A lot of self-help books and motivational speakers have a simple message when it comes to optimism – if you believe in yourself, then you will achieve success.  But there is one problem with this little mantra, according to psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson – it’s not true.

The focus on achieving success almost effortlessly, if only you have the proper mindset, is more than false, it can be downright harmful.  It can itself lead to failure.

Halvorson is not arguing against optimism.  It is true, she says, that those who are successful are precisely the people who believe they will be successful.  Many experiments have proven so.

What Halvorson takes issue with is the idea that success, if only we believe, will come easily, that it won’t require much effort.  It’s the difference between being realistic and being naive.

Those who are optimists, but also know the reality of life, know that they are responsible for making success happen. (As basketball coach John Wooden put it, “If you don’t work, nothing else will.”)  They know that success only will come with careful planning, sustained effort, tenacity, and overcoming obstacles.  Realistic optimists know they have to prepare and work, and this work is self-reinforcing – it only gives them more confidence in their ultimate success.

But people who are unrealistic believe that all it takes is the right attitude – if you believe, it will happen, somehow magically.  They don’t believe it must be self-generated, but that optimism is enough to bring it from some external source.

Those who are realistic know that achieving success won’t be any walk in the park.  It will be tough, it will require overcoming obstacles, it will require sacrifice and effort.  Realistic optimists put in more effort, plan for how they will deal with obstacles before they come up, and persist longer in the face of adversity.

Those who are unrealistic see thoughts about difficulty and problems merely as negative thinking, something to be avoided, rather than something to embrace and contend with.  They focus only on what they want, and do not consider anything else.

Yes, you need to have a positive attitude, but you also need to have a realistic perspective on adversity.  As Halvorson says, don’t just visualize success, visualize the steps you are going to take to be successful.

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When you are facing a really big, complex challenge, it may look impossible to achieve. But before becoming too discouraged, the best course to take may be to break the project down into a series of small tasks, to make it more manageable. Each task then has a specific, achievable goal.

By doing this, you can reduce anxiety, make your course of action easier to figure out, and increase your chances of some quick successes along the way to your final goal, which will motivate you to keep going.

This is especially true in the business environment.  Research has shown that it is important for workers who are tackling complex problems to be able to experience success along the path to their final goal. With big, complicated projects, problems are going to arise often, and so if workers cannot experience some small achievements along the way, their morale and motivation will suffer.  So, it is important that workers be able to realize some small achievement, no matter how minor.  In fact, some business experts have argued that big, overarching goals are generally so obvious and so broad that they really don’t offer much to go on that relates to the day-to-day work to accomplish the goal.  They advise setting goals incrementally.

Even in our personal lives, setting up small goals and achieving them can be important.  We need to think about the small victories we have, not just the major ones.  An example of this involves people who are suffering from depression.  Often, their condition prevents them from following an exercise program, even though exercise has been proven to combat depression.  As a result, a goal such as working out for an hour a day can be out of reach for someone in this situation.  So, instead of trying to do everything at once, which in this case would be going to the gym, the person could break it down into more workable parts, such as taking a short walk.  Then by keeping track of the walks, and recognizing this small achievement in this way, the depressed person can build up to a workout at the gym.

These small successes are important for all of us to keep our well being on the positive side.  Studies have shown that big changes in life do not usually have effects that are lasting. But  routine boosts from our little achievements each day can have lasting effects.

Call Winston Resources when you’ve set a staffing goal of finding terrific temporary employees. We can provide your Manhattan-area company with top marketing, administrative, healthcare, IT, accounting, legal, human resources, publishing, and real estate professionals. Contact us today to learn more about how strategic staffing can help your business succeed.

How can you as a leader help your employees realize their capabilities?

Here are a few ideas from one business analyst.

1) Perhaps one of the most important things to do is listen.  Listen to your employees’ ideas, and to their career goals and aspirations.  You may not have the same opinion that they do about the possibility of achieving their goals, but they deserve to be heard.  By listening, asking questions, and showing your interest, you encourage their desire to do things, to achieve things, which ultimately will keep your workers more engaged with their jobs, happier and more productive.

For example, even if you don’t think the innovative idea mentioned by an employee will really work, or you don’t think  that the employee really has the ability to take on the job he or she aspires to, you owe it to the worker to honor his or her ambition.

2) Take the time to look for what is positive about an employee’s performance or ideas.  For many managers, the first instinct is to be negative, under the mistaken assumption that if you encourage an employee with something you will be taking away resources from the company.  It’s a kind of view that looks at the world as a zero sum game.  If the employee’s pie gets bigger, the company’s pie has to get smaller.

