Key Truths For Being An Outstanding Manager

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While there are numerous books, courses, and online trainings for improving your managerial skills, seldom do they address the psychological underbelly of wise and wonderful management. That’s understandable since they aren’t created by people with a psychological background. 

But over the past many years we’ve seen how understanding and incorporating the following psychological truths have enabled good managers to become great: 

1 - Everyone Knows How To Follow 
Everyone was once a small child whose very existence depended on following their parents or other caretakers. So the act of following is built into each and every one of us. And while some chronological adults rebel against managerial leadership in an unconscious carryover from their youth, the vast majority of people welcome clear, supportive leadership they can readily follow. 

2 - Your Followers Want You To Exhibit Strong Leadership 
When a manager can be counted on to provide clear directions, clear expectations, clear rewards and clear critique in response to outcomes, s/he can provide a confident-making platform for everyone on the team. Being nice, wishy washy, or distracted by the company’s internal politics raises grave concerns for the future of the team’s project as well as anxiety about management’s missing guidance about current expectations.

3 - Your Team Wants You To Lead Not Rely On Their Opinion
While team input and collaboration are extremely important and invaluable, all too often managers abdicate their leadership role in favor of “consulting” with people on the team to try to handle dicey hiring problems, team restructuring, or other insecurities that are not the business of that manager’s team members. 

4 - Forget About Being A Buddy 
Some managers, uncomfortable with their senior status and leadership role, believe that becoming friends and buddies with their team members will empower those who report to them. Actually, nothing is further from the truth. Role confusion makes for team members’ job confusion which creates organizational confusion. 

5 - Trying Too Hard To Save An Employee Endangers Your Whole Team 
Well meaning managers can often get caught up in trying to rescue a team member whose behavior and/or output is insufficient, incorrect, or injurious to the well being of the team. They may have recruited and/or hired this individual. They may have had great hopes for this person’s career and it’s now a blow to their sense of competence to have to concede that the person needs to be let go. But letting go must become a must-do in order to protect the well being of the other team members and the team’s output. 

6 - Big Visions Do Not Make For Wise Guidance 
Your team needs wise and caring guidance for execution of your project vision, whatever it is. Merely providing a big vision leaves everyone scrambling to guess at what is expected, demoralizing and rendering insecure what might otherwise be an excellent team. Remember, everyone knows how to follow. Give them clear, empowering guidelines and most people will knock themselves out to produce what you want from them. 

While there are certainly many other psychological truths about excellent management, these six will get you started thinking about what’s most wanted and expected of you from your followers—who by and large want to please and impress you.

What other psychologically-oriented qualities do you think are essential?

(Photo: Business meetings eventspaceportland/Flickr)

Judith Sherven, PhD and her husband Jim Sniechowski, PhD http://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabuloustm. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing—they are always succeeding. The question is, at what? To learn about how this played out in the life of Whitney Houston for example, and how it may be playing out in your own life, check out their 6th book: http://WhatReally KilledWhitneyHouston.com 

Currently consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. You can learn about their core program “Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous” by going to http://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com 

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A $32,000 Startup That Was Sold for Millions

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I meet entrepreneurs all over the world who think that venture capital is a prerequisite for starting a company. They write business plans and ask for introductions to venture capitalists. I tell them that they should instead bootstrap their startups. That what would have cost millions of dollars a few years ago now costs thousands.

Think about it. Today’s laptops have the same processing power as the minicomputers which cost millions of dollars in the 1980s. For storage, you once needed server farms and racks of hard disks. Today you have cloud computing and cloud storage—and these are cheap.

You can also bootstrap hardware companies like Nest (which Google acquired for $3.2 billion). Sensors such as those in our smartphones would have cost tens-of-thousands of dollars a few years ago. They now cost practically nothing. Entrepreneurs on shoestring budgets can build smartphone apps that act like medical assistants and detect disease, body sensors that monitor heart, brain and body activity, technologies to detect soil humidity and improve agriculture.

