Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

Overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences:

It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person’s ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative. Moreover, although people have a strong sense that they are gaining insight into themselves and their problems during their ruminations, this is rarely the case. What they do gain is a distorted, pessimistic perspective on their lives.

–Sonja Lyubomirsky
The How of Happiness

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My CEO executive coaching clients frequently wonder how best to motivate and retain key employees. The question often takes the form of, “Should I give her an unscheduled bonus or a raise?” The business owner often tends toward a raise because it defers the cash outlay. My study of psychology recommends the bonus.

I have written about Professor Christopher Hsee of the Booth School of Business before. Recently he spoke explicitly about the bonus vs. raise question. “If you ask a typical employee, he or she will tell you they want the salary. But that’s because they don’t understand psychology,” Hsee said. “You should give them the bonus instead. Salary is stable and people adapt to the new salary level quickly. Bonuses are not as easy to adapt to.”

Hsee also supports my advice about giving a gift, particularly something the employee wants but might not indulge in. “Give somebody something they like but won’t Read the rest of this entry »

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The pursuit of happiness may be simple but it is seldom easy. As renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, reports,

“You have to work at it.”

Other key elements are:

• Sleep
• Money enough for necessities
• Physical activity
• Social activity

–The pursuit of happiness
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

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…adding five substantive conversations to your weekly social calendar could boost your spirits dramatically.

–Skip the Small Talk:
Meaningful Conversations
Linked to Happier People

Scientific American.

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People have three basic wants that make them susceptible to social influence.

1. First, people have a hedonic motive, or a desire to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
2. Second, people have an approval motive, or a desire to be accepted and to avoid being rejected.
3. Third, people have an accuracy motive, or a desire to believe what is true and to avoid believing what is false.

As we shall see, most forms of social influence appeal to one or more of these motives.

–Psychology
Page 16-22
By Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner

See also, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, on this blog.

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Compiling research from psychologists and economists (including colleague Richard Thaler), Professor Hsee provides tips on how to make the people around you—employees, significant others, friends, relatives—happy.

1. Separate gains.
   Combine losses.
2. Announce good news early.
   Announce bad news late.
3. Unpredictable gains are better than stable gains.
   Stable losses are better than unpredictable losses.
4. Choice is bad for good options,
   good for bad options.
5. Wanted is better than needed.
   Memorable is better than usable.

Details in The University of Chicago Magazine.

– Prof. Christopher K. Hsee
Chicago Booth

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