Tag:

change

3 Tips to Communication Change That Aren’t Common Practice

by Dianna Booher April 24, 2018

written by Dianna Booher

In a world where someone can walk into a restaurant, shopping mall, or school and open fire on hundreds of innocent people, where jobs disappear overnight, where cancer appears suddenly on a scan, people grasp for order, stability, and control.

They demand the same from communication coming to them––the email, instruction, or announcement should make sense for them personally. Generic messages about change get ignored.

Be Specific and Concrete

Leaders use the following vague statements in many different scenarios––with a multitude of meanings.

“We’ll look into the situation and get back to you when we have a resolution.” When leaders toss this promise to a crowd during a crisis, they react, “We want to know now what you’re doing to find the resolution.”

“We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We’ll consider the situation and let you know if the policy warrants a change.” Customers may grin and bear it, but they won’t accept this generic template as a sincere apology—or expect a change.

None of these statements encourages listeners to change their mind or feel more positive about a change. In fact, these statements anger people, causing them to dig in their heels, and stall any proposed actions.

Drop the Doublespeak

People distrust what they don’t understand.

Much of what is written today in corporations and governmental agencies is not intended to inform employees. The writer’s purpose is to protect the organization providing the information. For example, take financial disclosures that accompany investments. Remove the jargon and what they say is beware: “This is a highly risky investment. We will not be responsible if things go wrong. If you invest in this, you could lose every cent!”

But if they made that statement so clearly and boldly, very few would invest in the venture.

Doublespeak persists as a protective shield. But gobbledygook also limits a leader’s influence and power in multiple ways: wasted translation time for employees, distrust, and confusion. Unravel the babble. Ditch the double-speak.

Avoid Making the Change Look Harder Than It Is

That’s not to say change is easy. Leaders who promise people that change will be easy become immediately suspect. People will think you’re either incompetent, crazy, or a liar.

When you’re trying to influence people to make a change, give them time to consider the request and make the commitment. Otherwise, you’ll have a “yes” answer and a “no” on the follow-through.

That said, some things really are easy—or at least worth the effort they require. Why make that change unnecessarily difficult simply by the way you communicate the change?

Rule #1 for change: Make the action you want clear. If it’s easy, say so. Pay attention to its physical layout on the page or screen to allow easy scanning.

Use a simple font.
Make subject lines useful, specific, and concrete.
Provide informative headlines for easy scanning of instructions.
Create an eye-appealing layout: short paragraphs, lists, bolding, color, adequate blank space.
Replace text with images or video when images or video can tell the story more easily.

Communicating change in and of itself is difficult. Persuading people to change their mind or take action based on that change is harder still. The goal in communicating that change should be like creating user-friendly software––intuitive.

April 24, 2018 0 comment

Entrepreneurship Management Self Governance Small Business

4 Comments Employees Hate to Hear From New Leaders

by Dianna Booher August 22, 2017

written by Dianna Booher

Leaders aim to make their mark on business operations, imprint their philosophies on their staff, leave their legacy on the organization. They hope the team will remember their leadership as unique, profitable, and pleasant. Understandable goals.

But all too often, new leaders start out with similar clichés and concepts—lines that set their staff members up for disappointment, if not downright disengagement, rather than the intended productivity boost.

Do these new-leader clichés sound familiar?

“Tell me if I’m wrong, but here’s what I’m thinking.”

While it’s admirable to ask for input, the problem is phrasing. Who wants to start off a new relationship with this response: “Well, boss, actually, here’s where you’re wrong….” Better to ask for input in these ways: “I’d like your input on a few ideas….” “Here’s what I’m thinking as a different way to handle X… Your thoughts on that issue?” “I’m about to make a couple of changes in the way we do X. Am I missing something here?”

“I’d like us to blow this up, and try to rebuild it from the ground up.”

For all our collective complaining, most of us become attached to our projects. We “own” them. Yes, we’re open to change, improvements, growth. But hearing a new leader talk about “rebuilding” implies that previous work has become worthless. Many employees consider it arrogance for a new leader to walk in and start making “changes for change’s sake” before he or she knows the what and why behind the current state of things.

Whether you’re talking about processes or products, your phrasing counts. Modify, maybe. Improve, probably. But “rebuild” will most often meet resistance.

“Let’s put everything on hold until I get a better understanding.”

What does “on hold” mean? Stop work? Stop planning? Stop funding? Stop signing contracts? Notify all departments/people related to the project? For how long? Do what in the meantime? What if “this” is my primary job at the moment? This comment sets up a major logjam, with the boss blocking workflow.

