The Importance of Telling Employees "Don't Do That"

The Importance of Telling Employees "Don't Do That":  In a recent study, HBS professors Francesca Gino and Joshua D. Margolis look at two ways that companies can encourage ethical behavior among employees: the promotion of good deeds or the prevention of bad deeds. They find that employees tend to act more ethically when focused on what not to do. But can be problematic in firms where success is commonly framed in terms of advancement of positive outcomes rather than prevention of bad ones. Gino and Margolis discuss their research in this article by Carmen Nobel, which first appeared on the HBS Working Knowledge website.

20 Power Packed Tips to Create an Inspiring Workspace

20 Power Packed Tips to Create an Inspiring Workspace:
Start by answering these questions:

• Are you in a working environment that drives you nuts?
• Do conditions in your workplace support positive and creative thinking?
• Are you putting in a whole lot and yet it feels as though you are doing nothing?

Surroundings can have a big impact on your mood, emotions, and productivity. When your office space feels dead and lifeless, you’re employees and customers, not to mention yourself, may also feel dead and lifeless while you’re there.
Create an environment where people enjoy working by following these power packed tips to develop an inspiring workspace...

A Three-Step Method for Converting Passive Support into Real Action

A Three-Step Method for Converting Passive Support into Real Action:
Three tips to turn community awareness into action.

10 Traits of Super-Achievers - Boiled Down to 2

10 Traits of Super-Achievers - Boiled Down to 2: Most of us are fascinated by people who do really well in life; those who break records, become world famous, are the very best at what they do, invent whole new ways of operating.  What, we wonder, are their secrets?  How are they different from us?

Dream It, Design It, Live It: Coaching Workbook

Dream It, Design It, Live It: Coaching Workbook:
The Dream It! Design It! Live It! workbook has the following nine steps to generate your personal road map to success.

1. Your Life Purpose – asks what type of legacy do you want to leave?
2. Align Your Purpose with Your Life – looks at your current roles and external factors.
3. Design Your Dream Life – sets the budget to finance your life.
4. Envision Your Goals – helps you brainstorm and think out-of-the box.
5. Bring Your Goals to Life – prioritizes where to start.
6. Organize, Schedule & Plan Your Goals – creates a time management system to act on your goals.
7. Your Internal Resources – outlines the critical need for a support system.
8. Celebrate – identifies ways to savor each milestone.
9. Circling – touches on how to keep your inspiration.

How To Get People To Agree With You

How To Get People To Agree With You: I know someone who really cares about being right.  Now, in fairness, I haven't had much interaction with this person over the past five years or so; he may have changed.  But when I knew him, his main focus in most conversations was to convince the other person that he (my friend) was right.

What It Takes To Retain Your Top Talent

What It Takes To Retain Your Top Talent: If you were planning to quit your job, what would it take to persuade you to stay? Better benefits? A bigger paycheck? More flexibility?

How to Increase Employees' Intrinsic Goodwill

How to Increase Employees' Intrinsic Goodwill: Everyone comes to the table with some amount of "altruistic capital," a stock of intrinsic desire to serve, says Harvard Business School professor Nava Ashraf.  The key for leaders is figuring out how to increase it -- and how to avoid depleting it.  Ashraf developed the concept while conducting extensive field work in Zambia, including a program that employees hairdressers to sell female condoms and provide HIV/AIDS education in their salons.  She discusses her international research in this article by Carmen Nobel, which first appeared on the HBS Working Knowledge website.

8 Ways Transparency Will Make You a Better Leader

8 Ways Transparency Will Make You a Better Leader: In any given day, I have hundreds of chances to lie to people. Whether it’s a client, employee, partner, or investor, there’s always a way to make something sound better or different than it really is. We’re human and we make mistakes, but it’s important to remind ourselves that being honest has its benefits.

What Dear Abby Taught Us About Managing People

What Dear Abby Taught Us About Managing People: Straight talk never gets stale.

10 Skills Your Employees Need to Succeed

10 Skills Your Employees Need to Succeed:
What skills will employees need to help their companies succeed in this year and beyond? If your team doesn’t have those skills, how can you help them get there?

