Connection

Understanding how others think is critical to influencing them and getting results.  It’s the key to persuading people and moving them to action.

My new eBook, How To Think Like A CEO, helps you look inside the brain of your CEO.  Doing so will help you take stock of your own professional strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve been privileged in my career to work with dozens of CEOs. I’ve seen inside their boardrooms, and been part of some of their most private conversations, when they often feel the most vulnerable. It’s through these defining moments that I’ve gained insights into how CEOs think and what they care about most.

In How To Think Like A CEO, I list the top 10 things that a CEO cares about and provide a self-reflection point for each.  These care-abouts include:

1. Defining , then aligning people to a common vision or goal
2. Growing leaders, especially future leaders
3. Making everyone in the organization feel valued
4. Defining the organization’s core competencies
5. Balancing the focus on today and the future

And five more!

Getting this insight into the practical behaviors and skills that work for the most effective leaders can be a big help as you decide which strategies might work best for your organization.  You’ll see just how employees  build credibility as a strategic advisor if they start thinking more like a CEO.

Whether you’re a freelancer, small-business owner, or full-timer, to climb the ladder, you must know how to lead the pack. Are you destined to be the big boss or be bossed around? To find out, take a look at these 10 characteristics shared by great business leaders:
1. Persistence, Persistence, Persistence
In the 1890s, Henry Ford came up with the Ford Quadricycle, a vehicle made up of a frame mounted on four large bicycle wheels with an ethanol-powered engine. Needless to say, it wasn’t a success. Ford later founded the Ford Motor F +0.81% Company, invented the Model T, and became one of the wealthiest men in the world. Do you try, fail, and pick yourself back up again? Bingo!
2. Thick skin. Rhino-thick.
Walt Disney DIS +0.8%’s editor at the Kansas City Star told him that he had no good ideas and lacked imagination. He could have taken the harsh words to heart and given up the creativity ghost. Instead he went on to become the most successful animator of all time, winning 22 Academy Awards, creating characters like Mickey Mouse, and opening his own theme park. Today, Walt Disney is one of the world’s most ubiquitous household name brands, synonymous with creativity.
3. An Eye for Talent
It takes a village to make amazing things happen. That’s why great leaders surround themselves with other great minds. Steve Jobs was always on the hunt for talent in unique ways, like accepting invitations to lecture at universities so he could scout potential employees. Jobs personally interviewed over 5,000 applicants during his lifetime, managing all the hiring for his team.
4. Can’t Get No Satisfaction
What do Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have in common? All are billion dollar companies that started in dorm rooms. Great business leaders are never satisfied and continually strive to take their business to the next level. As Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, said, “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.”
5. Fearlessness
When Richard Branson was younger, his aunt bet him that he couldn’t learn to swim during their family vacation. After failing to master the skill during the trip, on the drive home, he asked his father to pull over the car. He jumped into a river, swam, and won the bet. Today, Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, which is made up of over 400 companies, believes in a philosophy of taking risks and stepping out of your comfort zone. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules,” Branson said. “You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
6. Owning Your Mistakes
After Amazon deleted copies of unauthorized versions of Animal Farm and 1984 from users’ Kindles, there was an immediate negative backlash. Not only did Amazon cop to the mistake in an official press statement, CEO Jeff Bezos personally apologized, admitting that the company’s solution to the problem was “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” He also offered, “deep apologies to our customers.”
7. Toughness
If you want to lead in the business world, you’re going to have to stand up for yourself. “When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough,” advised Donald Trump. Michael Bloomberg agreed, saying at a commencement ceremony that, “In the business world, it’s dog-eat-dog,” and, “you occasionally have to throw some elbows.”
8. Winning Friends and Influencing People
But don’t take the tough act too far. People work better for managers they like. John D. Rockefeller said, “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable as a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other thing under the sun.” Mark Cuban put things a little more simply: “People hate dealing with people who are jerks. It’s always easier to be nice than to be a jerk. Don’t be a jerk.”
9. Singular Vision
It all starts with an idea. Howard Schultz envisioned a single brand with coffeehouses across the globe. He turned that dream into a reality and founded Starbucks. “I think if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got to dream big, and then dream bigger,” he said. “It’s seeing what other people don’t see and pursuing that vision.”
10. Powerfully Passionate
Above all, a true leader is passionate about whatever venture he or she is undertaking. As Jobs said, “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” Oprah Winfrey also had some powerful words on the subject. “Passion is energy,” she said. “Feel the power that comes from doing whatever excites you.”

