The Red Velvet Lawyer

How to be the Best  . . .   and Learn from the Worst Doha does not have a deep collection of print books for sale.  I was at Doha Festival City twice last week.  After touring the entire mall, I found a book I did not expect to see in Doha. It's Robert I Sutton 's Good Boss, Bad Boss .  The book builds on his research that supported an earlier book called The No Asshole Rule .  I read the earlier book, several years ago, when I served on a law school's hiring committee.  We tried to use the advice in the book.  Overall, we built a small faculty of dedicated teachers.  Sadly, we did hire a few jerks along the way, and frankly, the institution paid for it. Amazon  describes the new book in this way:   If you are a boss who wants to do great work, what can you do about it? Good Boss, Bad Boss is devoted to answering that question. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton weaves together the best psychological and...

Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets Today, Tom Asacker provides a nice discussion of why the opposite of success is not failure. Instead, failure leads to success because it gives us lessons, insights, and opportunities to change. With that new information, we are better positioned to succeed.  He suggests that failure leads to success in the same way that exercise leads to fitness.   A second blogger today discussed the criteria Google uses to hire employees.  It looks for three things: cognitive processing and problem-solving on the fly; emergent leadership; and a sense of responsibility that leads to humility and ownership.   Both posts reminded me of the book I read last month  by Carol S. Dweck, a world-renowned Stanford psychologist, called: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success -- How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential (2007).   It describes two mindsets -- fixed and growth. The publisher describes the theme of the book as this: ...

Some positive affirmations: Fear can’t stop me from moving forward.  I’m worthy of positive changes in my life. Today, I welcome change as an opportunity. I am fulfilling all my commitments today. I am confident in my ability to meet challenges today. I have all that I need to do what is good and right in my life today. I am learning to trust my own wisdom and give myself permission to follow it. In July, I posted some positive affirmations for nervous bar exam takers  here .  This past Friday, I provided our incoming students with a modified copy of the same list of affirmations during the session I taught on test taking strategies and test anxiety. Science confirms that this sort of positive self-talk changes our brains in good ways, elevates emotions, and generates the kind of energy people want to be around . Think of Christopher Robin -- the wise, pleasant, cheerful, compassionate companion and leader  -- in the Winnie-the Po...