New Years resolutions, if not exactly “made to be broken,” don't have great staying power. Seventy–five percent of “resolvers” keep their resolutions after one week, 64 percent after a month, and merely 8 percent twelve months later.

But the reasons go beyond lack of will power. According to Elizabeth Grace Saunders, time management coach and author of How To Invest Your Time Like Money, many people fail to accomplish new goals because they don’t consciously eliminate old activities from their schedule to make room for the new. It’s like “trying to stuff more papers into a file drawer that’s already packed tight.” 

If your resolutions involve workplace goals and behaviors, consider the following:

• Question all of your work commitments.  The start of a new year marks the perfect time to reevaluate what you’re doing, and why.
• Reassess your work style. Now assess how you accomplish work. Do you really need all those meetings? Can you interact less with messaging technology?
• Add new goals strategically. Once you intentionally create space, you can strategically add in the activities that you want in your life. To say “yes” to the new, you must say “no” to some of the old.
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What do you plan to resolve for this coming year, and how will you make room for it to happen? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

A recent study from Forrester estimated that 10% of U.S. jobs would be automated this year, and some estimate that many more jobs will be automated in the next decade. But perhaps asking which jobs will be eliminated is less relevant than asking which aspects of remaining jobs are unlikely to be automated.
 
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Stephen M. Kosslyn, former Dean of Social Science at Harvard and author of Building the Intentional University, posits that while routine and repetitive tasks lend themselves to non-human replacement, aspects of jobs that require two critical elements will be difficult to automate.

1. Emotion: Emotion plays an important role in human communication (think of a physician explaining treatment options to a critically ill patient). It involves empathy as well as all forms of nonverbal communication. Beyond that, emotion, which is nuanced and complex, interacts with many of our decision processes. For example, it helps us to prioritize what we do right now as opposed to later. As of now, the functioning of genuine emotion is difficult to build into an automated system.
   
   
2. Context: Machine learning operates on data sets that by definition were created previously. But context changes all the time—often rapidly. For example, earlier this year we were suddenly operating in the context of a pandemic. Humans can take context into account when making decisions or having interactions with others.

 
As Kosslyn points out, employers highly value the kind of “soft” skills that are intrinsically linked to contextual evaluation and emotion: critical thinking, clear communication, and holistic decision-making. “All of this suggests that our educational systems should concentrate not simply on how people interact with technology,” he writes, “… but also how they can do the things that technology will not be doing soon.”
 
What do you think humans can do much better than machines in the workplace? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

The pandemic will make this a holiday season unlike any other, but that doesn’t mean a holiday party is out of the question. Now, perhaps more than ever, teams want to feel bonded, express feelings of mutual appreciation, and have some good old-fashioned holiday fun.
 
Here are some suggestions from the Paperless Post blog for a festive Zoom celebration:
 

• Have an ugly sweater contest: This time-old tradition will hold up well in cyberspace. Just throw your tackiest pullover or cardigan over your sweatpants. Prizes can be awarded for Most Original Sweater, Best DIY, and even Best Team Sweater,
• Host a talent show: Everyone’s on screen anyway, so what better venue to show off a hidden bent for singing, storytelling, or stand-up comedy.
• Organize a virtual awards show:  Dunder Mifflin had its iconic Dundees. Imagine what you can come up with to acknowledge each of your team members for their special accomplishments and contributions—be the categories serious or whimsical.
• Have a home scavenger hunt:  Put together a list of items team members can find around their houses, or give one-off prompts like, “Show us the weirdest thing in your refrigerator right now.”
• Play “Holiday tradition, or not”: For a festive twist on Two Truths and a Lie, ask each person to share a quirky family tradition. The other players must guess if the tradition is real or fake.

 
Keep in mind that many party festivities, from charades to impromptu dancing, are easily adaptable to an online format.  Whatever activities you choose, the important thing is to acknowledge one another, particularly during a time that hasn’t been easy on individuals or companies.
 
What are you and your team planning to celebrate the holidays? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you can do the work well, you can lead other people to do it. Right?  Wrong. “Occupying a leadership position is not the same thing as leading,” says executive coach and management professor Monique Valcour. “To lead, you must be able to connect, motivate, and inspire a sense of ownership of shared objectives.”
 
There is no magic bullet or infallible management tool to ensure good leadership. Instead, Valcour advises creating practices to increase leadership proficiency using the following steps:

• Start with a problem you’d like to solve or a future result you’d like to achieve. What outcome would make a meaningful difference for you and your team?
• Articulate why it’s important to you now. Getting clear on your purpose and motivation increases creativity and persistence.
• Seek quality information to base your approach on. Check in with your coach or mentor, and search for relevant books, articles and studies
• Identify measures of success. How will you know if you're making progress?
• Ground yourself with an intention. Place a sticky note with this intention on your computer where you’ll see it first thing each morning—and your team will see it too.
• Choose behaviors to implement. For example, serve as a role model, stimulate thinking with questions, practice empathy, and praise proactive behavior.
• Seek feedback and celebrate progress.
  
  

“The developmental journey is fascinating and fulfilling if you embrace it,” says Valcour “You don’t have to wait to be trained; you can design leadership development practices any time you want.”

What are you doing to promote your own continuous learning as a leader? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.