Some lessons and skills can only be learned the hard way.

Making sure the projector bulbs work before that big presentation is one. Withholding your wardrobe opinions with your wife is another. Making sure you bring your phone charger on a trip another.

There are also a few serious lessons that effective leaders must learn the hard way. In fact the hard way is the only way these lessons and the ensuing skills are ever learned.

They must be experienced, not explained. Caught not just taught.

If you lead a business or an organization of any size there will be losses - be they deals, battles, alliances, partners, businesses, customers or vendors.

Most great leaders have been shaped by their losses as much if not more than their victories. Lincoln lost a child, and a key election. Jefferson lost his wife and only two of his six children made it to adulthood. Steve Jobs lost his job and his company. Nelson Mandela lost his freedom.

It becomes a core leadership skill to suffer and grieve loss, and yet keep moving. But words like tenacious and persistence that adorn the motivational posters are glib and shallow antidotes to the true challenge of loss.

Grief is an unfavored task. The inner struggle of grief is ugly, unpredictable, and emotional. That is why the impulse is to either ignore loss or be totally consumed by it. But leaders who go there find a resupply for their interior world. It profoundly changes their leadership.

But it is a lesson that can only be learned the hard way.

When the conflicting perspectives overtake certainty, directions are vague, the data incomplete yet you must act before the outcome is clear. That is ambiguity, and it demands movement without guarantees. It is where leaders must grapple with an uncomfortable fickleness and unpreparedness.

Here we can note the likes of Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, Reagan during the height of the cold war. Google has navigated enormous ambiguity in their business models while the true value of search engines evolved. And Elon Musk (Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX) would likely have a thing or two to say about it.

While you might prefer to hide behind analysis or to power forward blindly on ego, the greatest leaders are able to remain suspended in the middle ground of uncertainty, curiosity and unresolved issues yet keep moving forward.

If loss requires movement amid grieving, ambiguity requires movement without guarantees.

The old maxim "nobody dangles gracefully" is the underlying sentiment. And it is a hard lesson to learn the hard way.

The third life lesson has to do with the inequities and injustices of life. The partisanship, biases and special interests that favor against your leadership.

They are going to happen in one's leadership tenure. Guaranteed.

If the first two require leading amid loss and leading without guarantees, this one requires leading with the tide against you.

Maturing as a leader means not letting the inequities lead you, but accepting their reality as merely the context for your decisions and actions.

Leadership examples abound in this category, from Martin Luther King, Jr. in the US to Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic to the steps Microsoft has taken against technology piracy in China.

Just because things don't go your way does not mean you are a poor leader. In fact that is when leadership truly begins. Any leader who can relate to these three life and leadership lessons have this in common.

They learned them the hard way.

The lessons may not have been pleasant, but have served well to confirm and establish their leadership capacity in ways a classroom could never have taught.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

The two men are among the most successful entrepreneurs of the past fifty years. Gates grew richer, becoming the wealthiest man in the world, while Jobs touched more industries, including movies, music, TV and phones.

The two men have always been compared to each other, as both men were born in 1955 and have competed against each other as they rose to success. People ask, who was more innovative? (Probably Jobs). Who had a better business mind? (Probably Gates).

But who hired better? After all, both men weren’t just superstars by themselves, they had teams of people who helped push their companies forward. So who was better at identifying and bringing on top talent?

Well, without further ado, we’ll break down the way both men hired, and then determine a winner.

How Bill Gates Hired

When Gates was around at Microsoft, candidates didn’t go on job interviews.

They took IQ tests.

Gates, at his foundation now, talks about skill-based hiring. In other words, he doesn’t care what school you went to or how many years of experience. (In fact, too many years is seen as a detriment.)

Instead, he focuses on if you have the skills to do the job. And, at Microsoft, the primary skill was intelligence.

Interviews at Microsoft included incredibly difficult riddles to gauge intelligence. And Gates was opposed to hiring people with too much experience, preferring candidates with brilliant, untrained minds who would be known as “little Bills”.

One genius move by Gates was that Microsoft couldn’t pay the same high salaries as his competitors in the early years, so he offered them stock options. That aligned their motives with his, and ultimately resulted in Microsoft creating approximately 10,000 millionaires.

