Why Hope?

http://www.billycoxinternational.com/blog/why-hope/

When People Sense Victory:
They sacrifice to succeed.
They look for ways to win.
They become energized.
They follow the game plan.
They help other team members.

When People Sense Defeat:
They give us as little as possible.
They look for excuses.
They become tired.
They forsake the game plan.
They hurt others.

The Messenger Really Matters

http://www.hrbartender.com/2011/employee/the-messenger-really-matters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HrBartender+%28hr+bartender%29

“It’s the message that is important, not the messenger.”

While I agree the message is important, the messenger is equallyimportant.  In fact, for some situations, the person who delivers the message can change the entire dynamic.  Here’s an example:

A company is struggling with their revenues.  The sales forecast isn’t good.  The organization must do a significant layoff to survive:

Can a representative from an outplacement firm deliver the message?  Sure they can.  Most people will call the company insensitive for doing such a thing.

7 Types of Power in the Workplace

http://www.hrbartender.com/2010/training/7-types-of-power-in-the-workplace/

• Coercive power is associated with people who are in a position to punish others. People fear the consequences of not doing what has been asked of them.

• Connection power is based upon who you know.  This person knows, and has the ear of, other powerful people within the organization.

• Expert power comes from a person’s expertise (duh!).  This is commonly a person with an acclaimed skill or accomplishment.

• A person who has access to valuable or important information possesses informational power.

• Legitimate power comes from the position a person holds.  This is related to a person’s title and job responsibilities.  You might also hear this referred to as positional power.

• People who are well-liked and respected can have referent power.

• Reward power is based upon a person’s ability to bestow rewards.  Those rewards might come in the form of job assignments, schedules, pay or benefits.

Let your stuff focus on their work

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/five-reasons-you-need-to-trust-your-staff/6384?tag=nl.e106

Trust begets trust.  Do you trust your staff to do their jobs and do them correctly?  If not, you have a situation that needs to be resolved. Your issue may be that:

• Your staff truly doesn’t have the skills to get the job done. If this is the case, you need to train your staff or add people with the correct skills.
• You may not have the self-confidence or experience to lead an experienced staff. This can manifest itself in a need to interfere or micromanage.

Obviously, there is a difference between general management and micromanagement and even the best leaders can sometimes devolve into micromanagement when stress is high. But when you have confidence in your staff, they will know it.  No one wants to be micromanaged; people want to work for those who value their contributions and that treat them like professionals.

There is also a difference between micromanagement and rolling your sleeves up and working alongside your staff when necessary.

Can You Answer the Miracle Question?

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/career-advice/blog/other-8-hours/can-you-answer-the-miracle-question/2597/

The questions you ask define your reality. They can help you live your best life or they can distract you (at best) or even derail you. It’s time you start thinking like a lawyer. A good trial lawyer uses questions to construct a reality that builds their case and best supports their client. It’s time that you become a better advocate for yourself by asking better questions.

Think of the questions you ask as a beacon of light. The focus of your question becomes the focus of your attention. No matter what questions you are asking, you are always defining what is important and what is worth your attention. If you get in the habit of asking problem-focused questions, your energy will be spent on your problems and not necessarily on the solutions.

Management ain’t magic, it’s learned

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/dont-be-the-victim-in-your-career/6070?tag=nl.e106

This is targeted more toward IT leaders and upper management, but one of the gravest sins you can commit as a leader is expecting that management and leadership skills exist naturally in everyone and will instantly flourish once you assign a new manager a cadre of direct reports. Most would laugh if I suggested taking a competent writer, plopping them in front of the latest development environment, and expecting them to write clean and efficient code since they’ve demonstrated excellent keyboarding talent, yet corporate management does the equivalent daily. Without a second thought, a talented technician or project manager will be promoted to an IT leadership position, and then their managers watch in horror as they spectacularly fail.

Like any other skill, management and leadership are learned talents, and expecting someone to thrive in a new role without training and development is ludicrous. Furthermore, this usually destroys two formerly effective positions by removing the technician from the role they excelled at, then not equipping them for success in their new role.

With careful planning and a focus on managing and running your career in an active and aggressive manner, you can excel in IT or any other field. Furthermore, approaching your career as a free agent opens up the entire world of employment, be it at a different company, in an entrepreneurial role, or in a position totally unrelated to technology. While it may be scary to embrace the fact that you wield so much power over your own career, the alternative of victimhood and long years spent being pushed by circumstance through your working life is far less palatable.

