3 Entrepreneurial Skills You Won't Learn In Business School

3 Entrepreneurial Skills You Won't Learn In Business School: Business school will teach you a lot, but it won't teach you these three things that are critical to founding and running a company.

Seven Questions You Need To Ask To Increase Your Leadership Potential

Seven Questions You Need To Ask To Increase Your Leadership Potential: The seven questions you need to ask yourself to become a better leader.

How To Influence Anyone, Any Time, Anywhere: 4 Subconscious Secrets

How To Influence Anyone, Any Time, Anywhere: 4 Subconscious Secrets: Learn quick and powerful ways to "speak another person's language" in order to enroll, engage, influence

5 Strategies That Will Turn Your Employees Into Leaders

5 Strategies That Will Turn Your Employees Into Leaders: Whatever your employees' career goals, it's up to you to mold them into leaders. Start now with these five leadership coaching strategies.

How You Can Cope Better With Stage Fright

How You Can Cope Better With Stage Fright: The best way to deal with stage fright is to embrace it.

How To Manage A Moody Boss

How To Manage A Moody Boss: Is your boss irritable, negative, and constantly experiencing mood swings? Here’s how to manage your moody boss.

8 Tips For Dealing With Difficult People

8 Tips For Dealing With Difficult People: Like the old Saturday Night Live character, Debbie Downer, some people are only happy when they're unhappy and bringing down everyone else around them too.
Here are eight tips for dealing with difficult people at work.
1.   Don?t get dragged down?The old saying is ?Misery loves company.? The most important thing is to be aware of who the Debbie and David Downers are in your company and to make sure they don?t suck you into their world of negativity.  Keep your guard up!

Getting Past 4 Common Workplace Fears

Getting Past 4 Common Workplace Fears: With uncertainty in the workplace comes the natural concern that runs through your mind and that feeling in the pit of your stomach about your future.   Many times this is exacerbated by tensions that exist with your boss, the fear of not getting promoted or not believing that you can be yourself at work.   Today’s workplace is fueled with uneasiness about trust, the next big decision and that sixth-sense that many of your colleagues don’t have your back.   Moving past workplace fears requires you to navigate the landscape with greater purpose of your goals, certainty of your beliefs and the required strategic focus to avoid being distracted by adversity and an environment you can’t control.

The Zen Of Innovation Leadership: 'And'

The Zen Of Innovation Leadership: 'And': If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
― Søren Kierkegaard

Developing a Leadership Pipeline That Works

Developing a Leadership Pipeline That Works: One lesson that you learn reasonably early in life is that if you need to be somewhere at a specific time, and you know roughly how long it will take to make the trip to your destination, it is important to begin the trip on time.  No combination of speeding or looking for shortcuts enables you to get there on time if you’ve left 15 minutes or a half-hour late.

Why You Should Mentor -- And How To Do It

Why You Should Mentor -- And How To Do It: Sharing your expertise is not only helpful to someone younger, it’s a rewarding experience for you.

Brand Growth Lessons From McDonald's

Brand Growth Lessons From McDonald's: Increasingly, upstart competitors are peeling off slices of a large brand’s customer segments  by creating strong value propositions and specific, deep emotional connections with those consumer niches (To prove the point, just take a look at the growth of Tory Burch, or Dollar Shave Club or LEON restaurants  in the UK).

3 Strategies For Keeping Your Cool At Work

3 Strategies For Keeping Your Cool At Work: You get a rude email from a co-worker.

Seven Ways To Inspire Employees To Love Their Jobs

Seven Ways To Inspire Employees To Love Their Jobs: Smart leaders take advantage of the fact that some things never change. Take employee engagement, for example. In my book, Fire Them Up, which I wrote in 2007, I cited several studies that showed the majority of workers as being “disengaged” and hating their jobs. Unfortunately the numbers haven’t changed. In Gallup’s most recent report on the state of the American workplace, we discover that only 30 percent of the U.S workforce is engaged in their work. In other words, they love their jobs. Seventy percent are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged,” meaning they hate their jobs or, at best, are unenthusiastic about their roles (Forbes staff writer Susan Adams did a nice job of explaining the survey’s details).

Four Pillars Of Leadership

Four Pillars Of Leadership: Listening to CEOs and other senior leaders talk about building businesses is always a privilege. Last week I did this at the XSite conference in Boston (designed to recognize the high-tech revival in Boston) and again at the 50th anniversary gathering of 1,000 past and current partners of my former employer, the Boston Consulting Group (“BCG”).

10 Steps To More Confidence At Work

10 Steps To More Confidence At Work
Phase #1: Eliminating Self-doubt
Building self-confidence is a two-phase process. The first phase involves purging yourself of self-doubt; in the second, you build up your confidence. It’s like erecting a skyscraper...