Those payouts obviously didn’t hurt Gates either, considering that he became the richest man in the world. An obvious example of how paying people more can actually make companies more money.

How Steve Jobs Hired

Jobs put a premium on hiring, as he believed “hiring the best” was the most important job of a manager. He never delegated the task, conducting over 5,000 interviews himself, as he believed there was a huge difference between the very best and the pretty good.

“I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1,” Jobs said. “A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

During the hiring process, Jobs focused on finding people who share Apple’s vision, who were innovative and, most importantly of all, loved what they were going to be hired for. In other words, he put a lot of emphasis on soft skills, instead of just the skill of the candidate.

The actual hiring process at Apple is unique, as the first-round interview is often a group interview, where 25 candidates are considered. There, Apple employees look for leaders out of that 25, while eliminating the wallflowers.

The candidates that pass through then generally have to go through two more traditional interviews before finally getting the job. Again, for high-end positions, Jobs himself would be involved in the last interview.

So, Who Hired Better?

So who did it better? One thing about Jobs’ strategy is that it was more compressive than Gates, in that it put more of an emphasis on soft skills. The group interviews are a good example of that, as people are really screened on how they interact with others.

However, although this isn’t directly related to hiring, we love Gates’ compensation plan. By giving employees stock options, it tied Gates’ incentives to his workers. That led to both becoming very rich.

So who did it better? Well, for that we have to look at their most important hire, the people who replaced them.

Jobs had Tim Cook replace him as CEO when he died in 2011. Cook has been solidif not spectacular, as Apple continues to be one of the most successful and innovative companies in America.

Gates, conversely, tabbed Steve Ballmer to replace him as CEO in 2000. While Microsoft is still a successful company, it became much less innovative under Ballmer and fell behind in key areas like smartphones and tablets. Also, he is sort of insane (but so are we, so who’s to judge).

Obviously, both Gates and Jobs were great at just about everything, including hiring, or else they wouldn’t be the successes they are today. But, gun to our head, largely because of the Cook decision alone, the edge goes to Jobs.

We can talk all day about the importance of employees with stellar communication skills but it sure is nice when an outside group – and one not even connected to the communications field – takes up the case for us.

That happened this year when the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released its Corporate Recruiters Survey report. The annual survey by this well-respected group gauges the demand for MBA graduates among Fortune 100 companies and offers insight into hiring practices and trends across industries and world regions.

For the first time this year, employers were asked to evaluate which skill sets were most important when considering job candidates to hire. The number 1 skill employers sought? Communication skills. (see chart below).

Employers said they strongly valued recent graduates who were “highly proficient” in communication skills, specifically oral communication, followed by listening and writing skills. On average, employers ranked communication skills twice as important as managerial skills for new hires. With the exception of one industry – manufacturing – communication skills were top ranked across all world regions and employers, regardless of company size or industry.

Behind communication skills, the other skills employers ranked as most important for recent MBA graduates were teamwork, technical, leadership, and managerial skills.

Since 2001, the Corporate Recruiters Survey has been produced annually by the GMAC, a global nonprofit education group of leading graduate business schools and the administrator of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). This is a powerful group with a critical message: communication skills aren’t just soft skills to be picked up along the way. They are vital to employees’ success in the workplace.

At the same time, many executives find new hires struggle with communication skills. A national management education survey of more than 800 business executives published in July identified leadership and effective communication as the two most important management competencies, but also the two most in need of improvement. The study was conducted by Canadian-based Leger Marketing in association with the Schulich School of Business at York University and other Canadian business schools.

In a Globe and Mail article about the Canadian study, Schulich marketing professor Alan Middleton put it this way: “I take out CEOs once a month and they all tell me the same thing. What ever happened to the ability of someone, in less than two minutes, to state what they want me to do, state the rationale and how to do it?”

What’s your plan for improving your own daily communication skills?

-David Grossman

At every title or level, there are people who feel undervalued, underestimated, andunderappreciated by their superiors—and maybe even by their peers.

And so in frustration many resort to sucking up, ingratiating themselves in all the wrong ways to become visible and to be valued.

But nobody really wants to be that person—slavishly hanging around the boss, making sure they’re out front, the loudest voice in the room, and possibly even willing to subvert their co-workers’ performance to make their own look better by comparison.

There’s a better way to make yourself visible but it takes authenticity, integrity, and honesty and when it’s done right it actually helps you and those around you all do a better job.

