Nano Tools for Leaders XXXVII

Staying Motivated: Five Renewal Rituals

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: G. Richard Shell, Thomas Gerrity Professor, Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Management, The Wharton School; author of Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success (Portfolio Penguin: 2013)

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The Goal:

Boost your success and satisfaction by keeping your motivation level high.

Nano Tool:

What motivated David Ferrucci and his team at IBM to stay committed, despite years of challenges, to create an artificial intelligence system (Watson) that could beat the smartest Jeopardy! players in the world? Renewal rituals.

The inner satisfaction that comes from doing what you love, also known as intrinsic motivation, acts like slow-burning fuel, allowing for sustained effort over a long period of time.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXXVI

Building Resilience: “REAL” Ways to Thrive During Tough Times

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Katherine Klein, PhD, Edward H. Bowman Professor of
Management, Vice Dean, Wharton Social Impact Initiative, The Wharton School.

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The Goal:

Build resilience in yourself and your team.

Nano Tool:

Resilience — the capacity to bounce back from setbacks or to thrive during times of challenge or change — is not a fixed trait. It actually grows out of a set of “learnable” behaviors with results that interact to make you and your team less vulnerable to stress. Whether you’re dealing with the acute stress of sudden challenges, or the chronic stress of daily life, simple daily actions can increase your resilience.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXXV

Virtual Communications: Getting the Most from Technology and Your Team

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Nancy Rothbard, PhD, David Pottruck Associate Professor of Management, The Wharton School.

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The Goal:

Make virtual communications and meetings more effective.

Nano Tool:

In today’s increasingly global business environment, face-to-face communication is often a rare luxury. The challenge for individual leaders and virtual teams is that we tend to rely on facial expressions and interactive feedback to fully interpret what people say. How do we know we’re being understood and that we understand others without those meaningful inputs?