How To Be Seen As A Leader - At Any Point In Your Career

How To Be Seen As A Leader - At Any Point In Your Career: So you want to be seen as a leader? Do these 3 things every day.

The Top 6 Actions That Promote Career Success

The Top 6 Actions That Promote Career Success: Want more career success? It doesn't just fall in your lap - you have to take the right kind of action to move forward. Learn the top 6 actions that create more success and reward in your career.

One Question That Unlocks Explosive Growth

One Question That Unlocks Explosive Growth: Crayola transformed its business by answering this seemingly obvious question. Here’s how you can do the same

The Internal Interview: How to Nail an Interview at Your Current Company

The Internal Interview: How to Nail an Interview at Your Current Company: You’ve been thinking about making a lateral jump within your company, and you’ve had your eye out for marketing positions for months. Or, your boss knows you’ve been looking to switch into a more creative role, and she’s recommended you for an editorial position in another department. And now, you’ve found yourself with a new job interview—with your own company.

A Quiet Person's Guide To Effective Public Speaking

A Quiet Person's Guide To Effective Public Speaking: Three things I can say with certainty about public speaking:  1) Most normal people start off fearing it (slightly preferable to losing a limb).   2) It's one of the most valuable business/career skills you'll ever have.  And 3) it's a skill that most definitely can be learned.

4 Tested Time-Management Secrets

4 Tested Time-Management Secrets: Wasted time is wasted money. Use these proven strategies from top entrepreneurs for getting more done, in Part 11 in the Lessons From Leaders video series

Want To Keep Your Best People? Do This

Want To Keep Your Best People? Do This:

Treat your employees as trusted, valued partners - rather than as replaceable,  interchangeable parts.

This is a powerful idea. I've seen over the years that doing this is the one thing most likely to increase the probability that the best people in your organization will stay and thrive.

Here's how to do it:

How Business Champions Overcome Adversity: 5 Powerful Steps

How Business Champions Overcome Adversity: 5 Powerful Steps:

Starting and running a business can be extremely challenging. Most entrepreneurs and managers find new obstacles to remove and towering barriers to scale every day of the week. We often encounter disruptive situations in our personal and professional lives, such as a divorce, the death of a loved on, illness,

7 Surefire Ways To Boost Employee Productivity

7 Surefire Ways To Boost Employee Productivity: Maximize your return on human capital and increase output by improving in these seven key areas

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success: Tried-and-true negotiation tactics from author and negotiation expert Selena Rezvani.

How To Make A Strategy Succeed

How To Make A Strategy Succeed: This is the season when many organizations are planning and preparing for the year ahead and the years beyond. Strategic planning sessions and Executive Team retreats are in full swing, with teams developing programs and implementation plans that will, with the right approach, help direct their organizations mindfully and productively.

5 Steps To Managing Problem Employees

5 Steps To Managing Problem Employees: Survey finds business owners are spending too much time managing poor performers. Here's how to get them back on track in short order

The 10 (Hardest) Steps To Effective Delegation

Memo To Micro Managers: STOP! The 10 (Hardest) Steps To Effective Delegation: In my world as an investor, I find entrepreneurs who can’t let go of any task.  For various self-declared reasons, they alone can complete a given assignment.  Or even worse, they micro manage someone else’s work.  Sadly, this personality type frequently delegates a task to a subordinate only to quickly take it back.

10 Ways to Become Better at Your Job Today

10 Ways to Become Better at Your Job Today: With a sluggish economy, tepid hiring and continued stagnation in many workplaces, employees have a tough time feeling inspired to extend any extra effort . But if you can improve your job performance, you will put yourself in a good position to climb up the ladder should an opportunity materialize, or to move to a totally new job, in case you hear of an opening at another company.