Get ahead without sucking up and try the following:

Make it a group effort. Let others know you have merit, talk about your team or a group rather than yourself. Find ways to share successes and promote the group’s accomplishments.

Connect to others. Connect authentically with others—find out about them, what interests them, what they are working on and share with them what you do and why you do it and what you know.

Be the leader. Find ways to mentor others or to share a new skill, a new system, an interesting article, or an idea. Make yourself visible, but in a way that’s tied to support, guidance and mentorship.

Be present. Put yourself out front in a positive way by being visible, accessible, and communicative.

Be helpful. When crunch time comes, work twice as hard and be available to those who need help. Keep an eye out for new resources and invite people from other areas of the business who might have helpful expertise or experience.

Ask for help. When you ask for other people’s insights, opinions, and recommendations you gain not only short-term help but valuable connections.

Focus on solutions. When you’ve faced down an issue or crisis, share your processes and solutions. Become known as an excellent problem solver.

Listen to others. Instead of speaking, take the time to ask questions and listen. You’ll be well received—and you’ll learn more.

Self -promotion with authenticity, integrity, and honesty allows you to build a reputation that matches your accomplishments that demonstrates that you are a credible high performer.

Leadership is not about sucking up but about building up with authenticity and with accuracy.

Effective authentic self-promotion isn’t about being someone you’re not. In fact, your efforts will be more valuable and better received if you are genuine, substantive—and yes, imperfect.

Because at the end of the day self-promotion connects the dots between what you do and why you do it and let others know it matters.

Why repeat customers are the most valuable ones ... and how to get more of them: well this could be a HUGE post, but I try to keep my posts short and helpful, so please forgive me for cutting the drivel and just delivering this straight.

Why repeat customers are the best ones to have:

• They cost nothing to get to buy (unlike the cost of acquiring a new customer)
• They buy more frequently (about 50% more frequently than 'new' customers)
• They buy more per visit (about 25% more)
• They complain and send stuff back less (about 30% less)
• They talk about your to their friends for the right reasons (little data available but blindingly obvious common sense!)
• They improve your reputation and generate referrals

So, if your average customer spent $200 per year, and cost $100 to get, your average customer would give you a $100 gross profit

But your repeat customer would:

• Cost nothing
• Spend $350
• And generate, let's say, about another $200 of referral / reputation value

So a repeat customer would be worth $550 gross vs $100 gross: 550% more

However, you as an astute reader will have noticed a MASSIVE mistake in my assumptions: that 'repeat customers cost nothing': this is completely ridiculous.

If you want to give a world class customer experience (to generate repeat customers), you need to INVEST in doing this.

Let's suggest you invest $50 in 'repeat customer motivation' (I would suggest this is 'marketing' in the new world), then the REAL figure would be that a repeat customer is now only worth $500 vs the new customer value of $100

Oh no! We can't afford that!

Sounds ridiculous?

Well that's exactly what so many businesses do: they fail to invest in customer loyalty (as it's seen by the pen pushers as a 'unnecessary' cost), and so focus all their marketing on 'new customer acquisition'.

Is a qualification in accountancy only suitable for people who can't understand the bloody obvious???

Investment in 'customer loyalty' and 'return on relationship' is the No 1 investment a business can make. It is NOT a cost to be minimised!!!

So, how do we get more of them (what is that $50 to be spent on?). Here are a few tips:

• Setting and sticking to a rigorous 'customer focused mission'
• Paying the price to make sure all your systems and processes are filtered through your 'customers REAL needs'
• Training an developing people and skills constantly: Go the Extra Inch
• Developing amazing world class lead measures (and customer feedback systems) to ensure you keep on track
• Managing and empowering your people as the 'Internal customer' through the same principles (and, again, great measures)
• And also, when all the above is done (and ONLY then), giving customer loyalty bonuses and rewards

The ability to lead others begins with a leader's ability to lead oneself. This may seem straightforward, but especially in today's fast-paced world of work, leaders can lose their perspective -- their sense of purpose and direction -- and their ability to lead others effectively. So, how do you lead yourself effectively? Here are a few key considerations.

