Time Management: How and When do You Make Time for Personal Development?

If you've been in the world long enough, you've heard the buzzword: Personal development. What can it get it you? How do you fit it into your routine? Does it mean you have to learn Twitter?

The short answers is: it's not that simple, and we hope you already know Twitter. Personal development has often been thought of as the activity you undertake when you're looking to reach the next level--you need to prepare to upgrade your relationship? You want a new job/career move and you're just not quite there? It's time for personal development! However, today the meaning has started to evolve into a much more Millennial-minded, individual-friendly viewpoint: personal development is for everyone, any time. Even Emma Watson is taking a year off to develop herself.

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Book Review: Dave’s Subs by David Marx

daves subs

A late bread delivery. A new driver. An improperly stocked bread rack. A first-time customer. An employee’s first foray into covering as manager. An instinctive reach. A failure to confirm. It was a series of mostly unremarkable events. No evil actor. No intention to harm. Yet a customer with celiac disease had to be hospitalized when she was accidentally served a sub with regular bread instead of the gluten-free roll she’d requested.

Milo, the manager who’d been absent when the mistake occurred, is tasked with figuring out how to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. And so he begins a journey into learning about workplace accountability. We follow along, happy it’s his problem and not ours.

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Taking the Middle Way: Why Ambivert Leadership Works

The Middle Way, The Golden Mean, Moderation in All Things….

To start with, the wisdom of being an ambivert is not new to this world. Wise thinkers have agreed on this point, including Gautama Buddha, Aristotle and Carl Jung himself, the man who first popularized the terms introvert and extrovert. As cited in Entrepeneur's article on ambivert leadership, Carl Jung believed "there is no such thing as a pure extrovert or pure introvert. Such a man would be in an insane asylum."

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3 Keys to Inspirational Leadership

Leadership traits are very diverse and sometimes uniquely suited to the specific leader that exhibits them, but few traits inspire others to greatness. Obviously for a leader to truly lead all he has to have is followers, but what the leader does beyond that separates the average leader from the truly transformational leader.

Those traits are unique but not foreign, they are just so simple we fail to recognize them at times. Let’s look at 3 keys to inspirational leadership:

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3 Ways to Earn Trust with New Employees

You’re a new manager, coming in to meet with your employees. What is the best way to make a good impression and earn trust with the employees quickly? Hint: It’s not by immediately running down your educational background and list of credentials. Instead, try spilling your coffee, tripping as you enter the room, or making some other small but noticeable mistake. The point is, don’t take yourself so seriously.

Sound crazy? It’s not — as long as you really do have the background and credentials to give yourself credibility. For the past 50 years, researchers have been studying how people can make themselves more likable, and one classic study found that a high-performing person who does something a little vulnerable becomes more attractive to those observing.

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3 Ways That Tech Can Fuel Employee Happiness

Happiness! A new puppy? A perfect bowling score? Your favorite pineapple upside-down cake? Those things would probably make most of us happier (although some might opt for chocolate cake instead). Work might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "happiness".

Even at the wackiest Silicon Valley startup, it's unlikely that employers will provide puppies, bowling or cake to increase happiness. But business owners know that employee satisfaction is extremely important. Happiness is defined as "subjective well-being" by experts at UC Berkeley. Both research and experience show that happy employees--those who feel more positive emotions and a deep sense of purpose--are more productive.

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How to Manage Multiple Leadership Styles – The Right Fit for the Right Goal

Do you remember watching ‘The Karate Kid’ back in the 80s, and then coming out of the cinema feeling like you wanted to be a winner just as Daniel San was? Or watching ‘Remember the Titans’ and wanting to be part of a team that was just as great, with a coach that was just as awesome and wise? How about ‘Patch Addams’ and feeling like you wanted to be part of that movement of free clinics that helped people in need? Of course you remember!

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The Leadership Style of Gen Z

Generation Z or affectionately, "Gen Z" are the clued-in, cyber-smart, connected people born during the 1990s, the years when the internet and smart phones were becoming fast, pervasive, and endlessly useful. These people are in their mid-twenties and bringing their special style to office environments throughout the business world. They are the first generation that has never experienced a world without the internet. Knowledge has always been at their fingertips. Communication was always universal, fast and cheap. What will it be like working with people like that, with that kind of kink in their brains? What is the Gen Z leadership style like?

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Book Review: Breaking Corporate Silence ~ How High-Influence Leaders Create Cultures of Voice

This little book should be on every leader’s desk—not stuck under a pile of papers, but sitting on top, ready to be consulted every day. It’s well-written, filled with practical suggestions you can implement right away, and thought-provoking.

Corporate voice boils down to whether employees hold back important work-related information that could inform decisions and problem resolutions, or whether they experience the safety, confidence, and trust that encourages them to contribute their fullest. Employees in a culture of silence may perform their jobs, but they will do so as a matter of obedience or resignation. They don’t go out of their way to give their best efforts or to solve problems, even if they have good ideas, mainly because they don’t think leaders will listen to them or value them.

Employees in a culture of voice, on the other hand, contribute their fullest, resulting in open, honest, and healthy communication and innovative problem solving. They are willing to expand their efforts to meet organizations’ goals and advance business objectives beyond fulfilling the basic requirements of their jobs.

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