Travis Bradberry Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Travis Bradberry:
Few things kill likeability as quickly as arrogance. Likable leaders don't act as though they're better than you because they don't think that they're better than you. Rather than being a source of prestige, they see their leadership position as bringing them additional accountability for serving those who follow them.
~Travis Bradberry
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Confident people tend to challenge themselves and compete, even when their efforts yield small victories. Small victories build new androgen receptors in the areas of the brain responsible for reward and motivation.
~Travis Bradberry
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When you ask someone a question and they're slow to respond, don't feel pressure to move the conversation forward. Remaining silent plays to your advantage. Moments of silence make people feel as though they should speak, especially when the ball is in their court. This is a great tool to use in negotiations and other difficult conversations.
~Travis Bradberry
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Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.
~Travis Bradberry
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In most cases, it's slight and often unintentional gaps in integrity that hold leaders, their employees, and their companies back. Despite their potential, these leaders harm their employees and themselves.
~Travis Bradberry
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If you can't relax during your interview, then nothing you do to prepare will matter. Being yourself is essential to the selection process, and interviewers will feel it if you're too nervous. Showing fear or anxiety appears weak compared to a relaxed smile and genuine confidence.
~Travis Bradberry
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Many companies restrict Internet activity so heavily that it makes it difficult for people to do online research. The most obvious example? Checking the Facebook profile of someone you just interviewed.
~Travis Bradberry
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While exceptional employees don't seek conflict, they don't run away from it either. They're able to maintain their composure while presenting their positions calmly and logically. They're able to withstand personal attacks in pursuit of the greater goal and never use that tactic themselves.
~Travis Bradberry
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Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.
~Travis Bradberry
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You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.
~Travis Bradberry
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More than half of people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate an employee's success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts.
~Travis Bradberry
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Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don't leave jobs; they leave managers.
~Travis Bradberry
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Influential people aren't buffeted by the latest trend or by public opinion. They form their opinions carefully, based on the facts. They're more than willing to change their mind when the facts support it, but they aren't influenced by what other people think - only by what they know.
~Travis Bradberry
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There is a time in the life of every predicament where it is ripe for resolution. Emotions provide the cue to act when a problem is big enough to see, yet still small enough to solve. By understanding your emotions, you can move adeptly through your current challenges and prevent future ones.
~Travis Bradberry
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When influential people speak, conversations spread like ripples in a pond. And those ripples are multidirectional; influencers inspire everyone around them to explore new ideas and think differently about their work.
~Travis Bradberry
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The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance.
~Travis Bradberry
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Influential people have a profound impact on everyone they encounter. Yet, they achieve this only because they exert so much influence inside, on themselves.
~Travis Bradberry
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Taking time to contemplate what you're grateful for isn't merely the 'right' thing to do. It also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%.
~Travis Bradberry
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When you're working hard and doing all you can to achieve your goals, anything that can give you an edge is powerful and will streamline your path to success.
~Travis Bradberry
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Being a good leader requires remembering that you're there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn't to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism - they insist on it.
~Travis Bradberry
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Drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up spikes your energy levels physically and mentally. Lemon water gives you steady, natural energy that lasts the length of the day by improving nutrient absorption in your stomach.
~Travis Bradberry
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True confidence is firmly planted in reality. To grow your confidence, it's important to do an honest and accurate self-assessment of your abilities. If there are weaknesses in your skill set, make plans for strengthening these skills and find ways to minimize their negative impact.
~Travis Bradberry
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Negative emotions will challenge your grit every step of the way. While it's impossible not to feel your emotions, it's completely under your power to manage them effectively and to keep yourself in a position of control. When you let your emotions overtake your ability to think clearly, it's easy to lose your resolve.
~Travis Bradberry
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Exceptional employees don't possess God-given personality traits; they rely on simple, everyday EQ skills that anyone can incorporate into their repertoire.
~Travis Bradberry
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We all hit moments when we feel helpless. The test is how we react to that feeling. We can either learn from it and move forward or let it drag us down.