This directive creates a bottleneck while productivity decreases to a spurt here and there. Fear rears its head. The check-back directive suggests the leader’s ongoing management style: closely-held reins with little room for personal initiative and decision-making.

“Give me your wish list—as if money were no object.”

Generally tossed out during strategic planning meetings or staff retreats, this leader comment meant to start a brainstorming exercise sounds like such a generous gesture. The new leader wants input on needs—what new resources does the team need to get the job done faster or better? Tools? Equipment? Space? More people? More time?

So what’s the problem with this goodwill comment? Money is always an object—even when you have plenty of it. Even if venture capitalists have just dropped $100 million in your pocket, you’ll have to justify why one project gets funded and another doesn’t. When new leader after new leader arrives on the scene and encourages people to “dream big,” but there’s no basis for thinking the Fairy Godmother will fund such dreams, this approach becomes boring.

If the line sounds too familiar, skip it. You’ve heard it before—and so have your team members. Your communication during those first few weeks as a new leader makes a critical difference in connecting with employees and winning their trust and confidence.

August 22, 2017 0 comment

Leadership Management Strategy

Leadership Traps That Will Derail Your Change Efforts

by Bill Benjamin April 27, 2017

written by Bill Benjamin

This article is the second in the “All Change is Personal” series looking at three traps that leaders need to manage in order to steward their organization through change efforts. To read the first article in the series and learn what Trap #1 is, click here.

Trap #2: Not Getting Employee Feedback on the Plan

63% of employees agree or strongly agree that the reason “change fails at our organization” is because leaders don’t listen to employees (don’t consult with employees) about how change might affect them or how change might be done more effectively.
– IHHP Survey Data

Most leaders operate from a place of good intention. Their intention is to ‘do right’ and have a positive impact both on the business and the people they lead. Most are constantly on the lookout for ways to make a difference and to make their business and people better. However, there is one crucial step missed by most leaders when trying to implement changes: They expect everyone to see the need for change and the plan for change just as they do.

We have all witnessed it: the leader arrives back from a conference they’ve just attended or has read an evocative business book, and they see how the business could be doing ‘a’ or ‘b’ in a much more effective way. Their enthusiasm for the idea is unbridled and as a result, change is inevitable.

The next step involves the leader working through how the plan fits within the business model and offers them a competitive advantage. They talk with other executives about the plan and get their feedback on how it can be improved. They go to board members, shareholders, other members of their executive for feedback, and most are swept away by their belief and passion. They are leaders, after all.

At this stage, most leaders are feeling pretty positive about the plan, yet this is where they go make a major misstep. They allow their enthusiasm for change to get in the way of the important work of fleshing out the plan with their people. This misstep is often the biggest challenge to overcome when trying to implement a substantial change initiative

When the leader ‘unveils’ their idea to the whole organization, the expectation is that members of the organization will be excited and leave the room ready to implement. Instead, the ideas are met with blank stares. The leader may mistake shock and dismay for acceptance. Shock and dismay eventually turn to anger and resistance.

In their enthusiasm for the new idea, leaders do not stop long enough to include enough of their people in the crafting of the plan. They have not sought input from people upon whom it will have the greatest personal impact.

How does this happen? No matter that they started with great intention, when people are not included in the formulation of the plan, that has a significant impact on their implementation of the plan. When people have input into the formulation, there is a greater probability that they will be more committed to it when it is time to implement.

The other missing piece is that when individuals feel voiceless or when they feel like they are having something done to them as opposed to being part of the process (having a voice), it becomes personal and the emotional part of their brain goes into overdrive, moving to defend and protect. This can cause the most elegant and well-crafted plan to go off the rails when it comes to execution. Refer to the first article in this series for more about the emotional part of the brain and why all change is so personal to people.

What to do?

What do we mean by including employees in the plan? Giving them voice? What it means is getting information from them about how the current situation is working or not working for them. It does mean that we hear how things could be improved without committing to specific actions at that stage of the process. It means painting a picture of how not changing is costing the company to create a sense of urgency for change.

What is doesn’t mean is mean that there will be full discussion about the change that normally occurs at the leadership level with all employees. Not only is it logistically impossible but it can cause entrenchment that can impede change. This can get people more fixated on their point of view based on their own self-interest. People can start to argue about the best way forward that favors their job or business unit as opposed to what is best for the organization.