The Genius Hour

http://www.danpink.com/archives/2011/07/the-genius-hour-how-60-minutes-a-week-can-electrify-your-job

Lots of people believe that a single individual can’t make a difference in an organization.



Each week, employees can take a Genius Hour — 60 minutes to work on new ideas or master new skills. They’ve used that precious sliver of autonomy well, coming up with a range of innovations including training tools for other branches.
Of course, an hour a week for every employee isn’t much time. But it’s an hour more than most of us get. And Jen makes it work for at least three reasons.

Implementation matters. Jen admits that “it’s hard for our industry to see ways to offer autonomy,” and for good reason – credit unions are highly regulated and by necessity must be conservative. As a result, good ideas often blossom – and then wither from inaction. Jen works like a fiend to see that the best ideas get implemented.

How to Be a Great Storyteller

http://www.bnet.com/blog/ceo/how-to-be-a-great-storyteller-and-win-over-any-audience/6460?tag=content;drawer-container
1-First, determine who your audience is.


2-Second, put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask three questions: 1) What’s in it for them, 2) why should they care, and 3) what criteria do they use to determine if whatever it is you’re pitching is a good idea or not.


3.Third, develop your story by satisfying those three questions.

Here are some examples:

• If you’re an entrepreneur pitching investors, your story could relate to the genesis of the idea - if it’s an interesting or amusing story - and how it will change the world, so to speak. If you can somehow relate it directly to investors as individuals, i.e. involving family, technology they might use, etc., that’s good but not necessary. 
• If you’re pitching potential customers, you can tell the story of how your product or service did something amazing for another customer and how that customer benefitted in terms of gaining market share, for example. 
• If it’s an elevator pitch about your company, don’t do the usual boring …

If it’s an interview and you’re asked to tell them about yourself, don’t just rattle off the companies you’ve worked for and your accomplishments.

Qualities of a great executive

1. Ask employees how you can best support them in doing their job

2. Make sure that employees have all the information, resources and support they need to do their job

3. Give continuous feedback, both positive and constructive

4. Provide opportunities for professional growth

5. Listen

6. Give frequent feedback

7. Understand your employees' jobs

8. Acknowledge your employees' work 

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2456-Workplace-Issues-12-Traits-of-a-Great-Boss/?SiteId=cbmsnhp42456&sc_extcmp=JS_2456_home1&gt1=23000

7 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow on Twitter

http://www.bnet.com/blog/build-business/7-people-every-entrepreneur-should-follow-on-twitter/546?promo=713&tag=nl.e713

Are You a Collaborative Leader?

Developing a facebook application Chatter for collaboration and networking

http://hbr.org/2011/07/are-you-a-collaborative-leader/ar/1?cm_sp=most_widget-_-hbr_articles-_-Are%20You%20a%20Collaborative%20Leader%3F

How to climb the corporate ladder and become a good manager #2

if some company wants to hire you obviously they want you to do some work in the short term

How to develop a CEO : there is a very good book from Harvard Business that talks about Developing the CEO within you and it is called " Bower, Joseph L. The CEO Within: Why Inside Outsiders Are the Key to Succession Planning. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007."

  in which he explains how you can develop your skills from the beginning of your career and be on the right road

so the author developed a series of questions you should ask for potential leaders in the future during the recruitment process:

1-Why are you being hired?
 you want to get a good understanding of why this company wants to hire you obviously they some work for you to do .
 But 2- Do they let you develop and grow over time ?
3-Is there a career path or career paths?
4-Or you are basically moving without directions and do the job this year and the next year over and over
There is more questions you can ask your potential employer
5-How they gonna help grow? 
6-What pattern of assignment you will gonna get ?
7- Are you going to have time to learn ? 
8-Is this a place where you are running all the time ?
9-What kind of manners are they gonna provide you ?
10-What kind of training they gonna provide?
11-How early can you run a business?
12-Is this a company that is organized that is lots of pieces are together ?


Now before talking about Marketing and growth you have to perform , and you cannot get into the game without earning the reputation of meeting your commitments.

Now What is the Characteristics of a Good Leader :

if you are a person who is early recognized as the one who helps others, and you do develop other people
and is working with you a step up for them? and it is a huge thing for your own reputation.

