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People often say that a single spark can light a fire. In careers, that spark is often a person. It might be someone early in life who cracks open a door, offers encouragement, or quietly shows what success can look like. Whats less obvious is how profoundly that very first connection can shape everything that comes afterward. Consider 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion Serena Williams. Williams has often spoken about the crucial role played by her first coachher father, Richard Williams. His belief in her abilities and his willingness to expose her to competitive tennis from an early age ensured she gained experience long before most of her peers. In this, shes not alone: In sports, a first coach can recognize potential before anyone else does. Or consider Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theatres first Black female principal dancer. When Copeland was 13, a Boys & Girls Club teacher, Cynthia Bradley, recognized her potential and brought her into formal ballet training; within four years Copeland earned a spot in ABTs Studio Company. In 2015, she became ABTs first Black female principal, a milestone built on that early mentorship. Those first advocates opened doors to elite training, scholarships, and professional networks that sustained a long, barrier-breaking career. Anecdotes like these are powerful, but they also raise questions. Do early connections cause long-term success, or do they simply come more easily to people already positioned to succeed? After all, a young athlete with supportive and affluent parents might have access to better training and competition regardless of who their first coach is. This chicken-and-egg problem is hard to untangle, unless you look at a setting where chance plays a role. Thats where my research comes in. Real estate as a natural laboratory Im a professor of real estate finance, and I noticed that the residential real estate brokerage industry can mimic a random experimental setting. Since only a small number of people are active in housing markets at any given time, agents cant choose exactly who they work with. That means a new agents first counterparty brokerthat is, the agent on the other side of the deal depends on who happens to be representing clients at the same time and place. In many cases, that first connection is essentially a matter of luck. So my colleagues and I analyzed more than 20 years of home sales data from Charlotte, North Carolina, covering more than 40,000 unique real estate agents and 417,000 home sales from 2001 to 2023. We found that new agents who land their first deal with a well-connected power broker are about 25% more likely to still be in the business a year later. Since many agents struggle to close a second deal within a year of their first, this significantly boosts their chances of building a lasting career. The first handshake and lasting spark What makes these first encounters so powerful is not only the transfer of skills but also the shaping of confidence and identity. A young musician invited to join an orchestra by a respected conductor begins to see himself as part of that world. A student encouraged by a scientist to enter a national competition begins to imagine a place for herself in research. An athlete who trains with an Olympic medalist begins to visualize competing at the highest levels. In each case, the first connection changes the sense of what is possible. Our study also found that new real estate agents at the greatest risk of leaving the field (those with fewer early sales) benefit the most from starting out with a well-connected partner. The same dynamic appears in sports, where struggling athletes often flourish under coaches with deep relationships and credibility, and in education, where students on the verge of disengaging can be reenergized by respected teachers who open doors to programs, competitions, and networks. These mentors do more than teach. They change trajectories. The lesson for those just beginning their careers: Seek out people who are respected and generous with their experience. Observing how they work, think, and solve problems can shape your own professional identity. For those who are more established, the takeaway is equally important: Offering a hand to someone new, making an introduction, or simply offering encouragement can set in motion a sequence of events that shape a life. Soon Hyeok Choi is an assistant professor of real estate finance at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Our built environment contributes to a mental health crisis. Were not living in a natural outcome of human needs and behavior. The built environment as we know itbuildings and the spaces betweendoes direct damage to our minds. Land use planning has had devastating impacts on Americans: economically, socially, and culturally. But Im not a doomer and I know these things are fixable. Not overnight reversible, but certainly fixable. Copycat plans Typical land use rules are written, updated, and enforced at the local government level. But as you might expect, agencies copied each other over the years because why wouldnt they. Years ago, when I learned some photography techniques that were new to me, I made cheat sheets for other photographers. Much of what Ive learned as an adult (podcasting, publishing, public speaking, etc.) has been taught by generous people who themselves had learned tips and tricks. So of course public agencies copied each other with their rule-making. That worked for a similar river city? Lets try it here. