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HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF COOL AT WORK AT ALL TIMES

Anger makes extraordinary people doing ordinary things. Instead of leading with wisdom and skill, they act in ways that thwart their own intentions. This would be astonishing if it weren’t so common. For example, your top customer cancels a big deal. You want to tear his head off. Instead, after he leaves, you scream at two people on your team. Later, when your peer misses a big deadline, you quietly seethe and avoid her. Then, just when things have "settled down," your boss undercuts you in a presentation. You go numb and forget everything.

Fight, flee, or freeze: Three paths by which talented people act against their own interests. Neuroscience tells us why. The amygdala, stress hormones, and the heart are key protagonists. You may know that certain practices you do at home—like yoga, meditation, mindful strength training, and lots of water—increase your odds of responding skillfully.

But what strategies can you practice on the job? Right when you’re about to fight, flee, or freeze, how can you shift your response? In short, what does it take to lead skillfully when you’re ticked off?

In my two decades of work developing leaders, the following eight strategies have proved helpful, particularly when part of a repertoire of responses applied selectively to situations. In tense moments, they help you do something rather unusual: simultaneously take care of yourself, the other person, and the relationship.

1. THE PARAPHRASE

Repeat back what you heard. Your colleague sarcastically says you missed another deadline. You want to defend yourself or attack him. Instead, say, "Bob, let’s make sure I understand you. You’re saying you received the report from me late. Is that correct?"

Paraphrasing may seem like a waste of breath, but it accomplishes two things. First, you confirm what Bob actually said, not what made it through your mind’s filters. Second, you stay connected with Bob just when you feel like fighting.

2. THE GENTLE PROBE

Ask the other person to tell you more—what happened, what it means, how they feel, etc. "Bob, I'm guessing this had a negative impact on you. Tell me about that." Or, "Bob, I’m committed to meeting deadlines, so I'm curious: Was this an isolated incident, or are there other examples?"

The gentle probe is so unexpected that it can jolt both of you out of habitual patterns.

3. THE PAUSE

Sometimes the difference between carelessness and wisdom is five seconds. This is how long it takes to pause, breath deeply, and consider an appropriate response. When you notice yourself getting upset, try this:

• Acknowledge: "I'm hearing that (rephrase what you heard)."
• Declare a pause: "Give me a moment to digest that."
• Pause.
• Respond

4. THE THREE BREATHS

Feel your feet on the ground and wiggle your toes to lower your focus of attention. Take three deep breaths. For bonus points feel your breath entering your feet. Now respond. You can combine this approach with any other strategy.

5. THE TIMEOUT

What about those times when neither a five-second pause nor three breaths does the trick? What can you do when you're so riled up that any action is likely to cause harm? Call a timeout.

• Declare it. Say, "I'm realizing that despite our best intentions, this conversation isn't going well. Let's take a breather and come back in 30 minutes/tomorrow/next week. Will that work?"
• Calmly step away, get off the phone, or close out the screen. Graceful exits are nice, but a clumsy exit beats hanging around until things turn sour.

6. THE DO-OVER

Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, you realize that you just put your foot in your mouth by saying something harmful. Your first instinct? Ignore it or berate yourself. But consider an alternative: acknowledge you messed up and self-correct. For example, when you catch yourself criticizing someone, pause, take a breath, and say, "Wait—let me rephrase that. What I mean to say is___."

7. THE SLOW-MO

If the conversation appears to be spinning out of control, shift into a lower gear. Slow down the pace of your speech. Pause more frequently. Let others finish—really finish—what they are saying. Whatever it takes to slow down, and however awkward it feels, do it.

8. NAME THAT EMOTION

Okay, so you’re already familiar with emotional intelligence. But how well can you name the emotion you are feeling right now? Most people react emotionally without knowing what’s driving them. They don’t own their emotions. Their emotions own them. To turn this around, learn the vocabulary of emotions—like the difference between irritation and anxiety or between contentment and joy—and employ it on the job. Name your emotions for yourself. When appropriate, name them for others.

Using these eight strategies in difficult situations can help you improve the quality of your conversations. The people who matter most to you will appreciate this—and trust you in more ways than you can imagine. Also, by deliberately practicing the strategies throughout your life, you will grow—not only as a leader, but also as a human being.

(Credit : http://www.fastcompany.com/3044892/work-smart/how-to-keep-your-cool-at-work-at-all-times)

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At What Age Do Our Intellectual Abilities Peak?

When it comes to ability, conventional wisdom says age matters. At one end of the spectrum is the belief that mental sharpness peaks early, a viewpoint enforced by the college-aged entrepreneurs currently raising billions in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, there exists a simultaneous, parallel narrative, one that equates experience with intelligence (consider that we've never elected a U.S. president younger than 43, and aren't legally allowed to elect anyone under 35).

From a cognitive standpoint, which position holds more sway? Do our intellectual abilities peak in our mid-20s, or do they continue to ripen with age?

According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, the answer is yes to both.

When neuroscientists at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital gathered data from nearly 50,000 individuals aged 10 to 71 on a wide variety of online cognitive tasks, they found substantial variances in the relationship between age and intellectual abilities. Performance on processing speed, for example, peaked and began to decline early, around high school graduation; verbal and visual working memory tasks plateaued in the mid-30s; emotion-perception gradually crested in late middle-age. Finally, vocabulary continued to steadily climb into the 60s and beyond.

"These findings motivate a nuanced theory of maturation and age-related decline, in which multiple, dissociable factors differentially affect different domains of cognition," the authors write. "On the practical side, not only is there no age at which humans are performing at peak on all cognitive tasks, there may not be an age at which humans perform at peak on most cognitive tasks."

This view of human ability – one that recognizes the existence of multiple, co-existing intelligences, each with its own individual life-cycle -- helps explain why many personal renaissances arrive later in life: Harland Sanders started KFC his 60s, Ray Kroc opened McDonald’s in his early 50s, Steve Jobs spearheaded the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iMac after the age of 45.

Of course, certain abilities do, in fact, favor the young. “A lot of what it comes down to — are you cognitively able to do it?” James C. Kaufman, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut,recently told The New York Times. “Most software developers don’t suddenly start at 60."  Attempting to develop a new skill at an age where your ability is already waning, the deck is literally stacked against you. “It is generally very difficult to get a late start in a field that requires lots of fluid intelligence from the get-go,” Dean Keith Simonton, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis told the outlet.

This, of course, gets at the root of Silicon Valley's youth obsession; some of the bias is founded in fact. But the blanket statements often bandied about – "people under 35 are the people who make change happen…people over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas," venture capitalist Vinod Khosla famously pronounced – are oversimplifications.  

Engineering, programming and coding are skills ideally acquired before middle-age, but entrepreneurship itself is not a profession reserved for the young. A recent report from the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity found that the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. happens in the 45-54 age bracket, with a considerable amount occurring in the 55-64 demographic. Meanwhile, when a team of researchers looked into the backgrounds of 502 successful engineering and technology American companies founded between 1995 and 2005, they discovered that the median age of their founders was a nearly middle-aged 39.

In fields like law, psychoanalysis and entrepreneurship, lead-time is important; peaks often crest late. It’s important, then, to step back and recognize the shifting abilities that course through us: There is no magic formula, or magic age, when it comes to starting a business.

Source : http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244288