Here's a collection of things I shared over the week. Lot's of motivation, tips, and leadership pointers!
- 10 Leadership Nuggets From Nelson Mandela: Some inspiring words to lead by!
- 5 Public Speaking Tips That'll Prepare You for Any Interview: Several basic interview tips that are related to public speaking. Being better at interviewing never hurt anyone :)
- A Foolproof Tool for Motivating Your Team (and Yourself): I'm always looking for different approaches to motivate. This article offered a pretty good approach that's worth checking out.
- Shiny objects: tips for using both sides of your brain: Some tips for boosting creativity, mostly aimed at those that may not be that creative :)
- Are You Coachable?: An interesting article about being "coachable". The best part, I thought, was addressing whether or not you're actually seeking help or if you're seeking validation. Big difference.
- 10 Ways That Small Businesses Can Enchant Their Customers:
- One Strategy for Workplace Happiness: Meet Others Where They Are: A great article about increasing and maintaining engagement from your customers.
- Get Out of Your Own Way: You might be your biggest burden. Try to take a deep breath and stop letting others bring you down.
- Should Colleges Charge Engineering Students More?: I'm not a fan of online debates, but this one churned my stomach a bit. In my opinion, if the program costs the institution more to offer it, then there is no reason it couldn't cost a student more to take it. If the demand for people with these degrees is high, then perhaps the costs should actually be subsidized more (That doesn't actually mean making it cheaper than other degrees necessarily, just putting in more effort to bring the cost down comparatively). If the whole reason is to balance out salary potential then I think people need to get a grip (Hi, I pay taxes based on my income). If you're going to start charging more based on potential salaries, you might as well bust out the statistics and start charging a person's tuition based on gender, race, age, and any other obscure metric you can attach to potential salaries. That would be cool too, right? Maybe I should start overly sarcastic rant posts...
- Consider My Happiness Manifesto: It's important to be happy! Do you have your own list of things that you use to gauge your happiness? Have you ever considered it?
- The Unexpectedly High Cost of a Bad Hire: Having someone on your team who doesn't fit the bill (technically, from a company culture perspective, or any other reason) can be pretty costly. It's not even a matter of paying their salary while they are ramping up, but consider the impact it has on the effectiveness of other employees on the team.
- The First Thing You Must Do On Monday Morning: I bet this is actually difficult for a lot of people... Do nothing?! I can't even imagine how tricky this would be, despite the fact it's only 5-10 minutes. I think I can afford the time, and I think I'd like to try it on Monday!
- Name the Elephant in the Room: I thought this article was excellent. As a young professional in a leadership position, I get to see all sorts of awesome things in the startup I work at. Sometimes these things aren't so awesome though, and they can be really hard to address. Having a well-lubed and smooth-running company culture means being able to be transparent and trust-worthy. Having those hard discussions is crucial for ensuring things don't get bogged down by the elephant in the room.
- Get Anxious Speaking Up At Meetings?: I can personally say that I've been there, but not so much anymore! It's important that you can voice your opinions at meetings--That's why you're there!
- Quiz: Do You Make Other People Happy?: A quick one, but it should provide some good indications that you actually do make others happy!
- Praise or Criticism: Which is better?: An interesting article for sure. I'm sure we all think being praised is great, and surely we can't all be wrong. But criticism can't be all that bad for us, can it? Is there a right and a wrong way?