How you get on with your peers?

Are you So competitive that they don't trust you ?

Or Are you someone that they really welcome ? and that's  a big deal

And How do you manage up? One of the interesting things is that we think about Bosses that they gonna help us.

So that usually means that when your boss sees you coming he will say there is a problem , they gonna ask for something.

Think about what difference it makes if you gonna actually help your boss.
So Managing up is a big issue.
And How you are going to help the organization which means that you need to learn how to manage at higher levels at the organization?

Finally the author added a question :
Are you transparent?

Finally if you want to be a leader you have to get the reputation for being transparent,clear and straight forward.

What managers really like is that you want a person who is clear and when there is a problem he says sorry i screwed up.this did not work out and here is what i am going to do.

Focusing on Developing yourself: 
Are you developing a network that expands outside your division?

As most managers when they are developing they focus on the inside of the organization and the people they are working with and they forget the people outside the organization and in the community..,,,,,

it is interesting that some people get to know their customers and their vendors...and you can even talk to union people and you might learn something....

Do you know people in the community who are not in your business and who may not be in business at all?

Those organizations usually give the opportunity to be responsible early ....

Final thing is focusing on living a balanced life:
One of the questions asked is How i would do of that and take care of my family  ?

Well you have to take care of your family and your friends and live a balanced life..

How to climb the corporate ladder and become a good manager

1- Patience: First you need to understand that you have a long way to go so you have to be patient.
2- Developing your skills : the last thing you need to do is going back to school but you will discover that it is something that you need to continue to learn and improve your skills.
3- Be an inside outsider  : it is a manager that have developed  inside the  company and grown in the corporate but somehow he has retained objectivity and has a perspective about what is happening in the world outside and now he can understand the need to make changes in the company.
4- Work Hard and Play Hard: you won't achieve anything without hard work unless you are a magician.and you have to live a balanced life. you do everything you work hard and be really good at what you do and also go to pray as a lot of religious people are very successful and finally to need to exercise find time for going to the gym or enjoy walking and have to do that routinely.
5- Quit your job at the right time : when you start being bored at work and you are not improving and developing running around without a real strategy or there is work or management conflicts then it is time to move on with your life and find another job and you have to be picky at choosing the right job.
6- Be a good Finisher for projects: you to need to develop the skills in which you finish the projects you take until the end .
7- Be Organized: you need first to organize your thoughts and idea , use calendars , to do lists, organize your desk even your clothes.
8- Be a technology Savvy : we are living now in a a changing world so you need to understand technology as leaders of yesterday are very old fashioned but their skills most of them are still valid so you will work hard like them in the past to move ahead but you need technology too so you have to develop your computer skills and mainly scripting and programming , using the internet facebook , youtube , blogging twitter and effective use of search engines.
(to be continued )

Filling the Big Shoes and Climbing the corporate ladder

There is something they say that “You don’t want to be the guy who follows a legend. You want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the legend.”


A leader’s first responsibility is not to his predecessor, it is to the organization.


Affirm the organization’s purpose. The new leader must address what the company does and pay tribute to it.


Recognize the team. Leaders accomplish little by themselves. The previous leader’s legacy is built upon the good people she developed and who repaid that opportunity with outstanding service. Savvy newcomers always make a point of reassuring such employees that their contributions are important and must continue to be


Do the right thing. 
Every leader will face his own challenges because an organization must succeed in dynamic environment where circumstance, situations and systems change. A leader’s commitment is to help the organization succeed in the new environment not the one in the history books.


When Following a Legend is a Good Thing
Having big shoes to fill is not always a bad thing for a leader. The challenge is not to walk in those footsteps– it is to create a new path forward.

5 secrets to climbing the ladder faster

CEOs and other top execs share tips for getting where you want to be

Sometimes getting from where you are to where you'd like to be careerwise can seem like a daunting task. While time and experience help, other actions can speed the process along. Here, executives in a variety of fields share their tips on how to move up the ladder a bit faster.

Accumulate knowledge

"Knowledge is power," says Linda Matzigkeit, senior vice president of strategic planning and human resources for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. "You need to read about your industry, know what people are doing and keep your edge on innovation."