~Travis Bradberry
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The biggest mistake most people make when it comes to listening is they're so focused on what they're going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what's being said.
~Travis Bradberry
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'What is your desired salary?' The unwritten rule when it comes to salary is this: whoever proposes a number first loses. When you interview, you should never feel pressured to answer this question. Simply let your interviewer know that the most important thing to you is how well you fit the position.
~Travis Bradberry
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Even though we don't always realize it, as the day goes on, we have increased difficulty exerting self-control and focusing on our work. As self-control wears out, we feel tired and find tasks to be more difficult, and our mood sours.
~Travis Bradberry
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Personality traits form at an early age and are fixed by early adulthood. Many important things about you change over the course of your lifetime, but your personality isn't one of them.
~Travis Bradberry
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Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.
~Travis Bradberry
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Our brains are wired such that it's difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. In fact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderate levels of stress. As long as the stress isn't prolonged, it's harmless.
~Travis Bradberry
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Working hard is a great way to impact the world, to learn, to grow, to feel accomplished, and sometimes even to find happiness, but it becomes a problem when you do so at the expense of the people closest to you.
~Travis Bradberry
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There is no upside to making a disparaging remark about a colleague. If your remark is accurate, everybody already knows it, so there's no need to point it out. If your remark is inaccurate, you're the one who ends up looking like a jerk.
~Travis Bradberry
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People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.
~Travis Bradberry
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People lie in everyday conversation to appear more likeable and competent. While men and women lie equally as often, they tend to lie for different reasons.
~Travis Bradberry
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Verbal slip-ups often occur because we say things without knowledge of the subtle implications they carry. Understanding these implications requires social awareness - the ability to pick up on the emotions and experiences of other people.
~Travis Bradberry
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As important as it is to learn how to deal with different kinds of people, truly toxic people will never be worth your time and energy - and they take a lot of each. Toxic people create unnecessary complexity, strife, and, worst of all, stress.
~Travis Bradberry
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One of the toughest things for leaders to master is kindness. Kindness shares credit and offers enthusiastic praise for others' work. It's a balancing act between being genuinely kind and not looking weak.
~Travis Bradberry
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Likable leaders truly believe that everyone, regardless of rank or ability, is worth their time and attention. They make everyone feel valuable because they believe that everyone is valuable.
~Travis Bradberry
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Even in a crowded room, likable leaders make people feel like they're having a one-on-one conversation, as if they're the only person in the room that matters. And, for that moment, they are. Likable leaders communicate on a very personal, emotional level.
~Travis Bradberry
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Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people's buttons.
~Travis Bradberry
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Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.
~Travis Bradberry
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Leadership is a mindset in action. So don't wait for the title. Leadership isn't something that anyone can give you - you have to earn it and claim it for yourself.
~Travis Bradberry
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Technology-fueled change is happening so fast that even a six-month-old process could be outdated. Saying this is the way it's always been done not only makes you sound lazy and resistant to change, but it could make your boss wonder why you haven't tried to improve things on your own.
~Travis Bradberry
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Gossipers derive pleasure from other people's misfortunes. It might be fun to peer into somebody else's personal or professional faux pas at first, but over time, it gets tiring, makes you feel gross, and hurts other people.
~Travis Bradberry
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Being a leader requires being confident enough in your own decisions and those of your team to own them when they fail. The very best leaders take the blame but share the credit.
~Travis Bradberry
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We lack social awareness because we're so focused on what we're going to say next - and how what other people are saying affects us - that we completely lose sight of other people. This is a problem because people are complicated. You can't hope to understand someone until you focus all of your attention in his or her direction.
~Travis Bradberry
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Confidence is a crucial building block in a successful career, and embracing it fully will take you places you never thought possible. With proper guidance and hard work, anyone can become more confident. Once you pass a certain point, you'll feel it from the inside.
~Travis Bradberry
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It's difficult to find a genuine weakness that makes you appear competent. For instance, telling your interviewer that your weakness is working so hard that you have trouble prioritizing your family life is a little too cliche and comes across as disingenuous.