How To Make It Through Personal Difficulty At Work

How To Make It Through Personal Difficulty At Work: One of the things that distinguishes (most) adults from (most) children is their level of emotional self-control.  A friend and I used to laugh about what it would be like if grown-ups - especially in business - acted like little kids. For instance, imagine in a meeting where the CEO didn't get her own way, if she were to throw herself on the floor, start trashing around and yelling, "I want it I want it I want it!"  Or if someone were critical of the head of marketing's new logo design, he burst into tears and began sobbing, "You're mean - I hate you!"  (I know there are some grown-ups like that - but, fortunately, they're a minority.)

Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged?

Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged?: The answer most often lies in the manager-employee relationship. Most people chafe under too much authority, too much forcefulness, too much control.

3 Ways to Get the Most out of your 5-day Work Week

3 Ways to Get the Most out of your 5-day Work Week: Successful individuals know that it is essential to grasp every ounce of productivity out of the work week. Many of us struggle with how to manage our daily to-do?s, while forging ahead to grow as business professionals and individuals. Following these three essential principles will allow you to get the most out of your five-day work week:

12 Tips for Overcoming Your Fear of Change at Work

12 Tips for Overcoming Your Fear of Change at Work:

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft wrote those words in the 1920s, but they still hold true today—especially in the workplace.

Keeping the Peace: How to Deal With an Angry Client

Keeping the Peace: How to Deal With an Angry Client: Whether you’re fresh out of school or a seasoned veteran of the working world, receiving a tongue lashing from a client is never easy. And while your instinct may be to hide under your desk to duck and cover, eventually you’re going to have to face the music (and your client), and that’ll require some finesse.

The Most Common Practices Of Super-Achievers

The Most Common Practices Of Super-Achievers
These are the 10 most common practices of the highly successful...

The 3 Forces That Drive Improved Productivity

The 3 Forces That Drive Improved Productivity: A few months ago, I wrote The Productivity Improvement Steering Wheel.  I addressed the fundamental issues with productivity improvement, and what leaders can do to make the biggest immediate difference.  Now I’d like to delve into the “how.” Our research points to three contributing forces that lead to productivity improvement:

How To Get Your Colleagues To Work With Your Better

How To Get Your Colleagues To Work With Your Better
When colleagues work well together, everyone benefits...

8 Secrets To Accomplishing More Each Day

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

Surefire Ways to Get Business Referrals

6 Surefire Ways to Get Business Referrals:
Here are 6 ways to get business referrals from clients and acquaintances:

The 8 Networking Rules You Should Never Break

The 8 Networking Rules You Should Never Break: Networking is equal parts art and science – and it gets much easier with practice. I’ve been networking since I was a kid, and I’m still learning what works and doesn’t work. (Yes, I’d like to think my networking has developed some sophistication since third grade.) While it’s impossible to make any guarantees, I’ve discovered that the following rules always hold true.

Turbo-Charge Your Career Success, One Conversation At A Time

Turbo-Charge Your Career Success, One Conversation At A Time: If somebody said to you, If you do this one thing every week over the next year, you’ll enormously increase the chances of your professional success, you’d do it, right?

Good leaders are invaluable to a company. Bad leaders will destroy it.

Good leaders are invaluable to a company. Bad leaders will destroy it.: When good leadership is in place in a company, it can be felt throughout the entire organization. With good leadership, corporate culture isn’t forced, it is developed. Communication is daily and open. Everyone understands the vision and goals of the organization, and everyone has input into how they can be improved. Employees feel that they are an important part of the whole and that every job matters within the company. Decisions for promotions are based on picking people of integrity whose talents and experience best fit the positions. Employees are encouraged to compete with their own best to get ahead and they understand that helping their coworkers to succeed is the best way to get ahead themselves. The result of good leadership is high morale, good employee retention, and sustainable long-term success.

Do People Want to Follow Me? 5 Questions Every Leader Needs to Ask

Do People Want to Follow Me? 5 Questions Every Leader Needs to Ask: One question I hear from executives is this: how can I tell if people want to follow me?

