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Fast Company recently interviewed Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a senior researcher at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, on what it means to lead a creative life. In this essay, she shares one of her top tips for fueling creativity. Creativity is the powerhouse that differentiates good organizations from great ones. It goes beyond generating ideas. It is about the long process of developing ideas for more effective performance and the process of building abstract notions into concrete products. Creativity is full of emotionsthe reputational risk of not knowing how an idea will be received by stakeholders, the frustration of dealing with constraints and obstacles, conflict about directions to take, and elation when you finally develop a product. Successful creativity does not depend on the kinds of emotions experienced. Rather, it depends on your ability to harness the power of emotions and manage them when they get in the way of progress. In my book, The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions To Turn Ideas Into Action, I write about how to use emotional intelligence to manage the creative process, regardless of industry or job role. Notice emotions to identify opportunities A traditional (and outdated) idea of professionalism demands that emotions be left at the doorstep. But that is neither possible, nor desirable. Emotions contain messages about the state of our minds and the situations around us. This is valuable information that can spark inspiration and help us identify opportunities ripe for innovation. Is something frustrating you? This might point to a problem that can be solved. Entrepreneurs are skilled at identifying opportunities by reading their own and others feelings. Hate everything about the grocery shopping experience? Apoorva Mehta did not ignore this feeling, he used it to found Instacart. He created a way to shop for groceries from ones phone, which completely bypassed all the frustrations of going to the store, searching for items, and waiting in lines. Frustrated about the state of the beauty industry? Melissa Butler founded Lip Bar. Its products are vegan and cruelty-free and offer a wide variety of vibrant lipstick colors and complexion products. Innovators inside organizations do the same. For example, when a supervisor in a food services unit of a major hospital realizes his workers are exhausted, hes identifying a problem in need of a creative solution. As a result, the hospital redesigned the workflow, removing the need to bend or stretch to reach far away items. This reduced worker burnout and improved their accuracy on the job. Take advantage of thinking/feeling connections Emotion scientists have discovered moods boost different kinds of thinking. There are times when we feel positive, energized, and enthusiastic. These times are best for brainstorming and charting new ideas. At other times we are subdued or even sullen. At these times we are best at critical thinking. These moods make us see all that is wrong or not quite right. Creativity is not just a spark of inspiration or what we call “feeling creative.” Inspired ideas have to be developed and improved upon. To optimize creative work, it takes skill to match different moods to tasks which benefit from them. Feeling playful? Come up with new ideas for a project. Feeling down? Review and revise. Generate emotions What if you have to attend an ideation meeting, but are feeling down? Remember that we have more power over emotions than we might realize. You can create the mood that is most helpful in the moment. Recall a past win. Put on a song that gets you going. Reach out to a colleague whose enthusiasm is infectious. Just as athletes pump themselves up or find calm focus when needed, you can find a workplace equivalent of getting pumped up. Another skill is generating emotions to communicate and inspire. Leaders skilled at communicating their passion inspire others and end up having workers who are clear about their responsibilities and goals. Similarly, when pitching creative ideas, those who project fiery determination are perceived as both passionate and well prepared. And communicating these feelings is related to higher funding pledges. Use emotional intelligence to build a climate for creativity and innovation Leaders set the emotional tone in their teams and serve as models for what is expected and accepted. A Yale study including more than 14,000 people across industries in the U.S. asked workers to describe how their supervisors act in emotionally fraught situations. Emotionally intelligent supervisors do four specific things: They are skilled at reading emotions and acknowledge them. They realize when people are upset or worried about organizational or industry changes. They inspire enthusiasm and model decision-making that takes into account both optimistic and cautious voices. Emotionally intelligent supervisors understand how their decisions or other events affect people. They are able to successfully manage their own emotions, and also help their team members when they are upset or frustrated. Employees whose supervisors acted in emotionally intelligent ways were motivated, challenged, and fulfilled at work. However, employees whose supervisors did not act in emotionally intelligent ways felt unappreciated and angry. And this emotional climate had consequences. Having an emotionally intelligent supervisor makes workers see opportunities for growth and act in more creative and innovative ways. If the goal is creativity and innovation, leaders should develop emotional intelligence skills. A review of dozens of studies shows that training programseither in higher education or through workplace professional developmentmake people better at accurately perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions, regardless of their industry. When leaders develop these skills, they notice how their team members feel, demonstrate understanding of how their decisions impact others, and help people deal with challenges of work. Investment in leadership development will pay off in capacity for innovation.
