Prof. Dan Cable: How to be exceptional through empowerment

If you’re an ambitious person, you’ll be working out what it takes to be exceptional at work (and everywhere). You’ll know that working super hard helps, but won’t be enough — and might eventually burn you out. Getting candid feedback on what you need to change is critical. It goes hand in hand with compassion, funnily enough. You’ll want to strive for something far better than you have, in order to work out how far your strengths take you. Only that way you’ll know how to fill the gaps.

Finding moments — for yourself and those around you — that activate the parts of your brain (your seeking systems) helps. And you’ll want a hand in shaping your career, team, organisation; after all, it’s pretty debilitating to be told what to do or to copy somebody else’s work. In this conversation Professor Dan Cable shares his research on how to inspire exceptional performance at work.

The best bits of these conversations are captured in my newsletter Flashes+Sparks.

Further resources

• Dan’s website.
• His podcast Squeezing the Orange of Social Science with Akin Omobitan.
• His latest book Exceptional.