Our Corporate Life
September 18, 2012   •   Volume 3, Issue 19   •   ISSN: 2154-3240    
In This Issue
♦   Feature Article: Whose Monkey Is on Your Back?
Ask Amanda: I can’t stand confrontation—my job is making me sick!
♦   Practical Tips: Risk Taking Under Stress
 
Whose Monkey Is on Your Back?

One of the most common complaints we hear from managers concerns time—they’re running out of it while their team runs out of work. In the classic Harvard Business Review article, “Who’s Got the Monkey,” the authors use the monkey-on-the-back metaphor to show how subordinates transfer their work back to you.

Undoubtedly you’ve experienced this. Your subordinate shows up when stuck on a problem. Rather than pushing back and encouraging them to provide potential solutions, you engage and take the problem on yourself. You’ve moved their monkey to your back. Why?
read more

Thought to Ponder

Be careful who you emulate.

  
Practical Tips: Risk Taking Under Stress

According to a recent review article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, being under stress may affect your ability to make a smart, rational decision. While that fact probably doesn’t surprise you, the reason it’s true might.

Researchers at the University of Southern California found that stress causes you to overestimate the positive aspects of a choice and downplay the negatives.
read more

    
 ask Amanda
Question:

I hate confrontation but I have an underperforming team and constantly have to confront them about their poor performance. This is making me sick! What can I do? S.G., Summit, NJ

Amanda Mitchell
Answer:

How we believe is how we behave. If you believe that your interactions with your team are “confrontations,” you’ll approach them with an adversarial mindset. In doing so, you’re increasing your stress and probably setting up a win-lose situation. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
read more

    
     
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About Us: Our Corporate Life LLC (OCL) is a company that offers a new system for reducing unnecessary workplace suffering caused by the organizational, interpersonal, and ethical issues of our time. It is founded on the belief that adhering to core human values and achieving business success are always compatible. Working with both companies and individuals, OCL helps create solutions that enable corporate employees at every level to optimize profits while enabling them to thrive in the corporate environment. OCL was founded by Amanda Mitchell to help meet the needs of people working in corporate America during this transformative moment in our nation's history. The OCL system reflects her experience and insight gained from a 20–year corporate career working with Fortune 500 companies, and as an executive coach to senior–level corporate executives. Our Corporate Life
 
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