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E-Commerce
Tech execs love popping supplements and infusing themselves with youthful young plasma to ward off Father Time, but new research shows that a substance humanity has been ingesting for a thousand years holds powerful anti-aging effects. A new study published in Nature Partner Journals Aging discovered that naturally occurring compounds in the modest psychedelic mushroom were able to slow aging in cells and even increase a mouses lifespan. The two-pronged study out of Emory University examined the effects of psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, on the micro level using human lung and skin cells, and the macro level using lab mice. Human fetal lung cells treated with psilocin, psilocybins active metabolite, showed a 29% boost to their cellular lifespans a number that rocketed to 57% when exposed to a much larger dosage. When the scientists repeated the study with human skin cells, the large psilocin dose increased the cells lifespan by 51%. Across the cellular experiments, exposure to the psychedelic reduced the oxidative stress that can lead to cell damage and preserved the length of telomeres, a part of the chromosome implicated in cancer and other age-related diseases. The scientists findings in living mice were even more impressive. When dosing older mice with psilocybin and comparing them to a control group, the research team found the aged mice lived 30% longer than their peers who werent subject to the same psychedelic journey. On top of that, the mice given psilocybin looked healthier, with better fur quality, hair regrowth and less graying on their coats. Psilocybin is an emerging frontier in mental health research, but it obviously holds some strong potential in the field of longevity too. The psychedelic substance has shown promise for everything from helping smokers and alcoholics quit to giving patients long-lasting relief from major depression. Our study opens new questions about what long-term treatments can do, senior study author and former Emory University associate professor Louise Hecker, PhD said. Additionally, even when the intervention is initiated late in life in mice, it still leads to improved survival, which is clinically relevant in healthy aging,
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E-Commerce
While tariffs threaten to whittle away profits for many businesses, those costs arent subtle when theyre tacked onto the price tag of an airplane. In an effort to preserve its bottom line, Delta Air Lines is getting creative. The Atlanta-based company has been pulling engines off new Airbus jets in Europe and bringing them stateside to get grounded U.S. planes up and flyingwithout paying costs associated with importing new planes and parts. Bloomberg reports that the company has a new practice of removing some U.S.-made Pratt & Whitney engines from new Airbus A321neo jets that were constructed in Europe and sending them to the U.S. in order to avoid import tariffs. Delta is then installing the engines on some of its older A320neo jets that arent currently flying due to engine problems. Because Delta is reportedly waiting for regulators to give its new set of jets the green light, the engine swapping doesnt mean grounding Europe-based planes that would otherwise be flying. Along with Boeing, Airbus is one of the two largest manufacturers of commercial aircraft in the world. Unlike U.S.-based Boeing, Airbus was founded in Europe and is co-owned by the governments of France, Germany, and Spain, among other investors. Under President Trumps current tariff rules, European-built aircraft incur a 10% tariff when imported into the U.S. Because airlines regularly pay Airbus and Boeing billions to bolster their fleets with modern jets, even a small percentage of additional cost stands to zap the airline industrys already notoriously thin margins. For Delta, one of the largest airlines in the U.S., coming to peace with trade chaos and paying Trumps tariffs isnt on the flight plan. We will not be paying tariffs on any aircraft deliveries, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in an April earnings call. These times are pretty uncertain, and if you start to put a 20% incremental cost on top of an aircraft, it gets very difficult to make that math work.
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E-Commerce
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