When I work with leaders in developing clarity about personal values, I ask them to refer to a list of value words or statements and highlight those words or statements that resonate. Here's an abridged list of words: abundance, accomplishment, accuracy, achievement, adventure, affection, appreciation, balance, belonging, bravery, brilliance, calm, candor, caring, certainty, challenge, change, community, compassion, confidence, courage, curiosity, dependability, devotion, dignity, discovery, drive, duty, education, effectiveness, empathy, encouragement, faith, family, focus, forgiveness, friendship, goodness, gratitude, growth, guidance, health, heroism, honor, influence...

I then ask leaders to narrow their list of values to ten and then perhaps five. Once the top five list is affirmed, I ask them to then consider which values they are living out and which values they are neglecting. Further, I ask them to consider what actions they may take to live out their values and how those values drive their future vision and personal purpose.

I appreciate Mike Robbins' perspective on authenticity in his book Be Yourself: Everyone Else is Already Taken. Robbins highlights principles for being authentic. Here are several principles from the book:

Know Yourself: Practice self awareness by paying greater attention to what you say and do, how you interact with others, what thoughts and feelings you have, and how you show up in life. Also, learn more about yourself. Receiving and being open to feedback from others is important. How others perceive you and your actions may be helpful in you gaining some clarity about your perceptions of yourself.

Also, taking advantage of personal assessment tools such as the Everything DiSC®and the Gallup® Clifton StrengthsFinder® may be helpful. These tools, in particular, will help you to better understand your behavioral tendencies and how you interact with others and will help you to better understand your talents and how you may leverage your talents to be a more effective leader of self and others.

Transform Your Fears: This begins by knowing your fears, appreciating fears and how they may be indicators of things that need to be addressed, not allowing your fears to stop you, and moving through fear in a positive way.

Express Yourself: This involves speaking the truth, being real, honest, and vulnerable, being able to resolve conflict, and being emotionally intelligent.

Your ability to focus on priorities is essential, too, in moving toward what's important. I wrote a post on LinkedIn titled A 5-Step Approach for Focusing on Priorities that you can refer to.

Other people and life's circumstances do not define our attitudes. We determine our attitudes. Perhaps that sounds trite, but it's the truth. The challenge and opportunity we face is managing our attitudes -- sometimes moment by moment -- and realizing our attitudes, whether positive or negative, are a contagion.

John Maxwell, in his book The Winning Attitude: Your Key to Personal Success,states that our attitude growth never stops. Our attitudes are formed by experiences and how we choose to react to them. And he goes on to say that the more our attitude grows on the same foundation, the more solid it becomes. Therein lies another choice; what do you choose to dwell on that may impact your attitude?

I often ask leaders to consider the following questions to assess their attitudes:

• What does your attitude say about you?
• Is your attitude working for you or against you?
• Would an attitude adjustment make things better?
• If someone stole your attitude, would they benefit from it?

For some of us, being resilient or adaptable can be extremely difficult. The converse of resiliency is we are brittle and unyielding. The reality is if we don't learn to be resilient, it will take a mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical toll on us.

When I work with leaders on resiliency, I start by asking them their perceptions ofchange. Oftentimes, our perceptions of change have a significant impact on our personal resiliency. Of course, our view of change may depend on the significance of the change, the degree to which we feel it may impact us, etc. But, generally, how do we view change: as a positive or negative experience? How does that perception impact our reaction and subsequent actions regarding the change?

Next, I ask leaders to consider some questions that may allow them to assess their resiliency and develop actionable plans to develop their resiliency and garner support from others to assist. Some assessing questions may include:

• Do you cope well with change? If so, what are your coping mechanisms?
• Do you consider change an opportunity to improve a situation?
• Do you recognize the forces that drive change?
• Do you adapt to change easily?
• Do you avoid change?
• Do you anticipate when change may be necessary?

The ability to lead others begins with a leader's ability to lead oneself. What are you doing that allows you to affirm what's important and gives you a sense of direction, enables you to maintain an appropriate and empowered attitude, and assists you in developing resiliency so that you may effectively lead self and others?

If your spouse claims that time with the family is a priority but spends every weekend on the golf course, you might rightfully conclude that he’s really more interested in lowering his handicap than raising his child. If a business leaders pretend that customer service is the top priority, but won’t ever risk profits to delight a client, they have probably chosen to sacrifice tomorrow’s customer for today’s gain. Such hollow promises create phony hopes, destroying trust and causing untold damage to any organization.

The actions of a business are its value statement. Actions speak volumes about what really matters most – not what should matter, not what we wish mattered, but what really does matter to us. They swamp mission statements, speeches or memos, and they eclipse intentions.

