It’s said that to be at your best, you must get out of your comfort zone.
So then, the place you are looking for must be your … discomfort zone?
So how do you find it? Where is it? If you’ve not been there before, how do you know when you find it?
And lastly, once you’ve been there a while and adjusted, does it simply become your “comfort zone” again?
It takes planning. So it helps to have little signposts to spot along the way to let you know you are on course.
So you resisted your better judgment and went to that meeting after all.
And just as you feared, it ran off the rails in the first five minutes and rambled on for another 90.
It started with the usual awkward silence, but was soon filled by the guy from down the hall droning on and on about GAAP or something.
GAASbag was more like it.
You shouldn’t have been surprised. It happens way too often.
In fact, I just read an article which said bad meetings are usually the result of one of three things.
But when I did an unscientific poll with my colleagues and friends, we came up with 29 things.
And here they are, In no special order
Accomplished salespeople are some of the most highly sought-after (and sometimes misunderstood) creatures on the business planet.
And, coincidentally, the same is true for great leaders.
When it comes to leadership, it’s clear there is much that can be “borrowed” from the world of business-to-business sales.
Here are 13 ideas to grow your leadership skills, borrowed directly from well-established and proven tactics from the B-to-B sales bible.
In each, we simply substituted “leader” for “salesperson” or “employee” for “customer”, etc.
And they made total sense!
Firing someone is more than just an uncomfortable task. It can be a hazardous walk through a legal minefield.
(In case you don’t think so, the headlines in the graphic above are all from the past few months. Pretty frightening, eh?)
Most companies work hard not to discriminate. They try to adhere to the dozens of workplace rules and regulations.
But there is much potential for missteps, which is one reason why unlawful termination lawsuits increase year after year.
While most are without merit, they can still be expensive.
Throw in lost staff time and productivity, and the real cost is much higher.
The workplace is changing as rapidly the technology that drives it.
Yet there are still a surprising number of stubborn beliefs about management that just won’t change, and frankly, just aren’t very true.
One reason these myths persist is people don’t understand what managers do (and, unfortunately, that includes a lot of managers.)
Here are seven management myths that you might want to reconsider:
You never saw it coming. Is that what you want us to believe?
You came to work one day and, in an instant, one of your very best people just quit on you.
They said they had something important to share, and you asked them to hang on a sec while you freshened your coffee.
Then they sat down in your office and looked you right in the eye to explain how they were moving on to another opportunity.
You nearly choked on your next sip.
You had been their manager, mentor and savior. You were so sure things were going great (which they probably were).
You asked them all the time how things were going, and they said nothing but positive stuff.
They’d never lie to you, would they?
Well, they just did (sort of).
The higher you go in an organization, the harder it is to see what life is like way down there on the front lines.
And heaven help you if you ask someone, because you never know who’s going to tell you the truth.
The longer you are at the top, the more likely you forgot what life is like lower down, if you ever really knew.
It’s a very different existence, even for the frontline folks who love their jobs.
You don’t think so?
Here are 8 reasons you might want to think again.
Some phrases really should be banned from the workplace.
You know them when you hear them.
They are the sorts of things that make people wonder how their boss ever got promoted in the first place.
And yet, they are the kinds of things we all hear, and maybe even say, all too often.
If any of these sound familiar, hopefully it’s because someone ELSE is saying them.
So steer clear.
How well do you sleep the night before you fire someone?
Some firings are no-brainers. For instance, an employee does something so unacceptable that dismissal was never a doubt.
But what about the other ones. You know, the employees who struggle mightily to make the cut? The ones you’ve been on the fence about for quite some time?
So you can lay your head on the pillow at night knowing you made the right decision, here are eight questions you absolutely need to ask yourself before you fire someone.
“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry,” Gloria Steinem declared in the 1970s.
A journalist and social activist, Steinem was a leading voice in the feminist movement that took off in the 1960s.
So, have women really become the men they admired?
Well, women have dramatically joined the workforce. They are increasingly doctors, lawyers, politicians and scientists.
But for her quote to be true today (some 45 years later), all those men would have to take a 22.5% pay cut.