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} Planning departments at city and county levels werent setting out to guide development in a way that would purposefully harm people. Quite the opposite. If a new Sears distribution center was coming to town, theyd want to map out a plan to accommodate all the new employees and subsequent traffic. In the middle of the 20th century, planners were still very much concerned about separating dirty and/or dangerous land uses from residential areas. The result was that all across the country, local development rules required or incentivized development patterns that spread everyone and everything across the landscape. A work zone, school zone, shopping zone, entertainment zone, and a sleep zone were established. And then each major category started getting more prescriptive subcategories. Residential morphed into single-family, multi-family (apartments), and condos. But wait, theres more! Residential land uses started to be regulated by local governments according to lot size: garden apartments, planned unit developments, and subdivisions were each given rules. Residential was also regulated by the type of people living in a place: public housing, group dwellings, age-restricted dwelling, renters, and owners. Local regulations created (and continue to create) sprawl in cities, not just the suburbs. The traffic factor Land use planning requires traffic engineering analysis, a process prioritizing speedy car movement above all else. Wider roads and intersections are not just suggested but required with the express goal to move vehicular traffic from zone to zone as quickly as possible. This has been going on for nearly 100 years without taking a foot off the brake. The obvious outcome of modern land use planning is that Americans drive everywhere all the time. Not just work commutes, but all the errands before, during, and after work. Half of our car trips are less than a few miles long. A quarter are less than one mile. Less than a mile in a car by ourselves. The mental health connection Life in a single-occupant vehicle has its perks, like singing along to music or listening to podcasts uninterrupted. It also has its pains, like separation from other humans and mental deterioration. Loneliness is a significant variable affecting depression. Its a predisposing factor. Cigna conducted a study of 20,000 Americans, and reported a jaw-dropping finding: nearly half of adults sometimes or always feel alone. 40% said their relationships arent meaningful and they feel isolated. Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. She says the health risks of missing out on social connection is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Worse yet, theres a causal relationship between social isolation and suicide. Conversely, having a crew (social support in doctor jargon) has a protective effect against suicide. For every suicidal death, another 20 people attempted suicide. The takeaway So what do you do with all this heavy information? First, remember that the built environment is deliberately planned for us to drive in cars from zone to zone. Planners arent trying to destroy our minds, but the built environment increases anxiety, depression, isolation, loneliness, and suicide. Second, understand the land use catastrophes are reversible. Compact development won’t be legalized overnight, but reform can come as quickly as local leaders are willing. Walk-friendly, bike-friendly, transit-friendly places are good medicine, and theyre made possible at the local level. Third, and most important of all, know that things can get better in the end. Americas built environment does not fit who we are as humans, but we can turn this around with something as boring as reforming land use planning. Start by legalizing healthy infrastructurea variety of land uses within walking distance of homes and streets designed for safe walking and cycling. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he exploresideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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E-Commerce
Niccol Machiavelli, the infamous author of The Prince, wrote in the 1500s that the ideal leader makes and breaks solemn agreements. He creates alliances with weak allies to defeat a powerful enemy and then eliminates them one by one. He blames his next-in-charge for his own mistakes, and he executes opponents in public. St. Francis of Assisi was the antithesis of a Machiavellian leader. Born in 1181, the future saint renounced his fathers wealth, then spent the remainder of his life wandering around northern Italy as a beggar and preacher. Francis gained a reputation for extreme humilitybut certainly he was not weak. He dealt with popes, nobles and even an Egyptian sultan. He founded a religious order, the Franciscans, that survives today. In modern times, Machiavellian leaders abound in the corporate world. Perhaps more surprisingly, many other business leaders resemble Francis: humble and self-effacing, but by no means weak. In our research, we argue that two types of motivation help to explain these vast and enduring differences in leadership. Two faces of power Psychologists have long been fascinated by peoples nonconscious motivesand how to measure them. One influential assessment, developed in the 1930s, is the Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT. People write short stories about ambiguous pictures, and researchers then