Anthony Leone, founder of Energy Kitchen, a restaurantfranchise based in New York City, agrees. "Learn as much as you possibly can in your chosen field. Become such an asset to your company that the owners tell themselves, 'We cannot live without this person.'" He further suggests asking your boss what skills would most benefit the company, then going out and learning them "to the point that they just roll off your tongue, like your phone number."

Know how to ask questions

Armed with a solid understanding of their field, workers who gain attention are ones who know how to ask appropriate questions.

"Asking good questions is an art," says Elizabeth Sobol,managing director of IMG Artists, North America, which offers management services to performing artists. "I will be much more impressed if you ask me good ones than if you talk over me, trying to show me how much you know."

Employees should not worry that asking questions is a sign of ineptitude. "Do not be afraid to admit that you do not understand something," says Robert Stack, president and CEO of Community Options Inc., a national nonprofit organization that develops homes and employment for people with disabilities. "There is nothing wrong with not knowing; it is not asking or pretending to understand that always seems to have negative ramifications."

Think outside yourself

People who move up quickly are often ones who are good at examining the needs and goals of the company as a whole, not just in their own particular niche. Matzigkeit says that because her field (health care) is very specialized, it is easy to get deep in your own area. "In order to advance and truly identify ways you can have continued impact in an organization, you need to get connected to the big picture. Only then can you develop your skills, broaden your exposure and find ways to apply your transferable skills."

For managers looking to advance, Randy Murphy, president and CEO of the restaurant franchiseMama Fu's Asian House, suggests wandering around. "Have a presence in your store, and always know what is going on with your guests, employees and overall operations." He also notes that ambitious employees should always be looking for their own replacement. "Develop and train those under you so the team overall does better and so that you have a quality replacement to free you up for promotion to the next level."

Give it your all

Of course, one of the best ways to gain notice is to be a solid performer. "If you execute flawlessly, you will have a solid reputation, which will allow you to network into the right circles," says Brian Curin, president of the footwear chain Flip Flop Shops.

"Go beyond the job description," Stack adds. If you feel you are a person who is supposed to help people with disabilities find jobs, Stark suggests you work extra hours and get creative. "If you are supposed to help with fundraising, go out of your way to ask someone you do not know for support. Always be a little early, and always ask you manager what you can do that means a little extra."

Let your passion shine through

Doing all of these things, from learning as much as possible about a field to regularly giving 100 percent, can involve a great deal of time and effort. Some employees will look at these challenges as obstacles to overcome in order to get ahead. Others will view them with enthusiasm because they truly have a passion for their field. Guess who usually moves up faster?

Sobol says that she is impressed by people "who are fascinated by our business and are clearly always trying to learn and understand more about it. It is not hard to glean who is doing it out of genuine interest and who is not, so don't try to fake  it."

For those who lack that passion, maybe it's time to consider looking for a new ladder to climb. The rungs might not seem so hard to navigate when the journey upward is enjoyable.

Six tips for dealing with underachievers

By John McKee

April 21, 2011, 5:03 AM PDT

Takeaway: Many organizations have underachievers. Most, unfortunately don’t know how to deal with them proactively. Leadership coach John M McKee provides his favorite tips to get things moving forward.

“Dear Coach McKee, I’ve got a challenge:  One of my team members, Paul, is a chronic underachiever.  He’s not performing to standard and I know he’s capable of more. He’s a smart enough guy, and I know he’s capable of more.

I’ve talked to him about it but nothing changed. Should I face facts and just let him go?  We work in a small market and it could take a long time to replace him.  Any advice for how to get him motivated?” - Janice, Chicoutimi, Quebec.

Janice, although it’s small comfort, the problem you’re facing is a fairly common one and occurs in every country.  I recognize that it would be tempting to just dump Paul if you had a bigger talent pool up there; but the fact is you’re not alone with this hassle.  Less than 15% of senior managers say their organizations deal with under-performers effectively according to a US national survey.

Here are six of my favorite tips for helping motivate chronic underachievers. These work in almost any situation or job role:

1. Recognize that you, as supervisor, are in the best position to deal with your less-than-perfect performers. It’s tempting to call in HR or even an outsider to “fix” the issue when people are involved, but you know Paul, and the job requirements, best.

2. Deal with it head on. This is the time to flex your manager muscles. I’m not saying that you should lose your composure, but you need to tell Paul that he is not performing satisfactorily.  Find out if anything’s wrong, if there are problems you need to know about it.  That includes stuff outside of work.