Entrepreneurs can also participate in the genomics revolution (here is an article that explains this). It cost more than $100 million to sequence a full human genome about a decade ago. It now costs $1,000. Genome data will soon be available for millions, then billions of people. Anyone anywhere can write computer code that compares one person’s DNA with another; learns what diseases people with similar genes have had; and analyzes the correlation between genomes and the effectiveness with which different medications or other interventions have treated a given disease.

There are similar advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and many other fields.

In 2011, I mentored a startup called Beat The GMAT that figured out how to rebuild and bootstrap itself on just $32,000. The company was acquired last year for millions of dollars by Hobsons. Its founders Eric Bahn and David Park say they are really enjoying their financial freedom and are glad that they took the risk. It wasn’t easy, but was the most incredible experience they have ever had. Below is a version of an article I wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek about how they did this. There
 are valuable lessons that you can learn.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1999, David Park founded discussion forum service Coolboard.com. It took more than a dozen software developers, product managers, and quality assurance staff 18 months to build the company's core technology. To fund it, Park raised $10 million in venture capital, of which $4 million was spent before the company was launched. It went down in flames in 2003, a casualty of the dot-com bust.

In 2005, Park partnered up with his friend Eric Bahn to launch his next business, MBA admissions social network Beat The GMAT in San Mateo, Calif. Rather than take venture capital, they limited startup costs, spending just $119,000. The site steadily gained traction, but they were nervous that technologies like Facebook and Twitter would make it obsolete. So they chose to make it obsolete themselves.

In 2011, the team decided to rebuild the site and the company. Their goal was to create a social network for business-school applicants that had features such as aggregated GMAT-prep and MBA-admissions news; a way for members to connect with one another; and social gaming elements to keep members motivated. It makes money advertising test prep services. Amazingly, the new site took only four months and cost just $32,000 in total.

I was skeptical when Park and Bahn approached me last year to ask for advice on business strategy for the site. They were convinced they could build a bunch of sophisticated technologies in months—on a shoestring budget. They were determined not to raise venture capital. I had doubts. My two software companies had taken years and cost millions. Yes, technology is much easier to build today than it was during my tech days. But I meet Silicon Valley startup founders every week who tell me about their ideas and their plans; and no one says they can build their products for less than the cost of a BMW 328.

But Park and Bahn did. How? To start with, they crowdsourced the design. Instead of hiring a bunch of marketing people, as tech companies usually do, they asked their user community for volunteers to help conceive a new site. Then they selected a handful of the most eager users and trained them on the basics of Silicon Valley–style product management. Next, Park and Bahn needed to find a designer. They used 99designs.com, which hosts design competitions, for a two-week contest that attracted hundreds of designers, yielding a design they used as the theme for the new site. The contest, prize, and designer's time cost $9,200.

They broke up Web development into two tasks: front-end engineering (turning design artwork into code) and back-end engineering (making the code actually function). They built their technology on top of WordPress, phpBB, and Drupal—free, open-source platforms. Front-end engineering usually requires sophisticated coding done by contractors who earn as much as $100 an hour. Instead, the Beat The GMAT team turned to a service called PSD2HTML.com, which converts Photoshop design files into HTML and CSS code. The cost of this service, at $160 to $220 per Web page, totalled $4,500. For back-end engineering, they hired four developers from Hungary and Ukraine on the outsourcing website oDesk. They paid $15 to $20 per hour. The back-end engineering cost $18,000 in total.

In software development, things don't usually go as planned. Park and Bahn had their share of missed deadlines, buggy code, and product problems. Outsourcing always makes things more difficult, because developers are in different time zones, speak different languages, and don't always understand what is expected of them. It took many sleepless nights and lots of caffeine to surmount these obstacles.

In the result, a company that later sold for millions cost its founder just $32,000 because the relevant technology now is so inexpensive. The ability of entrepreneurs to build sophisticated technologies so cheaply in the Web world is even foreshadowing the marginalization of venture capitalists. Software startups often spend the first few months of their existence polishing business plans and pitching to investors. They can instead be working with smart people all over the world, focusing their energy on perfecting their technologies, as Beat The GMAT did. When a law-school grad (Park) and a sociology graduate student (Bahn) can build successful technology companies, the notion that website founders need computer-programming backgrounds too is outdated.

