others. In many cases, he had forgotten about the specific examples cited until he read the feedback, because his behavior in those situations had felt like second nature to him. Edward, for example, was a recently minted MBA executive in an automotive firm.

His colleagues and subordinates were older and more experienced than he, and he felt uncomfortable disagreeing with them. But he learned through the RBS exercise that his peers appreciated his candid alternative views and respected the diplomatic and respectful manner with which he made his assertions.

As a result, Edward grew bolder in making the case for his ideas, knowing that his boss and colleagues listened to him, learned from him, and appreciated what he had to say. Other times, the RBS exercise sheds a more nuanced light on the skills one takes for granted. Beth, for example, was a lawyer who negotiated on behalf of nonprofit organizations. Throughout her life, Beth had been told she was a good listener, but her exercise respondents noted that the interactive, empathetic, and insightful manner in which she listened made her particularly effective.

The specificity of the feedback encouraged Beth to take the lead in future negotiations that required delicate and diplomatic communications. For naturally analytical people, the analysis portion of the exercise serves both to integrate the feedback and develop a larger picture of their capabilities. Janet, an engineer, thought she could study her feedback as she would a technical drawing of a suspension bridge.

But as she read the remarks from family, friends, and colleagues, she saw herself in a broader and more human context. Over time, the stories she read about her enthusiasm and love of design helped her rethink her career path toward more managerial roles in which she might lead and motivate others. The next step is to write a description of yourself that summarizes and distills the accumulated information.

I can't imagine the correct way of using by as being in place of; beside, besides, next to, around. It is too colloquial, surely. It does not sound. How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems Hardcover – September 3, by.

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You may have more to gain by developing your gifts and leveraging your natural skills than by trying to repair your weaknesses. Here is a systematic way to discover who you are at your very best.

How to vote

Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. Carnegie had been conducting business education courses in New York since The initial five thousand copies [3] of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in its first year alone. In , a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released. The book has six major sections. The core principles of each section are explained and quoted from below.

How to Play to Your Strengths

Find out if you're eligible to register and how to apply. To apply to vote by post in England, Scotland or Wales, you need to download, print and fill in the postal vote application form. You can apply for a particular election or referendum, for a specific time period, or for a permanent postal vote. Once you have completed the form and made sure you have signed it, you need to send it to the electoral services team at your local council. The electoral services team at your local council may also accept a scanned copy of your form by email, but you should check with them first. If you're not sure if you already have a postal vote, contact the electoral services team at your local council to find out. You can include your overseas address in this section. If you're registered to vote in Northern Ireland, you must provide a valid reason as to why you can't attend your polling station in person.

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Sleeping well directly affects your mental and physical health. Fall short and it can take a serious toll on your daytime energy, productivity, emotional balance, and even your weight. Yet many of us regularly toss and turn at night, struggling to get the sleep we need. Just as the way you feel during your waking hours often hinges on how well you sleep at night, so the cure for sleep difficulties can often be found in your daily routine.

How to Sleep Better

To save this word, you'll need to log in. Accessed 10 May. Keep scrolling for more More Definitions for how-to how-to. Entry 1 of 2 chiefly US : giving practical instruction or advice on how to do something yourself how-to. Please tell us where you read or heard it including the quote, if possible. Name that Fruit! Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! And who put it there, anyway? Literally How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts.

How to Buy Stocks

Look Inside. Sep 03, Minutes Buy. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. As he did so brilliantly in What If? Full of clever infographics and fun illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.