Photo: See All 5 Living Presidents Together

• By EIG Staff
• April 25, 2013
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Why Everyone is Lazy (Except for You)

• By Mark Micheli
• April 25, 2013
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On your bad days you find yourself thinking it. Stressed out, you glare at co-workers and wonder why, when you feel so overwhelmed with work, others seem so calm. What are they doing with their time? Why are they leaving early? Why, you vent, is everyone so lazy...except for me?

First, the notion that everyone is lazy except for you is, as the Dude would say, "like, your opinion, man." And that's a problem. Recognize that notion is detached from reality.

Second, the moment you start asking those questions above you’ve become what Jody Thompson, co-author of Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It and proponent of results only work environments, a “sludger.”

What is sludge?

Sludge is a term coined by Thompson to encompass any statements we make about how another person spends their time. In work environments where results are what matters (not how long your butt is in the seat) sludge has an extremely toxic effect on office culture.

“Sludge makes people feel guilty, resentful, stressed out, anxious and defensive,” says Thompson. “It makes people feel small and has nothing to do with results. It’s all about me being jealous, envious or ...

A 3-Step Method for Giving Clear Feedback

• By Mark Micheli
• April 24, 2013
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There’s no better way to dull the impact of feedback than to muddle your delivery. The typical “sandwich technique,” in which you offer a piece of critical feedback in between two pieces of positive feedback, buries your intention. It makes it difficult for the individual you’re managing to know what to do, and often leaves them with more questions than answers.

The Center for Creative Leadership offers a solution in the form of the Situation – Behavior – Impact (SBI) Feedback Tool.  It allows you to give clear feedback while forcing individual’s to reflect on problem behavior.

(Related: 6 Tips for Giving Effective Critical Feedback)

Step 1:  Anchor the Situation

Whether it was last Thursday at the weekly staff meeting or yesterday morning during Bob’s presentation, you need to be clear about when the problem occurred.

Where and when did the issue happen?

Be clear. Be specific. Anchor the event in a specific moment in time—otherwise the feedback comes off too general. Remember: Specificity is your friend.

Step 2: Highlight the Specific Behavior

Comment on observable behavior, not your interpretations of that behavior. Focus on what you’ve actually seen or heard, in person, in order to ...

7 Tips For Starting a New Job Off on the Right Foot

• By Anna Codrea-Rado
• April 24, 2013
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Once the elation of securing a new job fades, the nail-biting nerves of starting it quickly set in. For one NBC news anchor, his first-day jitters got the better of him at the most unfortunate of moments. So how do you start a new job well? How many questions are too many? And is there really any point in going to the orientation session?

Quartz tells you everything you need to know about starting a new job on the right foot:

Ask lots of questions

Writing in the Western Journal of Communication, Erin Gallagher and Patricia Sias wanted to know what effect new hires have on the existing—or “veteran”—employees of an organization. The researchers from Washington State University and Edward R. Murrow College concluded that when new people join a company, veteran employees experience as much uncertainty as the newcomers do, albeit for different reasons. While new hires are anxious about making a good first impression, old hands worry how the newcomers will affect their work habits.

Gallagher and Sias found the veteran employees felt more relaxed when new hires asked plenty of questions. It made the existing employees feel more confident about their own abilities and less ...

Do Long Commutes Discourage Married Women From Working?

• By Eric Jaffe
• April 24, 2013
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It's easy to reduce commuting to a simple measure of getting to and from work, but its residual impact on our personal lives is becoming clearer every day. Commuting causes us stress and general displeasure, which no doubt sours many a mood and stirs up many a marital argument, though the side-effects aren't all bad. As we reported last spring, couples who commute in the same direction actually (if oddly) have happier marriages.

New evidence suggests that commute times may influence whether or not married women work at all. In research set for publication in the Journal of Urban Economics, a trio of scholars led by Dan Black of the University of Chicago reports that cities with longer average commutes have lower rates of married women in the workforce. The results suggest that commuting, above and beyond other factors, drives the disparity in the female labor force found across major American cities:

We believe that many factors are at play in producing the large observed local variation in female labor supply across the U.S., but, we argue, one explanation stands out: Married women, particularly married women with young children, are very sensitive to commuting times when making ...