It may even mean including a few select people who will participate in the full planning process who will represent that contingent’s point of view. It is also means getting feedback from employees as the implementation takes place so that we can improve the plan.

If a leader doesn’t understand the consequences of an employee feeling ‘voiceless’, then they will not engage them from an emotional standpoint the way that’s needed to in order to overcome the fear and resistance people naturally feel when there is change. By focusing on the opportunities to get the right feedback at the right time and in the right way you can overcome Trap #2 and have a much stronger chance of being able to implement the change required for your organization to succeed.

After all, all change personal!

Come back in mid-May for the third part in the All Change is Personal series, which will explore Trap #3: Leaders Not Having Enough Edge.

April 27, 2017 0 comment

Business Ops Leadership Management Strategy

All Change is Personal: How to develop a more agile workforce

by Bill Benjamin March 8, 2017

written by Bill Benjamin

It’s an astonishing statistic, but roughly two out of three change initiatives fail to meet their stated targets. This is significant since most companies must undertake moderate organizational changes at least once a year (and major changes every four or five years) due to disruption from technology, their industry and/or the competition.

As a senior leader, you’re likely either planning or implementing a change effort. For organizational changes to work, you’re going to need a workforce that has the flexibility, resiliency and emotional intelligence to handle the pressure of change. You’ll need to understand what happens to people’s brains during time of uncertainty and that all change is personal.

Leaders often fail in driving change initiatives because they fail to recognize that all change is personal. Specifically leaders fall into three traps, because they:

Don’t understand what happens to people’s brains when they experience change and how that can lead to resistance, apathy and even sabotage.
Make plans that don’t include other people, even though their plans affect those people.
Lack sufficient ‘edge’ to get the job done; e.g. they don’t deal decisively with people who are barriers to change.

In this three part blog series, we’ll look at each of these challenges.

Trap #1. Failing to Understand What Happens to People’s Brains When
They Experience Change

Under pressure, our brains are designed to be inflexible, resistant and rigid, not agile, open and adaptive. The brain is biologically designed to enhance our ability to survive.

The usual approach to change efforts don’t typically consider this neurological reality. Leaders bring in their ‘five point strategies’: communicate the strategy, put systems into operation, recognize successes, etc.

These ‘five point plans’ are what we call the ‘software’ of change. They’re effective at a tactical level to make change happen, like the ‘software’ programs of employees’ brains: ‘First, you do this, then you do that…’

However, if an individual’s ‘operating system’ (the emotional part of their brain) isn’t working properly because they feel threatened by change (as most people do), the most detailed planning process will have little or no impact as their brain won’t allow them to be flexible and agile. Using the computer analogy, new software will not work if the operating system is in jeopardy. Great leaders must understand this fundamental brain science if they hope to successfully lead through change. Our brain has two centers that are important when it comes to change: the amygdala (emotional system) and the prefrontal cortex (cognitive system).

Working memory of the brain sits in the prefrontal cortex. Working memory is the brain’s critical component allowing us to hold on to multiple ideas simultaneously and enabling us to engage in complex thinking. The prefrontal cortex allows us to think strategically, connect to a larger purpose, anticipate outcomes and adapt to changing situations.

The amygdala, the emotional part of our brain, alerts us to danger. It’s hyper-vigilant about keeping us safe, viewing change and uncertainty as a direct threat.

When the amygdala perceives change as a threat, it moves to “fight or flight” mode and overtakes or ‘hijacks’ the pre-frontal cortex, flooding working memory and diminishing complex thinking. We literally can’t think straight. We move to binary thinking: black, white; good, evil; right, wrong.

In this ‘hijacked’ state of mind, change becomes the black, evil, wrong side of the binary equation and we have trouble seeing beyond protection and defense. We can’t see what’s possible and be agile in a change initiative. We can’t see how adapting to the change might be good for the company and ourselves. This is when people move to behaviors like resisting, being defensive, complaining, and even sabotaging.

The amygdala looks for answers to personal questions like:

Will my social status change?
Will I have less influence?
Will I be as successful and competent?

These questions trigger the amygdala causing people to avoid change rather than approach it. The probability of success goes down. It sends employees into a default, defensive behavior as a means of protection, because the change has become personal to them

When people start to trigger emotionally and become resistant and inflexible, leaders have an opportunity to make a difference in both the change initiative and in their employees’ lives – if they can tune in to what each individual is feeling and understand vs. judge. Great leaders guide people through the personal aspects of the change, so they can be more agile and open.