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ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS5 TUTORIAL""" By: Derek Banas

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In these two video’s I show you how to use Adobe Illustrator CS5. I created this tutorial because of a request from DeathByKazillion.

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 1

Here I cover every new feature available with Illustrator CS5 and provide a review.

I cover specifically:

1. Bristle Brush
2. Perspective Tool
3. Creating Custom Brushes
4. Live Paint
5. Live Trace

If you like videos like this tell Google To make me extra happy, feel free to share it

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 2

Here I show you how to convert a jpeg or any image into vector art / EPS with Illustrator CS5. I also cover:

1. Rasterizing Images
2. Live Trace
3. Live Paint
4. Live Paint
5. Convert Muli-color Image into Vector Art
6. Working with Text Tool’s
7. Using Gradients
8. Using Strokes
9. Using the Knife Tool
10. Cleaning up Vector Art
11. And a bunch more in just 9 minutes

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 3
Here I show you how to use every other tool available with Illustrator CS5. I also cover:

1. Line tools
2. Shape tools
3. Layers
4. Colors
5. Text
6. Art boards
7. A bunch of random tip’s and trick’s

That’s All Folk’s

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The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Up Our Lives"""

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Let’s talk about the two basic mindsets that shape up our lives: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset presumes that our mental ability, character, and creative skills are constant givens that can’t be altered in any significant way. Additionally, success is confirmed by that innate intelligence, which is actually an evaluation of how those givens correlate to an equally fixed standard. Moreover, evading failure at all cost and striving to succeed no matter what turn into a way to maintain the belief of being smart or at least skilled

On the other hand, a growth mindset flourishes on challenges and views failure not as a proof of being poor mentally or of lacking aptitude but as an encouraging starting point for growth and for enhancing our potential. A great deal of our behavior, the way we see success and failure, both in a professional and a personal context, and finally our capability to be happy springs from these two mindsets which we manifest in the earliest stages of our life.

Here’s How You Can Be The Best and Shine This Year

So, for those of you who are looking to shine this year and be the best you you can be, here are ten tips for how to achieve it.

As we embark upon a new year, there are so many ways to view our lives and the chances ahead of us – new opportunities, old regrets, the same cycles people go through every year. However, if you want to change this year-  if you want to shine this year as a human being and as the best version of yourself – then you’re going to need to work at what makes you tick. What makes you happy, what makes you sad, your strengths, weaknesses, your days and nights. Everything about yourself has to undergo an examination if not a re-evaluation.

1. Drink water every morning.
One of the easiest ways to shine this year is start every day off by drinking plenty of water as part of your early morning routine. The reason? Drinking water first thing in the morning has an incredible set of health benefits, including purifying the colon and allowing better nutrient absorption, aids weight loss and better metabolism, helps give you glowing skin thanks to flushing out toxins, and helps balance your lymph system. In short, it helps rejuvenate your system and helps you start every day off in the right way.

2. Change your morning routine to suit you.
Everyone has a morning routine and one of the ways to shine this year is to go through it and modify aspects of it that can be best suited to you. After all, everyone’s different and has their own way of working things in the early hours. If you always feel like you need more sleep, go to bed earlier or use a sleep calculator to find out when you should be going to bed to work with your circadian rhythms and cycles. Add in time for a morning shower if you always feel better with one but never have time. Make sure you have breakfast. All these little things can have a big positive effect on your morning routine and wlll help you shine this year.

3. Make an active effort to see the good around you.
The world is, surprisingly, a good place despite the bad things going around and not a lot of us actually choose to see. Let’s face it, with the news creating catastrophe and calamity in every news item, some pretty seriously twisted ideals of perfection and beauty being pushed on us, and a general feeling that cynicism is the standard, it can be hard to be optimistic and someone who sees the silver lining when everyone else sees an oncoming storm. If you want to truly shine this year, look for the positive. Surround yourself with positive friends and be more considerate to people going through their own situations, so that by looking for the positive, you transfer it forward and become the positive change yourself.