But when you take the time to look for the positive aspects of an employee’s idea or ambition, it becomes a way of growing the pie.  And it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of work on your part.  For example, you could ask an employee who is looking to move up the ladder to come up with a plan as to how he would do the job he or she is seeking, with an eye toward how the move will benefit employees, managers,  the entire company.  This allows you to show your interest and allows the employee to think strategically.

3) Even when you are looking for the positive aspects of an employee’s abilities and performance, you still may not be convinced the worker can handle the job he or she is seeking.  If that is the case, it may be more helpful to step back and analyze a little all of the various skills the employee has developed.  By doing this, you may be able to find a particular skill in which the employee excels, one that can really help the company and the employee’s performance. You then can adjust the worker’s duties accordingly.

As one business analyst has said, great leaders find out what is unique about each worker and focus on it and use it.

Let Winston Resources help your New York City-area company achieve its goal of finding the best temporary and direct-hire workers available. We look forward to hearing from you!

The pursuit of wealth is something we are all actively engaged in – after all, it’s part of what we define as the American Dream.  Yet, all too often we see news stories about people whose lust for wealth leads them to do stupid, unethical and even criminal things.

Some of the more well-known stories in recent history include Enron and the sub-prime mortgage scandals.

It has led some business experts to ponder the question of how much is too much?  Why do smart people. who obviously have more money than they will ever need. do such crazy things that could jeopardize their entire fortune and reputation?  Why are so many people who have so much money still so dissatisfied?

Indeed, these are questions for all business people who are striving to build wealth.  One person who has thought a lot about business, work, money, and success is Jacob Needleman, a university researcher.

What gets people into trouble with money is that they are not honest with themselves about how important or unimportant it is to them, he says.  You cannot ignore the fact of money in our culture. And if you do not understand how Americans connect to money in our culture, then you are sure to have problems.  If you do not honestly know your relationship to money, you don’t really know yourself, Needleman says.

As far as the old saying goes, “Money can’t buy happiness,” Needleman agrees.  He says that your life is not determined nearly as much by what’s outside as by what is inside.  If you are an anxious poor person, you’ll be an anxious rich person.  Having a lot of money is not going to change your personality.

Also, having a lot of money doesn’t make you an expert in everything.  You may know a lot about how to make money, but don’t fool yourself into believing you have suddenly become a polymath.

And being wealthy does not always magically confer fulfillment and contentment.  Money and success are not the same thing.  To use all of your abilities to the utmost, to be completely caught up in what you do, that, for Needleman, is to be successful.  He stresses the importance of the immaterial, the spiritual.  The joy, struggle and challenge of doing hard work, work that you love.  Developing yourself as an individual, and developing your character, to him, is the pinnacle of success.

Let Winston Resources help you in your pursuit of career success. We have many direct-hire, as well as temporary and temp-to-hire opportunities with some of Manhattan’s top employers. Contact us today!

Sooner or later it’s something we all must deal with – failure.  How we respond to it and how we learn from it can make a significant difference on the path our career takes.

How should we approach failure?  How should we think about it?  Here are a few thoughts on thinking about something we’d rather not think about.

One thing to consider after a failure was your passion for the task.  How enthusiastic were you about it?  How deep was your interest and motivation to the task?  Often our desire to succeed is driven by forces outside of us – approval from others, the desire for money or recognition.  There may be little intrinsic motivation involved, and that may have something to do with the fact that the effort failed.  You simply may not have cared enough about what you were doing.  And without that intrinsic drive, it is harder to make a success out of what you are doing.  So you need to ask yourself, was what you were doing a calling that came from within, or from something external?

Another thing to look at is your expectations about the project or task at hand.  Have you raised them too high in relation to your skills and experience?  No one expects a neophyte to perform like a seasoned pro.  So you need to consider whether you have asked too much of yourself.  Did you achieve all that you could given the circumstances and your capabilities?  And should you be more satisfied with your performance?  In other words, are you being too hard on yourself?

You need to challenge yourself, but you also need to set realistic expectations about what can be accomplished.

Another question to ask yourself is whether you did everything you could to make your efforts successful.  It’s a question only you can answer – did you give it everything you had?  Did you try all avenues possible to reach your goal?  If not, why not?  Did you have the right attitude, or were you not completely confident of success from the start?

Finally, you need to be willing to learn from your failure. If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently or the same?  Would you just change a few things or do a major overhaul?  The idea here is to learn from failure, and not repeat it.

If your career hasn’t taken the turns you would have liked and you’ve decided that needs to change today, contact Winston Resources. We can help you find a new position and/or career with one of Manhattan’s top companies. Contact us today!

Having trouble reaching your goals?  Here are few suggestions for getting where you want to go from Heidi Grant Halvorson, a motivational psychologist.

First, be as precise as possible.  When you set a goal to find a new job that you enjoy, for example, you need to specify the exact type of job you want, not just simply set as your goal to “find new job.”