5 Ways Leaders Rock Employee Recognition

5 Ways Leaders Rock Employee Recognition:

I was grocery shopping the other day (Yes, this sometimes happens). A mom with two small kids in tow kept up a constant stream of chatter: “Great job pushing the cart, Stella, you are so smart.” “Good work picking out a pepper, Max, now put it back.” It went on

3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Focus

3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Focus: Of all the resources which have become in short supply over the past few years, the diminishing of our power to focus is perhaps the most problematic. Lean and challenging times are nothing new to the human race, but it’s our ability to concentrate that allows us to thrive in spite of them—to cultivate relationships, deeply problem solve, and innovate our way to a better future.

The Best Books to Boost Your Career in 2013

The Best Books to Boost Your Career in 2013: As part of my job as a career coach and as the Work and Volunteering blogger for Next Avenue, I make it a point to keep up with the latest career books. So to help you get 2013 off to a strong start, I wanted to share my favorite work-related books published in recent months.

From Crying To Temper Tantrums: How To Manage Emotions At Work

From Crying To Temper Tantrums: How To Manage Emotions At Work: Despite its corporate costume, the workplace is an emotional war zone. Here's how to deal.

How to Decide Which Role Is Right for You

How to Decide Which Role Is Right for You: Having a great business idea doesn't necessarily mean you'll make a good CEO. Take our quiz to see what role you are best suited for.

Leaders Need Wings, Not Wheels: The Profound Difference Between Elevating and Shifting Behavior

Leaders Need Wings, Not Wheels: The Profound Difference Between Elevating and Shifting Behavior: “I need you to elevate me here.” --U2, “Elevation”

5 Things Overachievers Do Not Do

5 Things Overachievers Do Not Do: 1. Think Small They Do Not. Yoda could have written this post.

Leader or Manager, What Does Your Business Need?

Leader or Manager, What Does Your Business Need?: The debate continues, is leadership and management the same thing?  Colleges across the country offer degrees in Management, each with required courses in leadership, so doesn’t that imply that to manage you need to know how to lead?  And what are you, a leader or a manager, because we can’t be both right?

How to Communicate Effectively at Work

How to Communicate Effectively at Work

Be crisp, clear and concise. Edit yourself, include specifics and keep your speech short...

10 Simple and Powerful Body Language Tips for 2013

10 Simple and Powerful Body Language Tips for 2013: Body language plays a key role in effective leadership communication. From my most-requested program, “The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help – or Hurt – How You Lead,” here are ten tips guaranteed to give you a nonverbal advantage!

12 Tips For Staying Productive Through the Bleak Winter Months

12 Tips For Staying Productive Through the Bleak Winter Months: Winter’s in full swing. The days are shorter, darker, and colder—and some workers will experience the “winter blues.” You might be more tired than usual, less active, or unmotivated; and your level of productivity in the office may decline.

Six Questions to Elevate Leadership in 2013

Six Questions to Elevate Leadership in 2013: The New Year is a great opportunity to reset your leadership aspirations.  While we step back to think about taking our organizations to higher levels each year, rarely do we step back with the intention of stepping up our own leadership.

How To Be More Creative

How To Be More Creative: Creativity is going to make the difference between working and not working, quality work or dull work, insecurity or life chances. We are moving into the real creative economy, where companies need solutions to problems, always. You have to get with this plan.

8 Tips For Leading Those Who Don't Want to Follow

8 Tips For Leading Those Who Don't Want to Follow:

Want to test your leadership mettle? See how well you do when leading those not inclined to follow. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people may be comforting, it might even seem like a good idea, but it’s not the stuff of great leadership. The best leaders are not only capable of

How To Craft An Effective Sales Pitch

How To Craft An Effective Sales Pitch: How do you craft an effective sales pitch? First, ditch the “pitch”—or at least neglect the traditional meaning of the word. It basically describes what salespeople used to do—throw information at prospects hoping to sell a  product or service before the buyer could hang up the phone or slam the door—but good salespeople today treat the “pitch” process as a collaborative conversation.

Level 5 Time Management: Beyond Stephen R. Covey and Ben Franklin

Time Management::
Every year I stand up in front of my company, InsideSales.com, and talk about time management right before the new year. I usually do it in that slow time between Christmas and New Year’s when everyone is trying to finish the year strong.

