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An Old Favorite

The term brainstorming may remind you of an out-of-date practice used by the corporate masses a couple of decades ago, but it’s worth taking a second look at the advantages of this exercise when contemplating your next big move.  Guy Farmer from Unconventional Training takes a fresh look at brainstorming, and reminds us what all the hype is about: The Overlooked Leadership [...]

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Creating a Nurturing Culture

Do you have a pulse on your organization’s culture?  Take a look around – what are the conversations about in the break room?  What kinds of Dilbert cartoons are posted on bulletin boards?  Better yet – which direction are employees’ cars parked?  These small observations can tell us a lot about the culture that we [...]

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Infusing Company Culture into New Employees

Many companies spend a great deal of time and energy attempting to create that perfect culture they want their employees to associate with their business.  What some of these organizations fail to realize is that a culture begins taking form before new employees are ever hired.  Building and maintaining your ideal culture begins from the [...]

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Choose Your Words Wisely

Customer, client, patron, consumer…no matter what you call them, these folks keep us employed.  They pay our bills, challenge us to create new and better products, and demand that we meet their ever-changing needs.  Without them, our organization fails.  They are, in fact, the lifeblood of what we do every day. That’s a lot of [...]

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The Unapproachable

Most of us look for potential employees who are friendly people.  We expect them to smile, greet, and engage the customer.  Because this behavior comes naturally for many, it’s easy to consider it a basic skill to master.  In reality, this skill comes easily when the customer is smiling back, but not so effortlessly when [...]

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What’s Your Story?

Every company has a story.  Maybe it’s the inspired beginnings of an organization’s founders who created a company fueled only by a dream.  Maybe it’s the rags-to-riches tale of someone who lost it all before creating an empire.  Maybe it’s a business that endured a disaster but bounced-back after its employees rallied to its aid.  [...]

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The New Efficiency

In the not-so-distant past, the word efficiency brought to mind thoughts of doing more in less time – a stressful task for many already stretched to their limit and beyond.  The word itself means the power to accomplish, but what are those accomplishments really worth?  In today’s business environment, the new efficiency is reevaluating tasks, [...]

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Great Leadership as Taught by Bad Bosses

Some of the most valuable lessons–What NOT to do–in life are taught by the bad examples of others.  Dan McCarthy has a great blog post on how we learn leadership skills by doing the opposite of our bad bosses.  Check out  “Got a Bad Boss? Do the Opposite“.  The icing on the cake is the [...]

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Know Thyself: Management Styles

One of the defining qualities of good managers is that they have more than professional knowledge. They have self-knowledge—in other words, they can look inward to examine their own strengths and weaknesses and they’re also willing and happy to listen to outside input on how they can grow and change. One of the most important [...]

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10 Essential Leadership Tips

Becoming a great leader requires effort, reflection, a heightened sense of personal awareness, and a willingness to constantly evolve.  Whether you are currently in a leadership position or aspire to be in that inspirational role; use these tips to get started on your road to leadership excellence. Lead By Example. Leaders that require their team [...]

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