3. Verify his perspective - Does he clearly know what his performance metrics are?   Use open-ended questions starting (with Who?, What?, Where?, When?, and How?) and drill down to ascertain he understands his role and what’s expected quantitatively.  How does he regard his performance?  You may find out he thinks he’s doing as much or more than others already.

4. Right tools in the tool chest? Poorly performing Paul may have problems with his tools of the trade.  This is a common issue for those working with computers.

5. Team players may not be playing well together. Every department head has seen how certain people simply rub each other the wrong way. Track performance history to see if new co-workers’ arrivals impacted the performance or productivity as far back as possible.

6. Leadership issue? This is often the issue. It’s possible that you’re the problem.  How often do you discuss goals, objectives, and results openly in a team environment?  The best leaders do and their team members recognize it. So, share successes and failures openly.  Salute the good performers and encourage everyone to up their game. Help weak players to understand that they need to improve because they’re holding the team back.

1 in 4 New Managers Unprepared to Lead, Survey Finds

If you’re the type of young person who spends your free moments online reading blog posts on productivity and office politics and your evenings perusing the latest business books, than most likely one goal is at the forefront of your mind — making it to management. You may think of being promoted as the reward for all your hard work, but is this also a case where you should watch out what you wish for?

For a significant percentage of new managers the answer appears to be yes if a new CareerBuilder survey is to be believed. The nationwide poll of nearly 4,000 workers revealed that finally getting on to the next rung of the career ladder can cause some serious stress.

The survey revealed that more than a quarter (26 percent) of new managers felt underprepared for their new responsibilities and a whopping 58 percent reported receiving no management training. So what did these fledgling bosses struggle with the most? CareerBuilder outlines the most commonly reported trouble spots for managers:

• Dealing with issues between co-workers — 25 percent
• Motivating team members — 22 percent
• Performance reviews — 15 percent
• Finding the resources needed to support the team — 15 percent
• Creating career paths for my team — 12 percent

Of course, we’ve got plenty of great resources to help new mangers get up to speed on BNET, including experienced managers sharing their worst mistakes following their first big promotion and readers offering tips to rookie bosses. Each individual story is different, but what stands out from both these tales from the front lines and from the CareerBuilder list of problem areas for new managers is just how difficult “soft” skills of management can be. Technical abilities may win you the promotion, but to succeed in management you’ll need tomaster office politics.

If you’ve already made it to management, was the transition a smooth one or did you struggle to cope with your new responsibilities?

Read More on BNET:

• What’s the First Thing New Managers Need to Learn
• Readers Diagnose “New Management Syndrome,” Offer Cures
• The Worse New-Manager Mistakes

(Image courtesy of Flickr user mrallwrighty, CC 2.0)

Managing Up: How to Do It Effectively

Face it: You need to manage up. At least if you want to succeed in corporate America. It’s as important as getting the job done. Managing up gives your leaders a way to see the work you do in a way that will benefit you. It also creates job security. And let’s be honest: When layoffs hit, the boss’s favorites never gets cut, regardless of their skills and talents.

Here are five ways to manage up that will put you in line for raises, security, and a fulfilling career.

1) Don’t blame your boss for anything. There is no point. Your boss is in charge and you are not. Make a note of what annoys you and tell yourself you won’t do it when you are boss. (Although beware, there are no perfect bosses. Just like parenting, you will suck as a manager in your own special way.)  When you manage up properly you will be able to turn your bad boss into a good boss. For you. Because you can work around your boss’s foibles if you stay focused on your goals. And yes, this is even true for bosses who micromanage.

2) Don’t wait for your performance review to fight for a raise. Find out the salary politics way before your performance review. What’s your boss up against when it comes to approving a raise for you? What do you need to do for him to help? Who are the influencers?  Start managing all of them. Your salary review will need to be approved by a bunch of people. Make sure they love you BEFORE performance review time. By the time approvals come around, it’s too late to ingratiate yourself. And, if it should come down to your boss really having no power over the purse strings, ask for nonfinancial compensation, like conferences and gadgets or whatever it important to you.

3) Find out what your boss is being measured on. Your boss definitely cares more about his own salary review than about yours. The more you help your boss to meet his goals, the more likely he is to go to bat for you to meet your own goals. If you do lots of work but it’s all outside the parameters of your boss’s goals, your boss won’t notice.  Do the work that matters, and then translate that strong performance into action from your boss. This means that the person who puts their head down and gets all their work done perfectly is not smart. There is no point in being the hardest worker in the office because all work is not equal. The work that is important is the work that gets noticed. Do less work so you have more time to understand what work matters.