How To Handle A Personal Crisis At Work

How To Handle A Personal Crisis At Work

Maybe your father was recently diagnosed with a terminal illness or your mother's house was burglarized. Perhaps your daughter is struggling in school, or your husband just served you divorce papers. Life will throw you curve balls, and you may be at work when it happens. Even if the personal crisis arises when you're not in the office, it will likely affect your work performance to some degree. Here's how to handle a personal crisis at work.

4 Tips For Finding Great Career Mentors

4 Tips For Finding Great Career Mentors: January is National Mentoring Month, but instead of using this blog to promote the benefits of having career mentors (which I’m sure you’ve read about countless times), I decided to discuss a different angle -- how to find great mentors.

How To Be Better At Your Job In 2013

How To Be Better At Your Job In 2013: A couple of weeks ago I laid out 13 tips for wrapping up 2012 and preparing for the new year at work. My expert sources suggested that you complete outstanding projects; establish new goals; reflect on accomplishments; get organized; and tie up loose ends--among other things.
Now, as you return to the office in 2013, there are a few things you can do to ensure you start the year off right.

How to Be a Better Boss

How to Be a Better Boss: Along with pledging to lose weight or kick the coffee habit, why not resolve to be a better manager in 2013?

Twelve Time Management Habits to Master in 2013

Twelve Time Management Habits to Master in 2013: Nearly three hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin came up with an approach to changing habits that has yet to be surpassed. A young adult seeking to straighten out his act, Franklin developed a list of thirteen virtues, jotting down a brief definition of each. These were character traits he took to be important, but in which he found himself lacking. He knew that nurturing these habits would bring about positive change in his life.

6 Ideas To Promote Innovation In Your Workplace This Year

6 Ideas To Promote Innovation In Your Workplace This Year: The startup scene today is an overcrowded space where companies are constantly vying for talent. But hiring talented people is only the first step in cultivating an innovative and creative environment. Building a workplace where there is a constant exchange of ideas involves finding the right formula for your company and culture.

The Value of Hard Work

The Value of Hard Work and Other Tips This Week:
How to find ideas, make use of holiday downtime and more...

Seven Strategies for Highly Effective New Year's Resolutions

Seven Strategies for Highly Effective New Year's Resolutions: New Year's Eve is just around the corner.  It’s likely that at least one person will ask you what your resolutions are for the year ahead. Whether you like to make them or not, research has found that people who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don't explicitly make resolutions. Yet as you know, it’s not so easy to keep your resolve as life returns to normal and your old habits of mind and action start testing your resolve and pulling you away from the new ones you resolved to create.

Developing the Global Leader

Developing the Global Leader:
What skills do today’s executives need to develop to become effective global leaders of tomorrow? And how do corporations teach these skills to their own leaders?

The Science Behind Persuading People

The Science Behind Persuading People: One of the most crucial skills to improving your career in the new year may be the ability to persuade people to see things your way.

Why Leaders Need to Rethink Teamwork

Why Leaders Need to Rethink Teamwork:
The problem: Stable teams that plan first and execute later are increasingly infeasible in the twenty-first century workforce. Coordination and collaboration are essential, but they happen in fluid arrangements, rather than in static teams...

13 Things Overachievers Do

13 Things Overachievers Do: 1. They laugh -- at themselves. And with others...

How To Manage A Dysfunctional Team

How To Manage A Dysfunctional Team:
Dysfunctional people create dysfunctional situations. One team member with poor communication skills can explode a business environment. But a great communicator who never pulls his weight on the team can do the same thing.

3 Tips for a Resolution You'll Keep: Your Personal Mission Statement

3 Tips for a Resolution You'll Keep: Your Personal Mission Statement: New Year’s Eve is next week and many of us might be thinking about personal New Year’s resolutions. Forget the promise to go to the gym or eat healthier. Make yourself a New Year’s resolution you know you can keep and that will help your business.