6 Steps To Networking Like A Pro

6 Steps To Networking Like A Pro: This plan will keep you top of mind with event attendees long after the evening is over

The Productivity Improvement Steering Wheel: 7 Powerful Steps Every Leader Can Take

The Productivity Improvement Steering Wheel: 7 Powerful Steps Every Leader Can Take: The topic of productivity improvement has fascinated me for the biggest part of my life.  I recall reading as a young college student about a factory that continued functioning after all its employees went on strike.   The supervisors ran the plant quite successfully for a period of many weeks.  (My question was why they couldn’t continue doing that permanently if it worked well for a few weeks. I wasn’t thinking about maintenance and repair issues.)  But the fact of the matter in decades past was that many organizations simply had more people than they needed.

How The Most Sucessful People Use Feedback To Their Advantage

How The Most Sucessful People Use Feedback To Their Advantage:

What could be more natural you ask?

You take a small step toward your goal, of let’s say starting a company in your quest to find stabile employment.  Or maybe it is trying a different approach to solving that problem that is bugging you are work. And then you pause to see what you have learned from taking that step.  It is the most logical thing in the world, right?

Yes.  But speaking just for ourselves, we find it difficult because (at least upon occasion):           

Must-Have Job Skills in 2013

Must-Have Job Skills in 2013: For employees who want to get ahead, flexibility, productivity, communications skills and a strong personal brand will be essential.

10 Steps To Effective Listening

10 Steps To Effective Listening:

In today’s high-tech, high-speed, high-stress world, communication is more important then ever, yet we seem to devote less and less time to really listening to one another. Genuine listening has become a rare gift—the gift of time. It helps build relationships, solve problems, ensure understanding, resolve conflicts, and improve accuracy. At work, effective listening means fewer errors and less wasted time. At home, it helps develop resourceful, self-reliant kids who can solve their own problems. Listening builds friendships and careers. It saves money and marriages.

Here are 10 tips to help you develop effective listening skills:

Leadership 2.0: Are You An Adaptive Leader?

Leadership 2.0: Are You An Adaptive Leader?: One of the most popular Dilbert comic strips in the cartoon’s history begins with Dilbert’s boss relaying senior leadership’s explanation for the company’s low profits. In response to his boss, Dilbert asks incredulously, “So they’re saying that profits went up because of great leadership and down because of a weak economy?” To which Dilbert’s boss replies, “These meetings will go faster if you stop putting things in context.”

Delivering Difficult Feedback

Delivering Difficult Feedback: Four top entrepreneurs share how to tell someone they screwed up and not let the situation get ugly in Part 7 of Lessons From Leaders video series

How to Build a Network of Value

Chris Brogan on How to Build a Network of Value: It took Chris Brogan – an early adopter to the world of blogging – eight years to reach his first 100 subscribers. Since then, he’s become one of the most influential writers and speakers about social media and business. In his newly-released book The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?, co-authored with Julien Smith, he discusses how to make sure your ideas are heard in a crowded marketplace.

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use
Having trouble focusing on what you really need to do? You're not alone. According to a survey by Salary.com, the average worker admits to wasting 2.09 hours of each eight-hour workday, not including lunch or scheduled breaks. The Web is like the next-door neighbor who keeps asking us to play when we know we have homework to do. Thankfully, there's an entire community of people who specialize in productivity and time management. Their guru is David Allen, author of the 2001 book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Others include Merlin Mann, founder of the blog 43 Folders, and the highly addictive Lifehacker.com. Here are some of their best ideas to help you declutter your life and make way for big, creative boosts of productivity:

The 7 Questions Great Delegators Ask

The 7 Questions Great Delegators Ask: Face the facts: You can't do everything. Learn how to enable others to do what needs to be done

How to Deal With Annoying Coworkers

How to Deal With Annoying Coworkers: We’ve all had coworkers who just rub us the wrong way. Maybe they have some annoying habit that gets under your skin. Maybe they don’t follow the same social “rules” you follow. Maybe they’re just different.

4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision

4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision: Business leaders are faced with dozens of decisions that need to be made every day. As our organizations grow, the decisions generally become more frequent, more complicated, and have more serious ramifications. Sometimes it’s not about making the right decision, but just making a decision at all. The most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders in the world will tell you they have made many wrong decisions throughout the lifetime of their careers, but those failures always lead to valuable learning experiences, so above all, it’s important to find ways to make the tough decisions.