Having the kind of integrity that leaves no room between what we say and what we do is really hard work. It’s much easier to follow the words of JR Ewing of the TV series Dallas, who said: “Once you lose your integrity, everything’s easy.” Lots of people have chosen this path. Others find it to be too much work to align their decisions and actions with what they claim as priorities.

Many are simply out of touch, preferring to believe that their intentions – rather than their actions – are their priorities. This is because intentions usually sound better and are loftier; and unfortunately, when we take a hard look at our actions, we may not like what we see.

But ignoring them is a form of self-deception. It’s better for business leaders to assess what is actually being done and label it outright: “our priorities”.

If you force yourself to look at where you actually spend your time and what you do with your resources, you may notice an internal conflict arising. It will not revolve around what I think of as “level 1 integrity” – things like never lying, cheating or stealing. Instead, it will likely challenge your “level 2 integrity” – the kind that has to do with not being divided or misaligned.

With level 2 integrity, values are consistent with clear objectives, supported by marketplace realities and internal assignments, and gauged by clear measurements of progress. Think of level 2 integrity the way a civil engineer might think of structural integrity.

This is a demanding form of integrity. Even the newest, least-trained, lowest-level employee can detect it. If you say one thing and do another, you may get away with convincing them you have level 1 integrity. But you’ll never fool them into believing you’ve reached level 2. To claim otherwise means you won’t really be trusted.

How do you build level 2 integrity? After setting aside your intentions and paying close attention to how you actually spend your time and money – establishing whether your actions align with your priorities – ask yourself where your mind goes when it’s “on its own”. Think about what you do in a crisis. In a world of scarce resources, check out how you allocate them. For example, consider not only how you spend your 24 hours every day, but also how you plan to allocate your years.

Finally, carefully consider those with whom you spend time, marry, employ, work and play. These are all the stuff of values, of trade-offs and of priority-setting – of inchoate desires. Do you like what you see? If you’re similar to me, being forced to label these answers as priorities may be enough to provoke change.

Once when I took on a CEO role, I found myself talking about the importance of customers – of ways to delight them, to respond to what they wanted, to anticipate their needs. When my assistant pointed out that I was spending all of my time on internal meetings and on new initiatives, she caught me. From then on, I scheduled time every week to call customers. They were stunned – and so was I at what I learned. My priorities went from talking about customers in the abstract to making sure I knew what they were thinking.

If you’re leading a team or a company, if you’re part of a family or teaching a class, your only lasting message will be what you do, not what you say. If you can achieve level 2 integrity, you’ll be looked to for leadership.

A new relationship—whether personal or professional—is a lot like buying a new car. Driving it off the lot is pure bliss. And like a car, when a relationship breaks down, it’s overwhelming. A trained eye knows when a car is in trouble. The same is true of relationships, and you can be your own mechanic.

Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Washington discovered four clear indicators of relationship failure, dubbed “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” The Four Horsemen are so profound that their presence predicts the demise of a relationship with 93% accuracy.

The researchers in Washington made their predictions with married couples, but these behaviors also wreak havoc in the workplace. TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and compared the quality of their working relationships to their job performance. We've found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing relationships, and they avoid The Four Horsemen like the plague. We've also found that The Four Horsemen are all too common in the workplace, and when they rear their ugly heads, relationships, teamwork, and performance suffer.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen represent the counterproductive acts we can easily fall victim to when our emotions get the better of us. As you read each of the Horsemen and consider its relevance in your relationships, remember that conflict itself is not a problem. Conflict is actually a normal and (ideally) productive part of two people with different needs and interests working together. The amount of conflict between two people has no bearing on the success of the relationship. It’s how conflict is handled that determines a relationship’s success, and the Four Horsemen’s presence means conflict is not being dealt with constructively or productively. Follow the strategies provided for overcoming each of the Four Horseman, and your relationships are bound to be successful.

The 1st Horseman: CRITICISM

Criticism is not to be confused with delivering feedback or otherwise seeking improvement or change in another person. Criticism becomes, well, criticism when it isn’t constructive (“This report is terrible.”). Criticism, in its most troubling form, focuses on the individual’s personality, character, or interests rather than the specific action or behavior you’d like to see changed (“You are terrible at writing. You’re so disorganized and tangential.”). It’s one thing to criticize without being constructive; it’s another to go after someone for something they are unable to change.