Overcoming Trap #1

Start with Yourself!
When you come across behaviors that seem out of character for an individual, be mindful of your own reaction. Try not to take those default behaviors personally or become judgmental. Remember to think of it as an ‘operating system’ issue and not a behavioral problem.

In IHHP’s Science of Emotional Intelligence training, we start with each leader identifying their own triggers and behaviors during change. Then they learn tools and skills to manage their own emotional response so they can model for their people.

Build a Bridge
Tuning into employees’ emotions starts by building a bridge to greater understanding of what they’re experiencing. But this cannot be done in the usual way.

When we need to connect to another person, we typically begin to ‘build a bridge’ to them from our side. We explain why the change is important from our perspective. This makes sense and is the natural thing to do, but it’s not a great approach. It deludes us into thinking that we’re connecting with our employees when we really aren’t. There’s a better way.

Instead, we should start from their side of the bridge – from their perspective – and build the bridge backwards towards us. This one change in approach can make a tremendous difference in getting people to adopt change.

With this approach, we think about their needs. Usually, they need to:

Feel like they have a voice
Feel valued and to have their concerns and emotions acknowledged
Know they still have the opportunity to be successful and have influence.

When an individual senses their manager truly cares about them and they feel valued, their amygdala (emotional brain) feels safe, enabling them to engage their best executive functioning. Now the employee is able to support the change, see the opportunities and solutions, rather than avoid, complain and resist – because you addressed the personal aspect of the change.

In the next article in this series, we’ll explore Trap #2: not getting enough employee feedback to the change initiative.

March 8, 2017 0 comment

Business Ops Entrepreneurship Leadership Management sales Small Business Strategy

Managing the Pressure of Change

by JP Pawliw-Fry October 20, 2015

written by JP Pawliw-Fry

Enough books have been written and enough information is available that, by now, most leaders and managers understand what they need to do to manage change in their organization. They understand the need to get buy-in, secure credible senior sponsors, persuade key influencers in the organization and communicate, communicate, communicate. Some of the more sophisticated leaders also understand the need to manage the grieving process that can come with change; that there will be an inevitable sense of loss that their people will experience when significant change occurs in their organization.

After spending seven years studying more than 12,000 people who face intense pressure, it has become clear to us: what managers and leaders need most are tools and insights about how to manage the pressure of change that can get in the way of the best laid plans to manage change.

What shocked us over the course of our multiyear study is that most individuals take a haphazard approach to managing the pressure of change. They don’t understand that there is an emerging science that is providing a better understanding of what happens to the brain under pressure or how pressure can significantly alter behavior. They don’t understand that there are insights that are being developed and used in the neurological and sports sciences that offer new approaches to help manage the pressure that comes with change.

A classic experiment by psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson provides one of the clearest examples of how pressure can alter a behavior critical to change. Students at Princeton Theological Seminary unknowingly were part of the experiment. One morning, the students, presumed to be an ethical bunch given their field of study, were told they would be speaking across campus giving a lecture on the good Samaritan, the man who helps a stranger on the road while others, including a merchant, a Levite, and a priest, pass the beaten and robbed man by and leave him for dead.

What the students did not know was this: There was no appointment to lecture across campus. The researchers were interested in seeing who would stop and help a needy student on their way. They wondered, in a contemporary setting, what variables influenced helping behaviors such as offering assistance.

To test their hypothesis, they planted a man slumped in a doorway, coughing, groaning and in distress, on the path the students would travel. It would be very obvious to the students passing by that this man needed help. Half of the group were told that they were running late for their lecture or sermon, the other half were told that they were on time. In other words, the experimenters put half the students in a pressure situation.

Of those students who were on time, who did not feel under time pressure, 63 percent stopped to help the man in distress. Of the group who were told they were running behind schedule, only 10 percent stopped to help. Some frazzled students literally stepped over the victim on their way to the next building! Many of the subjects who did not stop appeared disturbed and anxious when they arrived, perhaps because they were in conflict between helping the victim and their appointment.

What can we learn from this study?

First, pressure can have far ranging and powerful effects. It can disrupt an individual’s best intentions, whether it’s 90% of divinity school students who chose not to help someone in distress because of pressure, or a leader who has been trained to properly manage change but fails to execute on it because of pressure. A good example of this is the simple act of listening and tuning in. While it’s clear that stopping long enough to listen is one of the most important activities a manager needs to do to manage change, many don’t. What they need is not more lecturing on how to listen but more tools to manage the pressure that is keeping them from doing so.