Do it now.  Take advantage of an opportunity to make steps toward your goal.  When you have the time, make the effort to move toward your goal.  Revamp your resume, if getting a new job is a goal.  But to do this, you need to decide beforehand exactly when and where you are going to take the step toward your goal.  Tell yourself, “Monday and 2 o’clock, I will start reworking my resume,” for example.

Keep tabs on your progress.  How much have you accomplished so far, and how much farther do you have left to go?  If you don’t know how your progress is going, you can’t make adjustments if you need to.

Be prepared to work.  When you start out, be confident about achieving your goal, but realize that it is going to take hard work, and prepare yourself for that.

Think about getting better.  You need to focus on taking small steps at improvement, because improvement will come.  You can improve.  Abilities can be acquired with practice.  You can change.

Be tough.  You need to keep at it even when you encounter obstacles.  You need to make a commitment to your long-term goals and stick with it.  Not sure you have the toughness?  Again, persistence, planning and effort will go a long way to help you develop that toughness.

Build willpower by doing something every day that you would rather not do.  Like anything else, you can build willpower through practice.  Start with something small, and plan how you will tackle the difficulties when they occur.  It will be hard at first, but as you work at it, it will become easier.  Discipline in just one area begets discipline in other areas, if you keep with it. Just do one thing that requires discipline every day. Soon enough, you’ll find that you discipline “muscle” has grown exponentially.

By the same token, don’t take on more than you can handle.  Don’t try and do too much at once.

Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.  You’re not going to break a bad habit by just stopping it.  It will be much easier to break by replacing it with a good habit instead.  So focus on what you are going to do to establish that good habit.

If you’re looking for a new position in the Manhattan area, the one thing you can do today is contact a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you find a new direction within one of the many temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire positions we have with some of New York’s top firms. Contact us today!

Companies should look at the times they fail as opportunities for learning important lessons — and could come back more successful as a result.

So says research from the University of Colorado Denver School of Business.

The research found that lessons learned from success weren’t as helpful as the knowledge learned from failure. Company management tended to retain the lessons learned when projects or initiatives failed longer than when companies succeeded in certain projects or met goals.

Organizations shouldn’t try to push failure to the back of management’s minds and move on to the next project or initiative, the study found. The study also reported that organizations should rethink the knee jerk reaction to failure — the firing of those held responsible. Instead, researchers suggested keeping managers of failed initiatives and projects, debriefing them regarding what they believe were their mistakes, and then applying them later, as applicable.

In addition, researchers encouraged employers to neither ignore failure nor brand employees responsible for the outcome as failures. Failures instead should be looked at as great chances to learn and share the information throughout the organization.

When you need professionals to help you do the work that your New York City firm needs doing, contact Winston Resources. We will source, vet and place some of Manhattan’s most reliable workers at your firm in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire assignments — whatever you need to help you company thrive. Contact us today!

Are there companies you admire, businesses you would like to emulate? If so, chances are these successful enterprises have an ethos of goal setting and achieving among employees at all levels.

Here are some tips to help you get all of your employees to set personal work goals:

You may have to require that all employees set goals. Not everyone is a goal setter and several of your employees may feel intimated by the process. Be gentle but firm in your mandate and be sure to offer as much guidance as employees need.

Be sure every goal set by an employee is measurable. That is, stay away from “gut feelings” and other esoteric measurements. If, for example, an employee’s goal is to “improve my attitude,” ask him how he’ll measure that improvement. And look at what’s really causing him to be known as having a “poor attitude.” Is he chronically late? Does he continually miss deadlines? Perhaps a better goal may to be “arrive on time every day” or “complete projects a day before they’re due.”

Give your employees the chance to set their goals. People tend to reach goals they’ve set themselves as opposed to reaching those mandated by others. Don’t let employees set goals carte blanche (see above). Get their input, let them put together first drafts and then let you and/or department managers tweak as necessary.

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. There’s nothing like a deadline to focus one’s mind. What’s that old saw? “Dreams are but goals without a deadline”? It’s human nature; people tend to let things lie undone if not given an expected end date.

Visit with your employees periodically to gauge progress. Look at these not as a chance to micro-manage your staff but as a time to ask questions, offer solutions to delays, and to make sure employees aren’t focusing on one goal at the expense of others.

Speaking of multiple goals, keep the number of goals to a minimum. Too many goals can lead to an unfocused effort to reach them.

Finally, aim to get the goals in alignment with your company’s own goals and strategy. These are work goals after all, and every employee’s goals for work should somehow relate and contribute to the company’s.

Call Winston Resources when it’s time to set a strategic staffing goal. We can provide your Manhattan-area company with top marketing, administrative, healthcare, IT, accounting, legal, human resources, publishing, and real estate professionals. Contact us today to learn more about how strategic staffing can help your business succeed.