~Travis Bradberry
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It's often said that you're the product of the five people you spend the most time with. If you allow even one of those five people to be toxic, you'll soon find out how capable he or she is of holding you back.
~Travis Bradberry
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The next time you need to win someone over to your way of thinking, try nodding your head as you speak. People unconsciously mirror the body language of those around them in order to better understand what other people are feeling.
~Travis Bradberry
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It's difficult to know when to set boundaries around your health at work because the decline is so gradual. Allowing stress to build up, losing sleep, and sitting all day without exercising all add up.
~Travis Bradberry
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Liars hate silence, so they often try to fill it up by talking more than they need to. They provide far more information than was needed or asked for.
~Travis Bradberry
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'What if?' statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you'll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control.
~Travis Bradberry
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Exercising first thing in the morning ensures that you'll have the time for it, and it improves your self-control and energy levels all day long.
~Travis Bradberry
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It's easy to let your family suffer for your work. Many of us do this because we see our jobs as a means of maintaining our families. We have thoughts such as 'I need to make more money so that my kids can go to college debt-free.'
~Travis Bradberry
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There are a ton of qualities that can help you succeed, and the more carefully a quality has been studied, the more you know it's worth your time and energy.
~Travis Bradberry
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Don't be your own worst critic. If you're not confident in what you're saying, no one else will be either.
~Travis Bradberry
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It's through a leader's actions - what he or she does and says on a daily basis - that the essence of great leadership becomes apparent.
~Travis Bradberry
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If you struggle with putting things into perspective, just ask yourself two simple questions: What's the worst thing that could happen as a result of this? Will this matter in five years? Your answers should put a stop to cataclysmic thinking.
~Travis Bradberry
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One thing an exceptional employee never says is, 'That's not in my job description.' Exceptional employees work outside the boundaries of job descriptions.
~Travis Bradberry
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Teaching emotional intelligence skills to people with life-threatening illnesses has been shown to reduce the rate of recurrence, shrink recovery times, and lower death rates.
~Travis Bradberry
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The best way to find a balance between doing your best and showing that you're ready for more is by developing other people. As tempting as it is to hoard knowledge, don't. Instead, make certain that there are others who know how to do important aspects of your job.
~Travis Bradberry
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We need to establish boundaries between our personal and professional lives. When we don't, our work, our health, and our personal lives suffer.
~Travis Bradberry
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People often cover their mouths when lying. A hand on the mouth or even a touch of the lips shows you that they are lying because this unconscious body language represents a closing off of communication.
~Travis Bradberry
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People who fail to use their emotional intelligence skills are more likely to turn to other, less effective means of managing their mood. They are twice as likely to experience anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and even thoughts of suicide.
~Travis Bradberry
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The best way to avoid falling prey to the opinions of others is to realize that other people's opinions are just that - opinions. Regardless of how great or terrible they think you are, that's only their opinion. Your true self-worth comes from within.
~Travis Bradberry
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People like to know you're listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows not only that you are listening but that you also care about what they're saying. You'll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking good questions.
~Travis Bradberry
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Mistakes and pressure are inevitable; the secret to getting past them is to stay calm.
~Travis Bradberry
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With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you're challenged because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.
~Travis Bradberry
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If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of.
~Travis Bradberry
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Everyone knows that life isn't fair. Saying it's not fair suggests that you think life is supposed to be fair, which makes you look immature and naive.
~Travis Bradberry
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When companies create ridiculous and demoralizing rules to halt the outlandish behavior of a few individuals, it's a management problem. There's no sense in alienating your entire workforce because you don't know how to manage performance. It makes a bad situation that much worse.
~Travis Bradberry
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Kindness is weak when you use it in a self-serving manner. Self-serving kindness is thin - people can see right through it when a kind leader has an agenda.
~Travis Bradberry
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Get to know the job intimately that you're applying for. Don't just read the job description - study it and picture yourself performing every task required of you. When you interview, framing your responses so that you reveal your significant knowledge about the job gives you a massive advantage.