The Six Steps To Trust

The Six Steps To Trust: Many people have been given the feedback, “Others do not trust you.” Most people, hearing this, are perplexed as to what they might do to change. One leader actually asked me, only half joking, if it would help if he wore a sign on his back that says, “JUST TRUST ME!”

Collaborative Marketing Is The Next Big Thing

Collaborative Marketing Is The Next Big Thing: Those of you who know me well, and who follow my columns, could readily guess that I’m a proponent of collaboration in any business function. Marketing is no exception. I’ve been talking about the “softer skills” of business quite a bit as of late as I’ve been gearing up for the launch of my book, The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning, at the end of July.

Should You Consider Public Speaking

Should You Consider Public Speaking: Entrepreneur and adventurer (I love that self-description) Rodolphe “Rudy” Dutel got in touch with me to help him kick off his new blog on self-improvement, Karma, and yes, adventures.  I think I checked the self-improvement box, since the discussion was all about storytelling, rehearsal, the career of professional speaking, and other public speaking mysteries.  We conducted the interview as a Google + hangout, a first for me, so perhaps that checks the adventure box.  The interview is casual, relaxed, and covers many of the kinds of questions I get asked all the time, so check it out here and let me know what you think, or what further questions you have that didn’t get answered in the 30-minute discussion.  Enjoy!  And thanks, Rudy.

Ask Great Questions: Leadership Skills

Ask Great Questions: Leadership Skills:
Building a successful venture means consistently making good decisions. The question is how to become great at making good decisions. The answer is to look to Socrates. This ancient philosopher holds the key to an essential leadership skill: ask great questions. The challenge is that too few leaders, managers and employees ask great questions. This is a big problem. Cultures that embrace a culture of questioning thrive and those that fear it either fail or are doomed to mediocrity.

12 Counterintuitive Practices For Long-Term Success

12 Counterintuitive Practices For Long-Term Success: Life is a complex combination of interactions, events, and relationships. We all chase “success,” but we struggle to define it. We all want true happiness, but we usually settle for the appearance of it. We all seek meaning, but we often succumb to doubt.

Seven Do's And Don'ts For Mentors

Seven Do's And Don'ts For Mentors: I just finished reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and the “Are You My Mentor?” chapter really stood out for me because it highlighted an issue I've grappled with for years: how awkward and ineffective a formal mentorship can be. There's already plenty of advice for young people on how to be good mentees. But as someone who has been both a mentor and a mentee, I want to provide some solid tips to mentors instead, so they can guide their mentees in a more meaningful way:

The Two Most Underrated Leadership Skills

The Two Most Underrated Leadership Skills: Leadership is changing. A big part is the impact of the Millennials. They are less apt to respond to command & control and respond much more positively to a different kind of leadership. Even a recession has not cured them of this. I believe that this is a fundamental part of how they view the world. Mainly due to what they are taught at high school and particularly in university. One of the most interesting projects on emerging approaches to leadership is at MIT. I had the considerable pleasure of interviewing MIT's Deborah Ancona. She discussed their Four Capabilities Leadership Model, focusing on the two most neglected of the four, over to Deborah:

Coping In A Toxic Work Environment

Coping In A Toxic Work Environment: Recently, I had the occasion to observe a group of employees who were working in a toxic work environment.  I witnessed the decline of self-esteem in each one of them as they endured month after month of poor leadership and dysfunction in their workplace.   I was truly amazed at the change to the countenance of each of these employees as their situation continually grew worse.   If one could have taken a before photo of these employees prior to their being in a toxic environment and then an after photo when they were months into it, the physical manifestations of the negativity they endured would be staggering.  Slowly, I observed each of these employees reach their breaking point and one by one resign from the company.  Each of them had good paying jobs with fabulous benefits, but the toxicity they dealt with each day was so unbearable that no amount of money would have made it worth the cost to their own self-worth.   They left their jobs without having new jobs lined up because they recognized that the toll the toxic environment was taking had become far too great to stay another day.

7 Management Practices That Can Improve Employee Productivity

7 Management Practices That Can Improve Employee Productivity: All companies want to improve employee productivity, but how often do they examine their own management practices as a means of attaining it?  Studies consistently show that a disturbingly high number of non-management employees are disengaged, not working at full productive capacity.  Following are 7 practical suggestions - steps management can take to improve productivity by putting employees in a more productive mindset.

Six Verbal And Nonverbal Tips For Selling

Six Verbal And Nonverbal Tips For Selling: If you think that these tips aren't for you because don't have "sales" in your job description, I'd ask you to think again.

10 Lessons In Teamwork

10 Lessons In Teamwork: Standing on the deck of a sailboat, far at sea in the middle of a wicked storm. A freak wave climbs higher and higher until you are looking up at an 80-foot high wall of swirling green water. Your teammate desperately shouts at you from the other side of the boat, but all you can hear is the deafening howl of 100-mph winds.