4 Ways To Improve Your Business Networking

4 Ways To Improve Your Business Networking:
As small business owners and consultants, we understand the importance of networking. Your ability to schmooze, to meet people, and to create relationships will very often determine your success in business and how far you’re able to take your company. However, that doesn’t mean most of us are very good at it. We have a difficult time starting conversations and even keeping the relationships that we do start.
We could all be a little better.

Here are four tips to help increase your networking A-game:

Span Of Control - 5 Things Every Leader Should Know

Span Of Control - 5 Things Every Leader Should Know: Ask 5 people for their opinions on optimizing ?span of control? and you?ll likely receive 5 different opinions. These well meaning opinions will often cite a few different rules of thumb on size and composition, and will undoubtedly refer you to someone?s version of best practices. Here?s the problem ? they?ll all lead you astray.

First Rule of Management: No Whining

First Rule of Management: No Whining: One of my senior clients used to keep a "no whining" sign in her office. It seemed odd to have the sign so prominently displayed at a senior executive level. After all, the managers that walked into that office were not children, but mature adults with collective responsibility for thousands of employees. Why would they whine instead of just solving problems?

Performance Management Made Simple

Performance Management Made Simple: Four of Canada's top entrepreneurs offer their secrets for delivering employee feedback in Part 5 of the Lessons From Leaders video series

5 Most Effective Ways to Sell Change

5 Most Effective Ways to Sell Change: Change can scare a lot of people, but in today’s workplace – managing change is what keeps people relevant.    Being held accountable for managing change and making things better in your work is the new normal.   Knowing how to innovate and manage change will soon become a requirement in one’s job description and performance review.  Being responsible to generate results is one thing; knowing how to make the results more sustainable, profitable and multifaceted is another.   The new workplace requires everyone to lead and/or coordinate change in some shape or form – but very few have been formally trained to assure that it is effectively implemented.   This is the opportunity that everyone must learn to embrace!

How To Win Over Your Boss

How To Win Over Your Boss: You go through life trying to seek approval from your superiors. You constantly want to please your parents with good grades, impress your coaches on the field, and wow your professors in the classroom. And as an adult, you want to win over your boss at work.

The 30 Best Business Practices of All Time

The 30 Best Business Practices of All Time: Borrow the proven tactics of the most successful companies and executives from around the world and adopt them as your own

How to Deal With Favoritism in the Office

How to Deal With Favoritism in the Office: Do you have a colleague who is subject to special treatment while everyone else gets pushed aside? Are you the one praised incessantly by the boss, or the go-to person for all the great projects? It’s no secret that the playing field among workers isn’t level in most workplaces—and chances are you’ve been on one end of blatant favoritism at some point in your career.

5 Takeaways for Speakers, Leaders, and Followers

5 Takeaways from the Vice-Presidential Debate for Speakers, Leaders, and Followers: The Vice-Presidential debate was a lot more fun than the first Presidential one.  Both candidates came out swinging and got in some good punches.  Ryan was good on Afghanistan, on Obama as a speaker not a doer, and on the basic premise of the Republican campaign, that the economy isn’t getting better fast enough.  Biden was good on just about everything, once he got over his Gore-like tendency to create a sideshow of smiles, groans and eye-rolls when Ryan was talking.

How to Fire Someone

How to Fire Someone: Some ways to avoid making a bad situation even worse.

4 PR Habits of Highly Effective CEOs

4 PR Habits of Highly Effective CEOs: “There's none so blind as those that will not see” goes the old adage, and nowhere is this more true than boardrooms at budget season.

The Right Way to Be a Mentor

The Right Way to Be a Mentor: Every executive would love to have a great mentor looking out for them. But these days, they?re getting harder to find, as Harvard Business School professor Thomas DeLong explained in a recent Forbes interview. With professional demands increasing and many jobs requiring ?24/7? access, leaders frequently opt out of becoming mentors, choosing instead to focus on their own careers. Demetriouse Russell, a Harvard Business School graduate who now works at his alma mater as the Director of Corporate Relations and Market Development for HBS? Executive Education programs, is bucking the trend. Well known for his active mentorship (he was honored as a ?Living Legend? by the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School earlier this year), Russell credits his early upbringing in tough neighborhoods, including Chicago?s Cabrini-Green development, with helping him appreciate the importance of role models. ?There?s an intrinsic reward for me in helping others, because I was the beneficiary of mentors, teachers and coaches,? he says.

Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These

Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These:
There are four kinds of managers that I have seen and heard much about. They find their way into one small business or another and just help things unravel. Sometimes the owner brings them right through the front door, tucked behind their own personality...

3 Ways to Win the Workplace Game

3 Ways to Win the Workplace Game: Are you finding it more challenging to create and sustain momentum in your work?   In a global marketplace that demands more from people, the competitive landscape is fierce.   People are concerned about their futures and that of their children.  They are also increasingly becoming more nervous about “the here and now.”   As such, employees are looking to find ways to remain relevant so as to get discovered faster.   They are eager to stand out from the crowd with the hope of being sponsored by one of their senior executives.    Employees are becoming restless and are finding it difficult to wait for the next opportunity – and are thus realizing that they must create opportunities for themselves before time passes them by.

5 Ways to Amp Up Your Creativity

5 Ways to Amp Up Your Creativity: Whether you are in a brainstorming rut or feel too exhausted to muster up a germ of imagination, here are five action-oriented steps to propel you to the creativity big leagues:

The Secret of Productivity: How to Master Your Time

The Secret of Productivity: How to Master Your Time:
 The fact is that we have 168 hours of time per week. There is no such thing as a “lack of time.” We always find time to do the things we are most motivated to do. Our quality of life—our excellence in our field of work—is determined by how we manage those 168 hours.

 So, how can we master our time? We need to focus our brain on doing what is most important, and stop doing non-essential tasks. Everyone wants a “piece of our time”—and it’s typically in conflict with what we want to do....

8 Secrets To Accomplishing More Each Day

8 Secrets To Accomplishing More Each Day: Work smarter, not harder. Here’s how.

6 Powerful Ways to Embrace Change

6 Powerful Ways to Embrace Change: Most people are averse to change. They like to keep things the way they are; they like to stay in their comfort zone.

Work Is Easier When You’re Motivated

Work Is Easier When You’re Motivated:
Inspiration feels like catching a genie in a bottle — elusive and sometimes unreal. But when you tap into it for yourself, then you find a new kind of motivation...

10 Steps You Can Take To Become A Successful Young Leader At Work

10 Steps You Can Take To Become A Successful Young Leader At Work
Most people near the starts of their careers aren't typically thought of as leaders in the workplace. Not only do they inhabit a low spot in the office hierarchy and lack experience and skills, but also many are too timid and insecure to assume a leadership role. But with the right attitude, an observant eye and a desire to learn, any young professionals can prevail early on.

5 Steps to Smooth Networking

5 Steps to Smooth Networking: Networking is the heart and soul of all kinds of things in life, including job hunting, successful career change and building your own business. Here are five steps to becoming a great networker.

How to Turn Your Fear into Fuel

How to Turn Your Fear into Fuel: Three steps to make your entrepreneurial anxiety work for you.

10 Ways To Get Your Colleagues To Work With You Better

10 Ways To Get Your Colleagues To Work With You Better: One of the most important hiring criteria for many companies is the ability to work as a team player—yet, so many of us have colleagues who don’t play well with others.

The Simplest Way For Leaders To Gain Lasting Loyalty

The Simplest Way For Leaders To Gain Lasting Loyalty: This will be short because it's simple.  There are of course a number of ways for leaders to gain loyalty that involve variations around compensating your employees, running a sound ship and producing strong results for your organization.   These are all naturally true, but I'd argue there's one other method that's simpler and more fundamental and will serve you well in good economic times and bad:

How to Fire Someone

How to Fire Someone: Some ways to avoid making a bad situation even worse.

