Thanks for your feedback. I go into more depth on many of the topics in the print version of the article.

I agree about the important of priming. Creating an atmosphere of positive thought and success is certainly a powerful tool. That said, like a number of psychological concepts I find that priming is frequently overused and misunderstood, a point I try to get across to students in my psych classes. Priming is very powerful in isolation, but is much harder to accomplish in an environment in which multiple conflicting stimuli are competing with one another.

As far as Gladwell, I can’t say I’m terribly impressed by him. Blink boils down to a discussion and application of heuristics, which I was studying almost 30 years at MIT and which are a basic part of modern cognitive psychology. Gladwell is a much better storyteller than, say, Gordon Allport (whose work on these topics long predates Gladwell), but less knowledgeable.

ELICIT YOUR EMPLOYEES’ “INNER HERO”

Expanding on “Make people feel competent and appreciated.”…Here’s a recommendation that will help your people access what Southwest Airlines calls the Warrior Spirit:

Continually share stories of employees demonstrating “go the extra mile” behavior, stellar customer service, innovative thinking, courage, and other examples of inspiring behavior.

By doing this, you remind your people of what they are capable of, what heroic potential they have access to.

By making this a regular practice, you unleash the phenomenon called Priming, which is one of the most powerful psychological/neurological phenomena available to a leader.

If you want to read more about priming and how to use it:

1) An excellent blog post explaining priming as part of a review about the book Blink:

blog post

2) a blog post I wrote titled:

Prime Your People For Greatness

I believe that this is one of the most important and useful things you can do to keep morale high and a “Can Do” attitude present in your workforce during difficult times.

Happy New Year!