So what to do?

Become a student of human behavior. Learn how pressure affects your brain and your behavior. Make it a habit of doing your own ‘post-briefs’ (you can also do this with your teams). We do this with athletes after the Olympic Games and with leaders after significant events. We have them go back and clinically analyze how pressure affected the ‘Big 5’: emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, behaviors and performance. This can be invaluable as it provides a different kind of feedback. After doing it a few times, patterns become obvious. You start to see what led to better performances: the right amount of physiological arousal, the type of thinking that is best for you, or the situations that led to your not listening as well as you could have. Pressure affects everyone a bit differently which is why you need to work to gain personal insights. You can then use this information next time you’re under pressure, to put yourself in the best position to perform.
Change how you view the physical sensations in your body. One of the biggest differentiators of athletes who perform closer to their capability under pressure from those who do not is how they see the change in their body that pressure brings. Some feel the butterflies and sweaty palms and say to themselves: “I’m nervous.” Others feel the same sensations and say to themselves: “I’m excited”. It may seem small but the difference is significant. It changes brain chemistry (specifically the adrenaline/noradrenaline ratio) and it has a huge impact on behavior and performance. With more adrenaline, you approach the situation versus avoiding it. This not only affects your ability to perform the specific task at hand but it also impacts the people around you. They feed off of your approach and gain more confidence in you and in the change process you are undertaking. Often, the success of a change process takes a long time to reap benefits. It requires maintaining confidence in the middle of a situation when it ‘can feel like failure’ but is anything but. Confidence of a leader is critical at these junctures which is why it is imperative that they use a less haphazard approach to pressure.

The good news is that unlike IQ – which is concrete after age 16 and doesn’t change significantly after this age – learning tools to manage pressure is something that can be developed at any stage of a manager’s or leader’s career path. With a systematic approach and some courage to really look at yourself, you can develop the tools that will help you walk into your next change situation with more confidence.

October 20, 2015 0 comment

Leadership

Scrooge is Really Just a State of Mind

by Steve Mundahl December 9, 2013

written by Steve Mundahl

What did Dickens really show us in his famous Christmas story? Is it really about an old man who had given up hope in the joy of life, or is there a deeper lesson for us to learn?

Within us all is that crooked nosed humbug, Ebenezer Scrooge. Haven’t we all said “humbug” to neighbors who might not be able to speak our language, or “humbug” to those who put their hand out for a donation at the street corner?

Haven’t we all been guilty of pointing our own bony fingers and saying “I don’t feel like giving to you, I don’t feel like loving my odd family members and I certainly don’t feel love for those who don’t see eye to eye with me?”

Didn’t Dickens’ depiction of immortal Scrooge really describe a part of all of us? Even so, what is the real magic of this story?

Poor old Ebenezer taught us that the ghosts of the past in our own lives need to be forgiven and released. We all have ghosts… regrets, remorse, hurts from childhood. They haunt us in our sleep and follow us to the day we die, unless we wake up and see them for the thieves that they are. They are the bad dreams of Scrooge and ours as well.

We can make amends to others or forgive those who hurt us. We can learn lessons, change negative perceptions and become a better person. Perhaps we can’t whoosh it all away “in one night” but with a change of heart, a shift in how we view others, ourselves and the world, we can free ourselves up to be more alive in the present moment.

Speaking of the present, we all have ghosts here as well. Many of us work in jobs we dislike or live in relationships that have been dying a long protracted death with no intervention occurring. We do not fully pursue our dreams because we fear they will not manifest.

The spirits of today are the “I wishes”, the “I regrets” “I can’t” and the “If onlys.” But as Scrooge, we can finally believe and toss these robbers of our happiness a shilling for their attempts to keep us safe (and small) but bid them a firm, “goodnight.”

The ghost of Christmas future was the most frightening to Scrooge. Dickens painted this apparition as a black, silent, yet fearful vision. It frightened poor old Ebenezer to death, right to his gravesite, to an empty stone, to his own mortality.

Then something happened to our friend Scrooge. The chains that had bound him were tossed off. He opened the window of his soul and found that Christmas day had not passed.

His immortal words rang loud, “The spirits have done it all in ONE night,” he bellowed. His shift of perception, his change of heart changed everything in his life…. Everything.

Welcome the ghosts who haunt you and listen to their words for you… “Life can be changed! You can be a new Man or Woman! You deserve to be happy, to help your fellowman.” Is it Christmas day in your life? Or, will you be haunted for a bit longer? The choice really is yours you know… it isn’t too late, if Scrooge’s ghosts could do it in a single night, so can yours.

