Managing In The Discomfort Zone

Why is it that effective action is so often difficult to take? How do you make it work when you do take it? Human nature tends to make action difficult - or make it more likely to be delayed or be done half-heartedly (with subsequent negative impact on results).

You want people to stretch their limits, but your conversations meant to help them often fall flat or backfire, creating more resistance than growth. Top leadership coach Marcia Reynolds offers a model for using the Discomfort Zone—the moment when the mind is most open to learning—to prompt people to think through problems, see situations more strategically, and transcend their limitations. Drawing on recent discoveries in the neuroscience of learning, Reynolds shows how to ask the kinds of questions that short-circuit the brain’s defense mechanisms and habitual thought patterns. Then, instead of being told, people see for themselves the insightful and often profound solutions to what is stopping their progress. The exercises and case studies will help you use discomfort in your conversations to create lasting changes and an enlivened workforce.

The logical successor to the One-Minute Manager, this book identifies key results areas and shows how to focus on them, avoid delay or inaction and achieve your goals. The book filled with practical tips on how to be successful and also highlights the key behaviors traps to avoid. You'll greatly enjoy the short quotations that are highlighted from famous persons to convey key learning points in a memorable and amusing way. This book highlights an opportunity. It reviews a way of positively transforming and enhancing your performance virtually at a stroke. It focuses on approaches to those key things that should be done, and which are of a nature that will make overall success more likely. The book examines some of the reasons why opportunities can be missed and highlights an approach that can change your practice in a way that affects many different situations positively. Many managers try to avoid situations that are difficult. Why is effective action so often difficult to take? Too often, managers and others find themselves in the 'discomfort zone' with no chance of avoiding involvement and every wish to steer clear of the unpleasantness. This book faces these difficulties head-on and offers a wealth of excellent advice about reducing the discomfort, taking the right action and increasing the result. To be a successful manager, you need to work efficiently, productively, effectively and often creatively. The key is to recognize the problem of inaction or avoidance, and to put you in the discomfort zone on a regular basis. This book will immediately help you to become a better manager, and you'll enjoy the reading every step of the way.

Why is it that effective action is so often difficult to take? How do you make it work when you do take it? Human nature tends to make action difficult – or make it more likely to be delayed or be done half-heartedly (with subsequent negative impact on results). There are so many unpleasant issues to be faced, such as firing people or dealing with poor or unacceptable behaviour and performance; tackling sensitive issues such as bullying and discrimination; and handling awkward or embarrassing situations like networking or prospecting. Too often, managers and others find themselves in the ‘discomfort zone’ with no chance of avoiding involvement and every wish to steer clear of the unpleasantness. This book faces these difficulties head-on and offers a wealth of excellent advice about reducing the discomfort, taking the right action and increasing the result. The key is to recognise the problem of inaction or avoidance, and to put yourself in the discomfort zone on a regular basis.

The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen’s tale of growing up afraid of spiders, school dances, urinals, music teachers, boomerangs, popular girls, and his parents. It’s also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its mid-century idealism and became a more polarized society. Whether he’s writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his own protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between birdwatching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen’s recounting of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood is warmed by the same blend of comic scrutiny and affection that characterizes his fiction. Funny, insightful, and daringly honest, The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen at his most engaging.

'Honest, witty and insightful' Emma Gannon 'A brilliant, useful book' Dawn O'Porter 'Farrah has written a book about the things no one wants to talk about: failure, discomfort, and how to deal with both' Sophia Amoruso, author of #Girlboss While it is human nature to shy away from things that are outside of our comfort zone, it is only by spending time in our discomfort zone that we can grow, and improve, and realise our full potential. Whether it's putting yourself forward for a new challenge, asking for difficult feedback, nailing a presentation or getting a dream job, in this book Farrah Storr shows how you have to push through what she calls "brief moments of discomfort" in order to get to where you need to be. Farrah describes these brief moments of discomfort as "like HIIT training for your life" - and shows how the more you force yourself into them, the easier it will get. This book is full of advice, practical exercises and examples both from Farrah's own life and career and from all sorts of other successful people, from athletes to entrepreneurs. By adopting the brief moments of discomfort, or BMD method, you will soon understand that nothing in life is an insurmountable challenge, only a series of small, uncomfortable tests that can easily be overcome. Once you have used Farrah's techniques to transform your fear into bite-size, manageable pieces, you'll be able to take on anything. In fact, in time, you'll even begin to enjoy these moments.