4) Get benchmarks early, but be open to them changing. Your boss just wants you to make a difference on the team. He doesn’t really care about your performance goals, per se. He cares about his own, his team’s, and your participation to meet those goals. So help your boss to keep track of you by shifting your goals to be in sync with the company’s goals. Your boss will be surprisingly open to shifting goals in the name of helping the company. And you’ll find that shifting makes you look more like a team player, and like your irreplaceable to your boss.

5) Be nice. Really, there is no better way to ensure a good performance review if you are well liked by your boss. People get hired for hard skills to get the job. But they get fired and promoted because of their soft skills that make people like them. So really, the performance review is a great time to solidify your relationship with your boss after a year of hard work creating that relationship.

Why Do Married Men Earn More Than Single Guys Doing the Same Job?

In the annals of wage discrimination, a so-called marriage premium for men seldom gets much traction outside academic circles. Experts have for decades acknowledged that men who are married earn more on average than bachelors who do similar work.

The big, still puzzling question is why?

Theories about why employers pay married men more center-even in 2011-on a spouse at home who frees a husband from domestic tasks that sap his productivity at work. Of course, the same might be said of women at work whose husbands run households. But the available evidence does not show that men capitalize on extra time.

Is there a basic bias going on? Are married men getting the proverbial free lunch? Sidestepping a loaded question, maybe in a world where rules are fair and family expenses soar through the roof we should get more automatically. But the world is not fair, so I find it odd that life appears to bestow a free lunch on anyone, married or single.

Are Married Men More Productive Than Single Men?

Economists have yet to come up with good answers for this. The exploration of this topic has relied on fuzzy data on productivity tied to job titles and compensation surveys full of statistical assumptions, where two desk jobs that sound alike may scarcely resemble each other. No one has answered the basic question - are married men more productive?

That’s where economists Naomi Feldman of Ben-Gurion Universityand Francesca Cornaglia of Queen Mary University come in. They’ve drilled into this topic by examining another group of employees that American men can easily relate to: professional baseball players.

To be sure, professional baseball players are different from most of us. But there are similarities in some civilian echelons. Like top athletes, prominent CEOs, politicians, entrepreneurs and lawyers travel extensively, work long hours, pocket lavish compensation, and court winning records in the public eye.

Where the productivity of most private citizens is out of view, kids and rotisserie baseball fanatics can go online for exhaustive stats on every major league baseball player. (Sadly, trading baseball cards has lost cachet in schoolyards.) Pro second basemen on any team seldom stray far from second base, making their productivity easy to compare. Likewise, teammates mind their turf. And rules have changed hardly at all since the first major league pitcher faced a batter in 1871.

With statistical assists from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Sean Lahman’s Baseball Archive, Feldman and Cornaglia mustered data for a stab at benchmarking married men’s performance at work. Around 16,000 major league baseball players have played at least one game on a major league baseball since the first game. Trimming the roster left 5,000 players who played a sufficient number of games.

Looking for Answers in Baseball Stats

Besides marital status, “Productivity, Wages, and Marriage: The Case of Major League Baseball” crunched player height, weight, left or right-handedness, age in rookie season, experience, number of games played in a season, fielding position and team managers in addition to routine batting and pitching stats. When the dust settled, the study confirmed that the top third of married pro baseball players since 1975 - when free agents were born — have earned from 17 to 20 percent more that top tier counterparts who still play the dating field. But as for productivity, the authors found no meaningful evidence that links marriage to more runs, hits and putouts.

If married ballplayers are not more productive, why then do they earn a marriage premium? It’s not a free lunch. Feldman and Cornaglia credit added value to off the field characteristics like stability, leadership skills and popularity. Fans often flock in larger numbers to home teams with more married players, the study found. Bigger gates appeal to team owners who sign players’ paychecks.

But does that explain a marriage premium for corporate citizens? Hardly. On the other hand, Feldman says that anecdotal evidence - especially from men — supports an old-fashioned theory. Marriage might not make men better workers, but wives make them better negotiators.

S.L. Mintz covers finance and investment strategy and was a writer of the best-selling Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report.