Facebook and Twitter may be getting all the attention, but you still need to pay attention to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is important precisely because it is so stodgy and predictable as a business tool. Here’s how to work it:
Leadership Skills
Don’t just be a boss — be a leader. Maximize your leadership skills in the five most crucial areas: decision making, executive coaching, leadership training, strategic management and understanding your leadership style.
Situational leadership changes depending on the type of leadership (direction and support) each of your employee’s needs. Emotional leadership is based more on the theory of emotional intelligences and relates to the situation at hand.
Access more articles, tools and advice on maximizing your leadership skills.
With just 135 employees, staffing agency Winter, Wyman in Boston is limited when it comes to employee benefits, says Michelle Roccia, senior VP of corporate organizational development. So it offers the standard medical and dental insurance, and then managers come up with “soft benefits” to keep employees happy and make the organization attractive to applicants.
Nothing irks like jerks at work. But some workplace behavior goes beyond being merely annoying. When the actions of “challenging” personality types land you in court, these workers become a liability – in every sense of the word.
Joseph Plumeri, chairman and chief executive of insurance brokerage Willis Group Holdings, once was a command-and-control leader. “Being too exciting and too motivational is overbearing, and it turns people off,” he says. So he revamped his leadership style to focus on collaboration and debate.
Anyone can learn to innovate. That’s what researchers from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University say, after a six-year study. They’ve identified the five secrets to being a great innovator: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking.
Domino’s Pizza recently did something practically unheard of in the business world. First, it asked customers for honest feedback. Second, it actually listened to the painful truth. Third, it reinvented its product based on the input and ran TV commercials touting that its pizza “no longer tastes like cardboard.” Product development expert Dan Adams says Domino’s reinvention offers five key tips for small business owners:
There’s a common type of workplace theft, and it has nothing to do with missing office supplies, reports a recent OfficeTeam survey. Nearly one in three employees interviewed said that a co-worker has taken credit for their idea. “Being proactive in sharing your vision with your manager and colleagues early on can help ensure others know the concept originated with you,” says Robert Hosking, executive director of OfficeTeam.
Layoffs, pay cuts and an uncertain economy have left many organizations with fewer employees to do the work—often for the same or less money. Not all of those employees are handling it well. Here are nine ways you can deal with economy-induced employee stress and help your employees focus on their work:
Too often, customers never see products and services until they’re in stores. That’s too late. Use “who” and “what” questions to identify who your market is and what it needs.
More than 400,000 U.S. citizens retire or separate from the military every year—and most of them look for jobs when they do. Companies such as Union Pacific Railroad, GE and Home Depot actively recruit veterans. Your organization could probably benefit from hiring military veterans. To attract them, align your recruiting and employee benefits with their needs.
