#HR #RRHH Making love and making personal #branding #leadership

Friedman profiles luminaries including Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, and Sheryl Sandberg in his book and shows how they gradually became leaders. He shows the skills they exercised and how they integrate different parts of their life together.

Friedman says he chose subjects who possess what he calls the three principles of total leadership: "Being real, acting with authenticity and knowing your values and vision; being whole, respecting the whole person and knowing there are different parts of your work, community, and personal lives that affect each other; and being innovative, constantly learning and experimenting in new ways to get things done."

Like thousands of professionals all over the country, you're trying your best to stay organized, keep your appointments, and still churn out the countless hours of work you need to keep pushing your company forward.

Most of us aspire to conquer more and more work in less and less time, but since none of us can cram more hours into the day (despite our best efforts), increasing our productivity is the best we can do. Even so, in some cruel twist of irony, most "productivity enhancers," like going to the gym every morning, seem to add more effort to our already busy lives. Instead, try one or more of these 15 productivity hacks--which you can execute and experiment with immediately:

The workplace is a melting pot of personalities--no surprise there! All types of employees must work together and are expected to overcome personal differences to reach a common goal. But ethics, cultural norms, and temperament can sometimes cause friction.

Let's discuss temperament. All employee groups will exhibit two main types: introverts and extroverts. Each type can interact very differently in the workplace. One may be better suited for leadership than the other. But can you always tell which is which?

Our brains are hardwired to make much of modern life difficult. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with uncertainty. On the bright side, if you know the right tricks, you can override your brain’s irrational tendencies and handle uncertainty effectively.

Our brains give us fits when facing uncertainty because they’re wired to react to it with fear. In a recent study, a Caltech neuroeconomist imaged subjects’ brains as they were forced to make increasingly uncertain bets—the same kind of bets we’re forced to make on a regular basis in business.

Make it okay to ask questions

“We have weekly Q&A sessions where the whole company comes together. This was true when we were 20 people and it’s true now when we’re closer to 100. People can ask questions of [CEO Adam D'Angelo], of other managers, or each other. It's really about being encouraging of what people what to know about in the company.

The second area is making it okay to ask outside. We feel comfortable consulting with other companies we might have some connections with, where they might have similar challenges, where we might learn if we share best practices with each other. An example: Recently, we hosted a roundtable where startups came to Quora to talk about infrastructure. A lot of us use Amazon Web Services and we were starting to think about how we could improve cost. We wanted to learn from bigger companies and smaller companies what they had taken on."

Pope Francis has approval ratings any leader could envy: 88 percent of American Catholics think he's doing a good job, and nearly three quarters of Americans in general view him with favor. What is he doing right?

To answer that question, business author Jeffrey A. Krames examined His Holiness's approach from a leadership perspective, and the result is Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. Though a non-Catholic, Krames was inspired to write about the pontiff because he is the child of Holocaust survivors, he explains. "When I saw Pope Francis, I thought he was the anti-Hitler."

Here are some practices that make Pope Francis so effective--and that any business leader could use:

1. Reach out to non-customers.