Top highlights from HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself
Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your lifes strategy. I have a bunch
Show this quote
Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
Show this quote
Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.
Show this quote
When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.
Show this quote
Wherever there is success, there has to be failure.
Show this quote
organizations need to shift their emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are motivatedand ableto bring more of themselves to work every day.
Show this quote
Resilient people and companies face reality with staunchness, make meaning of hardship instead of crying out in despair, and improvise solutions from thin air.
Show this quote
Depressed, ruthless bosses create toxic organizations filled with negative underachievers. But if youre an upbeat, inspirational leader, you cultivate positive employees who embrace and surmount even the toughest challenges.
Show this quote
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary personhardworking and competent but otherwise mediocreinto an outstanding performer.
Show this quote
Dont worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation:
Show this quote
If youre not guided by a clear sense of purpose, youre likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not whats really important to you. And
Show this quote
Do your organizations ethics resonate with your own values? If not, your career will likely be marked by frustration and poor performance.
Show this quote
The lesson I learned from this is that its easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
Show this quote
emotional intelligence is carried through an organization like electricity through wires. To
Show this quote
How Do I Perform?
Show this quote
To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with ones own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.
Show this quote
ADT isnt an illness or character defect. Its our brains natural response to exploding demands on our time and attention. As data increasingly floods our brains, we lose our ability to solve problems and handle the unknown. Creativity shrivels; mistakes multiply. Some sufferers eventually melt down.
Show this quote
Negative emotionsespecially fearcan hamper productive brain functioning. To promote positive feelings, especially during highly stressful times, interact directly with someone you like at least every four to six hours. In environments where people are in physical contact with people they trust, brain functioning hums.
Show this quote
Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points. Everywhere, people rely on their cell phones, e-mail, and digital assistants in the race to gather and transmit data, plans, and ideas faster and faster. One could argue that the chief value of the modern era is speed, which the novelist Milan Kundera described as the form of ecstasy that technology has bestowed upon modern man.
Show this quote
Fostering connections and reducing fear promote brainpower.
Show this quote
Vision and Priorities In the press of day-to-day activities, leaders often fail to adequately communicate their vision to the organization, and in particular, they dont communicate it in a way that helps their subordinates determine where to focus their own efforts. How often do I communicate a vision for my business? Have I identified and communicated three to five key priorities to achieve that vision? If asked, would my employees be able to articulate the vision and priorities?
Show this quote
Whether they learn it from their family, school, or athletics, many people establish an identity by comparing themselves with others. When they see others gain power, information, money, or recognition, for instance, they experience what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called a feeling of deficiencya sense that something is being taken from them. That makes it hard for them to be genuinely happy about the success of otherseven of their loved ones.
Show this quote
And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that were moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesnt offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. Its really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, I raised a good son or a good daughter.
Show this quote
(A good mood, incidentally, spreads most swiftly by the judicious use of humor. For
Show this quote
Its crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once youve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people youll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited.
Show this quote
Bosses are neither a title on the organization chart nor a function. They are individuals and are entitled to do their work in the way they do it best. It is incumbent on the people who work with them to observe them, to find out how they work, and to adapt themselves to what makes their bosses most effective. This, in fact, is the secret of managing the boss.
Show this quote
More than education, more than experience, more than training, a persons level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. Thats true in the cancer ward, its true in the Olympics, and its true in the boardroom.
Show this quote
The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen.
Show this quote