6 Ways To Be More Productive

6 Ways To Be More Productive: Robert C. Pozen is a very productive guy. At age 66, his résumé is so packed with accomplishments, it’s tough to cram them into a short summary. He has been a law firm partner, an executive at two different investment firms, and he has served various government stints, including associate general counsel at the SEC and secretary of economic affairs under then- Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Throughout his career he has taught, at Georgetown, NYU and most recently, Harvard Business School. Meantime, he has written numerous articles, including two pieces in Forbes I edited back in 2005 and 2009, and six books. His most recent, perhaps not surprisingly, is called Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.

Can You Succeed Like Apple By Following These 7 Rules?

Can You Succeed Like Apple By Following These 7 Rules?: Is there a secret design agenda that can bring you some of Apple's success? John Edson thinks so.

3 Lessons From Shark Tank on How to Make Your Business More Likable

3 Lessons From Shark Tank on How to Make Your Business More Likable: Are you likable? It could be the key to your business becoming more profitable.

6 Ways To Make A Team of Rivals Work

6 Ways To Make A Team of Rivals Work: When Barack Obama was asked how he’d build a successful government, he referenced one of his all-time favourite books: ‘Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’. It describes how Lincoln appointed a cabinet of his three biggest rivals (who loathed him), and united them to win the Civil War. This, Obama said, was what he’d do – appoint the best person for the job, regardless of their affiliation, history or any personal grudge.

Seven Keys To Sales Leadership

Seven Keys To Sales Leadership: The sales leadership job is one of the toughest in business today. I have previously written about why this is so, but suffice it to say it is a few critical jobs rolled into one: super seller, coach, strategist and business leader. I have had the chance to work with thousands of sales leaders over the course of my career and have observed that the most successful among them possess key characteristics: the seven keys to being a great sales leader.

Great Ideas Bosses Never Hear

Great Ideas Bosses Never Hear: Employees have a lot to say, but their managers rarely hear it. How companies can benefit more from ideas that originate on the front lines.

Mass Persuasion

Mass Persuasion: “Successful entrepreneurs recommend reading this article about the persuasion techniques companies use to drive engagement.”

5 Leadership Lessons from JetBlue's President and CEO

5 Leadership Lessons from JetBlue's President and CEO: In a recent interview with Dave Barger, President and CEO of JetBlue, we discussed his personal interest in supporting education, how JetBlue views and integrates social responsibility and citizenship into their efforts, the evolving definition of business in society, and 5 leadership lessons he’s learned along the way.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Leadership Style

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Leadership Style: There are many leadership styles and a cottage industry has cropped up around defining them. Gayle Lantz, president of WorkMatters, Inc., a human resources consulting firm in Birmingham, Ala., uses the popular DISC assessment tool to as part of her practice to identify leadership styles.

PR Tips from the Pros: Katherine Barna, Tumblr's Head of PR

PR Tips from the Pros: Katherine Barna, Tumblr's Head of PR: This week, we’re bringing you even more PR advice from the pros—this time, straight from Katherine Barna, Head of PR at Tumblr. Check out our primer for using Tumblr to promote your brand, then read on for Barna’s expert tips for making the most of the social media platform.

10 Phrases That Are Holding Your Career Back

10 Phrases That Are Holding Your Career Back: Fillers and qualifiers and jargon, oh my! Get these weak and uncertain phrases out of your vocabulary.

Why Collaboration Is Key

Why Collaboration Is Key: Ideas are worthless until they're out of your head and in front of others.

The 10-Step Failure Challenge

The 10-Step Failure Challenge: When you're learning something new, whether its negotiation or hip hop, you go through several stages:

How To Run A Meeting

How To Run A Meeting: Dr. Nadine Katz goes to a lot of meetings. Some of them last so long the participants have to order in food or switch rooms.

Ways to Avoid Hovering Over Employees

Ways to Avoid Hovering Over Employees:
Regardless of the industry, entrepreneurs vary when it comes to leadership styles. Some employers prefer the traditional top-down approach, while others treat their employees like equals who can IM them throughout the day and grab drinks with them once that day is over. But altogether, teams are formulated at startups to create things, to get things done — without micromanaging...