~Travis Bradberry
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Regardless of the magnitude of the decision, our brains make it hard for us to keep the perspective we need to make good choices.
~Travis Bradberry
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Effective listening is something that can absolutely be learned and mastered. Even if you find attentive listening difficult and, in certain situations, boring or unpleasant, that doesn't mean you can't do it. You just have to know what to work on.
~Travis Bradberry
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When you take on more than the norm, your boss can't help but think that you're capable of a bigger role. This includes showing that you're willing to take risks by making innovative suggestions.
~Travis Bradberry
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Our days are filled with a constant stream of decisions. Most are mundane, but some are so important that they can haunt you for the rest of your life.
~Travis Bradberry
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Most hiring managers interview a lot of people. So many that they generally have to go back to their notes to remember candidates - the exception being candidates with a strong hook. Sometimes these hooks are how people dress or their personality, but the best hook is a strong story that's work-related.
~Travis Bradberry
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Successful people often exude confidence - it's obvious that they believe in themselves and what they're doing. It isn't their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first.
~Travis Bradberry
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Leadership and management are not synonymous.
~Travis Bradberry
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Companies need to have rules - that's a given - but they don't have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order.
~Travis Bradberry
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'Tell me about yourself.' When interviewers ask this, they don't want to hear about everything that has happened in your life; the interviewer's objective is to see how you respond to this vague yet personal question.
~Travis Bradberry
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No one always or never does anything. People don't see themselves as one-dimensional, so you shouldn't attempt to define them as such.
~Travis Bradberry
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Chewing gum actually lowers your cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for stress. But chewing gum doesn't just reduce stress, it also makes you more alert and improves your performance in memory-oriented tasks. It does so by increasing the blood flow to your brain and alerting your senses.
~Travis Bradberry
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Offbeat questions are nearly impossible to prepare for, and they don't achieve the interviewer's objective - to test out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to perform under pressure. That's the bad news. The good news is that companies are moving away from them.
~Travis Bradberry
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Great leadership can be a difficult thing to pin down and understand. You know a great leader when you're working for one, but even they can have a hard time articulating what it is that makes their leadership so effective.
~Travis Bradberry
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People are salaried for the work they do, not the specific hours they sit at their desks. When you ding salaried employees for showing up five minutes late even though they routinely stay late and put in time on the weekend, you send the message that policies take precedence over performance.
~Travis Bradberry
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When it comes to getting promoted, you want to present yourself in a way that feeds into the biases that bosses have about what makes someone promotable. You're already doing the hard work, so why not frame your effort in such a way that it increases your chances of obtaining the position you want?
~Travis Bradberry
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Emotional self-control is the result of hard work, not an inherent skill.
~Travis Bradberry
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Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, 'What if?' and 'Why not?' They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.
~Travis Bradberry
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We hesitate to call liars out in professional environments because we feel guilty for being suspicious. Calling someone a liar for no good reason is a frightening proposition for most.
~Travis Bradberry
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Grit is that 'extra something' that separates the most successful people from the rest. It's the passion, perseverance, and stamina that we must channel in order to stick with our dreams until they become a reality.
~Travis Bradberry
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Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.
~Travis Bradberry
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Staying composed, focused, and effective under pressure are all about your mentality. People who successfully manage crises are able to channel their emotions into producing the behavior that they want.
~Travis Bradberry
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Nobody's perfect. Even the most successful people make serious mistakes.
~Travis Bradberry
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Most people believe that their listening skills are where they need to be, even though they aren't. A study at Wright State University surveyed more than 8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as listening as well as or better than their co-workers. We know intuitively that many of them are wrong.
~Travis Bradberry
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Responding to emails during off-work hours isn't the only area in which you need to set boundaries. You need to make the critical distinction between what belongs to your employer and what belongs to you and you only.
~Travis Bradberry
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I don't know anyone who couldn't use a little boost in their energy and self-control.
~Travis Bradberry
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The beauty of social awareness is that a few simple adjustments to what you say can vastly improve your relationships with other people.
~Travis Bradberry
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