Overcoming CRITICISM

If you often find yourself criticizing when you planned on being constructive, it’s best if you don’t deliver your feedback and commentary until you’ve planned ahead. You’ll need to think through what you’re going to say and stick to your script in order to remain constructive and avoid criticism. It’s also best if you focus your feedback on a single specific behavior, as your reactions to multiple behaviors at once can easily be perceived as criticism. If you find that you cannot deliver feedback without generalizing to the other person’s personality, you’re better off saying nothing at all.

The 2nd Horseman: CONTEMPT

Contempt is any open sign of disrespect toward another. Contempt often involves comments that aim to take the other person down a notch, as well as direct insults. Contempt is also seen in indirect and veiled forms, such as rolling of the eyes and couching insults within “humor.”

Overcoming CONTEMPT

Contempt stems from a lack of interest in the other person. When you find that you don’t enjoy or admire someone—perhaps there are things about him or her that used to be interesting or charming and now they’ve lost their luster—contempt can surface unexpectedly. If your disinterest is unavoidable and the relationship is one that isn’t going anywhere, such as a family member or coworker, then you need to focus on taking small steps forward. People who manage relationships well are able to see the benefit of connecting with many different people, even those they are not fond of. Common ground, no matter how small, is a commodity to be sought and cherished. In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.”

The 3rd Horseman: DEFENSIVENESS

Denying responsibility, making excuses, meeting one complaint with another, and other forms of defensiveness are problematic, because they prevent a conflict from reaching any sort of resolution. Defensiveness only serves to accelerate the anxiety and tension experienced by both parties, and this makes it difficult to focus on the larger issues at hand that need to be resolved.

Overcoming DEFENSIVENESS

To overcome defensiveness, you have to be willing to listen carefully to the other party’s complaint, even if you don’t see things the same way. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. Instead, you focus on fully understanding the other person’s perspective so that you can work together towards resolving the conflict. It’s critical that you work to remain calm. Once you understand why the other person is upset, it’s much easier to find common ground than if you dismiss their opinions defensively.

The 4th Horseman: STONEWALLING

Stonewalling is what happens when one person shuts the discussion down by refusing to respond. Examples of stonewalling include the silent treatment, being emotionally distant or devoid of emotion, and ignoring the other person completely. Stonewalling is problematic, because it aggravates the person being stonewalled and it prevents the two from working on resolving the conflict together.

Overcoming STONEWALLING

The key to overcoming stonewalling is to participate in the discussion. If you’re stonewalling because the circumstances are leaving you feeling overwhelmed, let the other person know how you’re feeling and ask for some time to think before continuing the discussion. Maintain eye contact and a forward posture and nod your head to let the other person know that you are engaged in the discussion and listening even when you don’t have something to say. If you stonewall as a matter of practice, you need to realize that participating in discussions and working together to resolve conflict are the only ways to keep your relationships from crumbling.

In terms of profits, iOS is still the most attractive platform for mobile developers, iPhone users place apps higher in their priority list and use them more diversely. Today, the most used app categories across all platforms are social networking, games, and communication. However, Apple’s iOS 8 will open up an opportunity for much wider and more meaningful use than that, and it’s going to happen thanks to independent developers.

Here are 5 ways iOS 8 will impact our community:

HealthKit

Quantified self, wearables, and healthcare apps have been recognized as some of the game-changing trends of coming years. The VC funding of healthcare startups has been rapidly growing, the adoption of iPads in health care has been equally fast, and the wearables category has many enthusiasts.

The introduction of HealthKit is quite a notable advancement on that front. It allows users to integrate health data into new apps including Health app, which acts as a centralized storage place for all their health information. Users can get a big-picture look at their entire health profile: exercise, sleep and eating habits, or blood pressure and glucose levels. This opens up an opportunity for a whole new range of apps.

Aside from self-tracking, the app clearly wants to make it possible for users to share their health information with doctors. For example, as a pilot project, Apple partnered with Mayo Clinic, which developed an app providing actionable tips or prompts to contact the doctor based on the user’s data.

HomeKit

In the recent Andreessen Horowitz podcast, VC and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen discussed how everything around us will become smart in the following decades. We can see this trend happening now, fueled by the hardware revolution and the rise of crowdfunding.