Steven Mundahl is President and CEO of Goodwill Industries in western Massachusetts, professor of leadership effectiveness at Bay Path College, and author of The Alchemy of Authentic Leadership about how true authentic leadership is an “inside job”. www.alchemyofauthenticleadership.com

December 9, 2013 0 comment

Self Governance

The Fine Line of Money and Success

by Guest Writter July 5, 2013

written by Guest Writter

Jeff Gitterman

Most classic success stories go something like this: “I had nothing, then discovered a new way of thinking, turned my life around and got everything I ever wanted…” I could tell you one such story. But that’s not really what this is about.

I started working in the financial field in 1990. That year, I made about $22,000. Ten years later I had clawed and climbed my way up to about $26,000, while also trying to support a wife and two kids, falling months behind with the mortgage payments, scared and unsure of my future. I had credit card debt, mortgage debt, car loans. Things looked pretty bleak.

One day, I was getting out of my car and about to walk into a prospect’s house to try and sell a term life policy. I was way behind on my bills, and my mind was going on and on about how much I needed the sale. Desperation poured out of me as I caught my reflection in the car window. I stopped, looked hard at that reflection and said to myself, “Who would want to buy anything from you? Look at how desperate you look!”

And then I figured something out. I had an epiphany—or an enlightened moment, whatever you want to call it, where I realized I was going about things completely the wrong way. I realized that I was focused on what I wanted, but not on what I was willing to give in order to get what I wanted, and as long as I approached my business in this way, I would never succeed.

I thought of the successful people in my office and realized that to some extent, they all had a confidence about themselves that I sorely lacked. And so I decided in that moment that I needed to drop my desperate, needy attitude and walk into this prospect’s house with the confidence of someone who didn’t want anything. I took one last look at my reflection and saw that I had taken on an air of serenity, and that’s when I began to realize that I really didn’t need anything, that deep down there was nothing for me to get. I dropped my need to make a sale. I became still and quiet.

I soon began to approach more of my clients this way, putting all my attention on them, without any desire or expectation for myself personally. And to my amazement, my meetings really started to transform and my success as a financial advisor grew exponentially.

From my observations and experience as a financial advisor, it seems that many people are in the same rut that I was in. They know what they want to get, but no one along the way ever told them that they’d have to be willing to give something first. Many, if not most of us have been taught to focus on getting the big dollars and the big job, whatever it is, but we rarely come to understand that what we get really has nothing to do with what we want to get.

If you’re solely focused on what you want to get, chances are you’ll get nothing. But when you figure out what you want to give and what you want to be—you can then have whatever you want. It’s a weird paradox, but the truth is that when you let go of wanting anything, you can have everything.

Although it sounds like a bit of a cliché, I was able to see firsthand as I was going through my own crisis around wealth and success that the more I gave to others; the more I received in return. I quickly began accomplishing more in the world and my income grew substantially. In addition to starting my own financial firm, I also became the chairman of the advisory board to The Autism Center of New Jersey Medical School, and started a fund- raiser that we now hold every year, which to date has raised over a million dollars for autism research.

Unfortunately, too many of us spend our whole lives waiting to get something from the world so that we can show up as the person we always knew we could be. Deep in our hearts we think there’s something missing. But when we flip that mindset, we can discover that by becoming a giver rather than a taker, we can become agents for change in the world. In the end, it was only through giving to others that I was able to find the kind of happiness that I was really looking for. This is one of the main things I learned when I began to look for what might lie “beyond success.”

(Adapted from Beyond Success: Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity – © 2009 Jeffrey L. Gitterman – All rights reserved – Published by AMACOM Books – A Division of the American Management Association – www.amacombooks.org.)

About the Author

Jeff Gitterman is an award winning financial advisor and the CEO of Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC. www.gawmllc.com. In 2004, he was honored by Fortune Small Business Magazine as “One of Our Nation’s Best Bosses,” and his first book, Beyond Success; Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity, was recently published by the American Management Association (AMACOM) www.BeyondSuccessConsulting.com .

Over the past several years, Jeff has been featured in Money Magazine, CNN, Financial Advisor, London Glossy, Affluent Magazine, and New Jersey Business Journal, among others. He also serves as chairman of the advisory board to the Autism Center of New Jersey Medical School, an organization that to date has raised over a million dollars for autism research and support services.

July 5, 2013 0 comment