7 Ways to Sway Others to Take Action

7 Ways to Sway Others to Take Action: Marshall wasn’t aware that we were closely watching him as he strode into the pool table showroom but he was the ninth unwitting participant in our experiment. He glanced at the sign “Our Three Most Popular Models” that hung above an ornately carved, antique pool table, flanked closely on either side by a bare-bones model and a lean, modern pool table. Frankly it would have been hard to avoid this scene. The sign was hanging from the ceiling at eye-level and the tables rested on the curved end extension of plush, royal purple carpet upon which he stepped after walking through the front door.

How To Address Challenging Team Members

Don’t Reward Bad Behavior – How To Address Challenging Team Members : You and your leaders have to address issues. And how you do this sets the tone for your company environment. You won’t have the privilege of being the teams BFF (best friend forever). But you can have their respect and be surrounded by a productive and effective group that moves your company forward — and that’s good for business. Instead of rewarding bad behavior with your silence, here are three decisive moves to help protect and restore your standards and the teams focus.

5 Daily Rituals to Manage Work Stress

5 Daily Rituals to Manage Work Stress: Generally, I'm pretty well-tuned into my work-life merge and stress-busting routines, often awakening prior to the blaring of the alarm. Like clockwork, my body anticipates that first moment of "breath work" practice, meditation and  a few yoga poses. But it wasn't always like this. And honestly, things don't always go as planned, every day.

The Power of Teams

The Power of Teams: As we reflect on 2012, companies that focus on teamwork and collaboration are the companies who maximize the strengths of individuals as well.  Why? Because being a part of an effective team can bring forth wonderful increases in the work ethic and strength attributes of the individuals as well.

Leadership Truths That Every Leader Needs To Know

Leadership Truths That Every Leader Needs To Know : Successful business leadership is about the ability to create a compelling vision that is backed up by strong values, a strong sense of purpose and that inspires other people to help you to achieve it. In order to do this it is essential that, as a leader, you create an environment where people are encouraged to work harmoniously together using their own unique talents and skills to achieve common goals.

Here are 5 truths that every great leader knows:

The Most Misunderstood Aspect Of Great Leadership

The Most Misunderstood Aspect Of Great Leadership: I was recently asked what I consider to be the most misunderstood aspect of great leadership; in other words, what makes great leadership great? What immediately came to mind is not only misunderstood, but it also happens to be the most often overlooked element of leadership, and the one which also affords leaders the greatest opportunity for personal, professional, and enterprise growth. If you want to become a better leader in 2013, I suggest you become comfortable with a leadership practice few are - surrender.

How To Be Better At Your Job In 2013

How To Be Better At Your Job In 2013 With a new year approaching, many people have an “out with the old and in with the new” mentality—and work is usually a big part of that. If you want to be better at your job in 2013, here's what you should do.

How To Train Your Team And Make It Connect

How To Train Your Team And Make It Connect : Successful teams don’t build themselves. Effective leaders and managers build successful teams by reinforcing a core message until it becomes second nature for them and their team members. Below are five steps to help make any training message stick...

6 Key Steps For Career Resilience

6 Key Steps For Career Resilience:  This is a guest post by Beverly Jones, who has been an executive coach for more than 10 years. She is president of  Clearways Consulting LLC. 

Today, the idea of spending a whole career in a single organization, keeping your head down and doing pretty much the same type of work, seems quaint. Your career can be expected to flow through many phases, encompassing numerous organizations, shifting skills sets and startling change.

I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders and high achieving professionals, and I’ve learned that you can’t predict where your career path will take you. But you can prepare for it. Once, a central characteristic for success once was loyalty. Today what you need is resilience.

Why The Most Successful People Succeed: A Case Study

Why The Most Successful People Succeed: A Case Study: The first step in becoming successful? Figuring out exactly what you want to do.

Nine Ways Successful People Defeat Stress

Nine Ways Successful People Defeat Stress: Feeling stressed?  Of course you are. You have too much on your plate, deadlines are looming, people are counting on you, and to top it all off, you still have holiday shopping to do.  You are under a lot of pressure – so much that at times, you suspect the quality of your work suffers for it.  You find yourself forgetting things, your thinking lacks clarity, and your creative juices refuse to flow.