HomeKit represents a big step forward in the path to the truly smart home. Soon it will be possible to control your lights, home security, thermostat, fridge, and other devices using your iPhone alone. Combine this with the developer’s ability to leverage Siri and you get not just another range of opportunities in app and hardware development, but also a pretty positive outlook for taking your smart home to a different level.

CloudKit

An exciting thing about iOS 8 is a technology called CloudKit that enables developers to create a seamless experience between mobile and desktop apps. Developers gain access to a new data store that is automatically shared among all users of their apps, which simplifies the creation of apps built around multi-user interaction or collaboration. This set of tools may greatly impact the type of apps we see in the future. And with Box going for a considerable IPO and Dropbox reaching 300 million users, it’s not difficult to see how dynamic this market is.

Security

Security fears are one of the main reasons many businesses fail to convert traffic into paying customers. When The Federal Reserve surveyed consumers in 2013 about their use of financial and payment apps, almost 50 percent of respondents cited security as their major concern. Security is one of the main concerns in markets such as health apps and e-commerce too.

iOS 8 offers several new security features. Third-party apps will be able to use Touch ID to protect the user data within their app. The extra layer of protection definitely beats the standard and offers users a quick and secure login. Together with other iOS 8 features, the extra security opens up opportunities in enterprise, healthcare, finance, and payments markets, where security matters the most.

Appstore changes

The number of apps in the App Store has reached over 1.3 million — that is a lot of competition. The way app developers market their apps in the store makes a great impact on their customer acquisition strategy and on the overall health of their business (high customer acquisition costs are among top startup killers).

With iOS 8, the App Store is getting some major updates that will give developers new ways to be found and to stand out. One of the most interesting new possibilities is video previews — this brings a new dimension to app store experiences and will likely affect the app rankings too. Another feature is the new explore tab, which gives users the ability to browse categories with greater ease. There are also “editor’s choice” tags and a new preview feature, making this space something developers should pay close attention to. After all, you’re not in business if you can’t reach your customers.

Mark McDonald is co-founder and director of app development company Appster.

How many times have you heard it said of someone talented that they could really go places if they could learn not to let their ego get in the way?

You might be nodding and thinking Yes, I know that person. Or maybe Yes, I am that person.

How can you tell if ego is leading the way?

If you are constantly defensive.
If you are always looking for approval.
If you always have to be right.
If you are constantly comparing yourself to others.
If you have to be one up on people.
If you have to be the center of attention.

When you allow ego to lead the way, you are Edging Out Greatness.

Ego is not about power—it’s about being powerless.

Ego is fear.
Ego is insecurity.
Ego is hurt.
Ego is the mask we wear to cover it all up.

The ego is not the enemy to be subdued but a compilation of unexamined habits that keep us from greatness.

So how do we focus on greatness and make it more and more the heart of our leadership?

Manage self-talk. If our inner critical voice has kept us safe for many years as our inner authority, we may end up doubting the real voice of who we’re really meant to be. Don’t let the self-chatter of fear and doubt get in the way. Great leaders pay attention to the things they tell themselves.

Celebrate talent. Knowing how talented we are is good; celebrating others is better. Great leaders do not aspire to reach their own greatness by keeping others down. They realize the more they surround themselves with talent and strong people, the more successful everyone will be.

Stop perfectionism. The belief that perfect is good and imperfect is bad is misguided. Trying to be perfect keeps us from being our best self. Great leaders know that the best lessons always happen in imperfect moments. Let them happen.

Admit mistakes. To distinguish ourselves from others we need to be on the right side of mistakes. When we mask our mistakes, when we think we have to be right, we are masking our insecurities. When we admit our mistakes and amend them, we allow others to see us for who we are. Great leaders lead with authenticity and learn from mistakes.

Demonstrate empathy. Empathy is a powerful thing—simply listening and withholding judgment. It’s about making a connection. When we demonstrate empathy toward ourselves, we learn how to be empathetic towards others.

Practice humility. Check yourself—not everything is about you. True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Remember, leadership is about serving others instead of being served.

Stop the comparisons. Stop constantly assessing and comparing yourself to others.Great leaders know that who they are is good enough—that they are great just as they are.

The greater the leader, the greater the doubt—perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. Let the admission of your realities not change how brave you are, but reinforce how great you can be.

Lead From Within: Living our greatness is at the core of who we are, the center of our meaningful experience. When we lead with ego it can either be about edging greatness out or expanding greatness outwardly. We know what matters, but we have to choose what matters more.