analyze the stories to see which themes emerge: what the writer cares or worries about, and how they see the world. In 1970, psychologist David McClelland coined the phrase the two faces of power to describe two different types of power that motivate people, based on his TAT analyses: personal power and socialized power. Personal power is the motivation to dominate others. McClelland noted that people with a desire for personal power tend to use imagery that evokes the law of the jungle in which the strongest survive by destroying their adversaries. Socialized power, on the other hand, aims to benefit others. McClelland noted that personal power was associated with behavior like heavy drinking, gambling, aggressive impulses and collecting prestige supplies, like convertibles. People concerned with the more socialized aspect of power, meanwhile, join more organizations and are more apt to become officers in them, including sports teams. A few years later, McClelland and consultant David Burnham published an article titled Power is the Great Motivator, elaborating on this basic link between power motivation and leader effectiveness. Through a series of biographical vignettes and an analysis of a large company, they showed that managers exhibiting a high degree of socialized power were more effective than managers motivated by personal power. Measuring motivation It seemed to us that personal power, the law of the jungle, motivates the kinds of behavior approvingly described by Machiavelli. Likewise, socialized power seemed to underlie the forceful but altruistic behavior of St. Francis and modern so-called humble leaders. But we faced a problem: how to measure motivation. Powerful people such as world-class CEOs have little inclination to take TATs or answer questionnaires for admittedly humble scholars. In the 1990s, psychologist David Winter showed that speeches, interviews and diplomatic texts reveal nonconscious motivation in the same way as the Thematic Apperception Testdemonstrating a way to study leaders views of power. For example, someone driven by a desire for personal power often tries to control or regulate people around them; attempts to persuade and convince; and is concerned with fame, status and reputation. However, Winters procedures for analyzing texts are manual and complex; it is difficult to process a large number of documents. Also, he focused on personal power; socialized power was not included in his coding procedures. Words and action In order to overcome these limitations, we used computer-aided text analysis to analyze the language of CEOs in interviews and conference calls. In a series of 2019 studies, which were peer-reviewed and summarized in the Academy of Management Proceedings, our team identified 40 Machiavellian and 40 humble CEOs. First, we took a close look at the types of words and phrases that distinguished the two groups, shedding light on the kind of power that motivates each one. Using these patterns, we created two dictionaries of words and phrases that expressed personal power and socialized power. Language about strong, forceful actions, control, managing impressions, punishment and fear of failure, to name a few themes, constituted the personal power dictionary. Defeat, overrun and strafe, for example, appeared among the words on the personal power list. Themes such as rewards, mentoring and positive relationships characterized the socialized power dictionary. Then, we used a computer program to scan hundreds of interviews and quarterly conference calls. The computer program calculated personal and socialized power scores for each of the CEOs. Our team also developed indexes of Machiavellian and humble leader behaviorsuch as smearing competitors and backing out of agreements, or making significant donations to charity, respectivelyand measured all 80 CEOs. We found very high correlations between power motivation and CEO behavior. CEOs with high personal power scores, based on our analysis of their interviews and conference calls, also tended to show Machiavellian behavior. CEO humble behavior was positively related to socialized power. People and profits Do these abstract statistical results really mean anything? Evidently. Numerous CEOs from our list of humble executives have founded or managed exceptionally successful and people-oriented companies, including Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, Danny Wegman of Wegmans, and James Goodnight of the SAS Institute. Several of the humble CEOs have appeared multipletimes on Fortunes annual Best Companies to Work For list. The Machiavellian CEO list included Kenneth Lay of Enron fame and John Rigas, one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, who was convicted of fraud. Mark Hurd, one-time CEO of Hewlett Packard, appeared on Complexs list of the worst chief executive officers in tech history. In general, criticisms of profits over people, poor treatment of employees, scandals, lavish spending, lawsuits and accusations or convictions of fraud characterize many of our Machiavellian CEOs. McClelland and Burnham were right. Power really is the great motivator, but its the type of power that makes the difference. William D. Spangler is an associate professor emeritus of management at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Aleksey Tikhomirov is a lecturer of public administration and policy at Binghamton University, State University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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