4. Exercise at least three times a week.
Exercise is a bit of a hate word around people – it brings back memories of school gyms and forced running and mandatory activities. However, choosing to go out and engage in something that gets your body moving is absolutely a fantastic thing to get involved in and something that is certain to make you shine this year. Find the kind of exercise you like to do, rather than immediately going down the gym even though you’ll hate it. If you like slow rhythmic movements, take up tai chi or yoga; if you like high-energy stuff, check our Zumba or aerobics. There are more than enough exercise options out there for you and if you really want to shine this year, it’s a good idea to go and get your body moving.

5. Get plenty of sleep.

This one cannot be stressed enough – sleep is key. All of our culture seems to be screaming, ‘you don’t need sleep, you can go for longer’ – but to do is to put into jeopardy your physical and mental health because sleep is an option. Sleep is a legitimate physical need that will cause you severe problems if you don’t get enough. A way to truly shine this year is to take care of yourself by engaging in some sleep hygiene. Make your bedroom the best kind of sleeping environment possible for you. Sweet dreams.

6. Make sure to dance at every opportunity.
A bit of a cliche, perhaps, but let’s be honest- people who shine through life are always ready to dance at the drop of a hat. Dancing is both ridiculously simple and complex – it’s a true expression of human emotion and the ability to translate our physical body into a joyous or mournful or reverential proclamation. Plus, dancing has incredible health benefits as it helps you keep fit, works your legs and arms through rhythmic movement, and releases endorphins into the bloodstream providing an entirely natural rush. Whenever you find the chance to, put on your favorite kind of music and dance to it. Dance with a friend, dance alone, let your body do the talking and feel yourself begin to shine.

7. Try something new at least every month.
There’s nothing that kills as quick as routine nor boredom – so the paraphrased saying goes. One of the most enjoyable ways to shine is to keep putting yourself out there more and trying new things as often as possible, within a minimum of one new thing a month. There’s an entire world out there waiting for you to experience it – a world full of fantastic films and delicious food and astonishing plays and beautiful music and joyful dance and great TV. People who shine always try and broaden their horizons and their own perspectives, so make sure you give into that childlike curiosity with that new album, new restaurant, new film. After all, you might just find a new favorite.

8. Visualize your happiness.
If you want your happiness, you’ve got to visualize it. See it, imagine it. Work through it so it becomes an approachable goal rather than a lofty ideal which is as unattainable as it is ill conceived. We create our own happiness and shape our own lives so if you want to truly shine this year and be the best version of yourself that you can be, is to decide what makes you happy and either cultivate it if you have it, or work towards it if you don’t. Create a vision board, a Pinterest channel, a sigil – whatever you need to try and plan out your happiness, use it. The future is yours.

9. Stop comparing yourself to others.
Comparing your life and yourself to other people is one of the most toxic and self-destructive things you could ever do to yourself as it undermines your own experiences and your personality and erodes away at all the positive achievements you’ve managed to accomplish throughout your life. Simply, you need to finish with both the negative and positive comparisons to other peoples’ lives in order to focus on your own. Comparisons lead to negativity, anger, jealousy and gossiping which not only makes you look more petty and negative, it also stops you from focusing on your life and your goals. Cut the comparison and truly shine this year as an example.

10. Stop the ‘should have’ thoughts in your life
We’re constantly being told what we should have and shouldn’t have in our lives. Designer clothes, cars, the latest electronic products, haute cuisine and expensive coffee, everything is construed as a status symbol, an indicator that the person has met untold requirements for being seen as desirable. That is an incredibly toxic way of viewing life and viewing ownership, because if you live your life by the ‘should haves’, then you will be forever chasing trends because what is a la mode always changes, always evolves.

Your life, however, should be based on the wants and needs that you yourself cultivate and desire. It’s not the end of the world if you want the latest tablet or phone or a cup of coffee or shoes – that’s fine – but what you need to assess is why you’re wanting it and then go off your instinct as to whether or not it’ll make you happy. If it makes you happy, go for it. If not, then find something that does make you happy. And then you’ll truly shine this year, and the years to come.

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