According to self-determination theory, three profound needs contribute to human motivation: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. In a recent Harvard Business Review article on influencing without authority, Pamela Meyer explains that autonomy may be the most profound of the three. People desperately need to feel they have agency, or they will distort the way they express
Recently, I read a social media post by actor and comedian Dan Aykroyd that I couldn’t stop thinking about: “Happy Birthday weekend to my Wild and Crazy older brother Steve Martin. There would be no Blues Brothers without the patronage of this generous, brilliant, magnificently talented master musician, comedian, author, actor and eclecticist … He
Much of politics and political discourse today seems to be a display of people imposing their will on others. Rather than diplomacy, reasoning, or the careful navigation of the law, we see force and pressure. Unsurprisingly, this only escalates tensions and mistrust. I’m embarrassed to admit the number of times I’ve imposed my own will
Twenty years ago, I used to run daily around a lake near my house. One day, I saw a man rowing on the water. Because I had been a rower in college—and he was the only person I’d ever seen rowing on this particular lake—I told my wife Kari that night that I was going
I used to manage a product that provided transcripts and summaries of corporate earnings calls to investors. This was before AI, so the transcripts were produced by stenographers and the summaries were written by lawyers. The thinking was simple: Stenographers were trained to produce verbatim, sequential output, whereas the lawyers were trained to produce accurate,
My dog, Happy—a gentle, twelve-year-old golden retriever—and I recently went for a walk in a massive, wooded park. Because it was very early in the morning and no one else was around, I let her run off leash. Things were peaceful until Happy trotted a short distance ahead of me up a hill, rounded a
The past month has been a whirlwind with our twin boys graduating from high school. Amidst the endings and celebrations, my wife and I have reflected on our boys’ level of preparedness for greater independence. Specifically, we wondered how ready they are to elevate their executive function to make decisions and demonstrate reliability on their
I recently observed a meeting where a team member raised a complex issue. Another leader immediately jumped in to address it. Within seconds, the rest of the room went completely silent. I had the distinct sense that the rest of the team didn’t go quiet because they lacked ideas, but because of the approach the
By the time you read this, my son will have performed his guitar and vocal solo. It’s his first and final high school solo concert performed over three nights, in front of hundreds of people. He has been anxiously anticipating this moment on the stage since the tryouts months ago. That anxiety comes from a
We are swimming in ego-centric waters. Media, tech, education, sports, and the modern workplace generally set a glidepath toward “self.” This external pressure is reinforced by our own brain’s self-protective measures. The slide is often a slow and subtle bend inward toward our own appetites, agendas, and concerns. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE