July recommended reading

Do You Know What You Are Especially Good At?

From Michael Hyatt: “From a career standpoint, this is probably the most important question you could ever ask. The answer will determine how fast you advance in your career and, more importantly, how happy you are in your job. Many of us have had to figure it out the hard way—by trial and error. But fortunately, there is a better way.”

Read the rest of Do You Know What You Are Especially Good At?

What to Do When You Have a Difficult Boss

From TheJobBored: “Do you feel like your boss is the “boss from hell?” Are you having a hard time dealing with your boss? If this is the case, what should you do? How do you deal with a difficult boss?”

Read the six tips of What to Do When You Have a Difficult Boss

How to Be a Good Manager: 8 Quick Tips

From Work Awesome: “Being a manager in any industry can be a fulfilling job, but it can also be a difficult one. You will need to find the right balance of friendliness and authority. You will need to create a good team atmosphere whilst achieving the bigger goals. So how do you strike that balance?”

Read the rest of How to Be a Good Manager: 8 Quick Tips

Saving Forwarded Messages in Outlook

From Outlook Tips: “Last week we had a record number of people asking about saving copies of forwarded messages: ‘I cannot find where the messages are that I forward. I looked in the Sent folder but don’t see them there.'”

Learn how: Saving Forwarded Messages in Outlook

Run More Effective Meetings

From Gallo Communications: “By making basics clear and emphasizing clear communication, you and your employees will get more accomplished and cut the time you spend discussing what you need to do.”

Read the rest of Run More Effective Meetings

 

June recommended reading

Some Prefer No Sex to Bad PowerPoint

From Talking Leadership: “A new survey by online presentation company, SlideRocket, confirms what we already know – nobody wants to sit through another bad PowerPoint presentation. What caught my eye was just how badly people were turned off by PowerPoint.”

Read why Some Prefer No Sex to Bad PowerPoint and what to do about it

Perfect is the enemy of good

From Business Leaders Learning: “Voltaire wrote ‘Perfect is the enemy of good.’
Many of us have done it. Spend too long on that email, ‘improve’ that agenda, re-write that proposal. Of course it must be right, but in many cases, it is right already. And it must be on time too.”

Read the rest of Perfect is the enemy of good

Don’t Try to Change Things You Can’t

From Steve Tobak: “You stress over things you shouldn’t, don’t focus on things you should, and maybe even end up screwing up your job, career, or organization in the process.

Don’t believe me? Here are a few examples of how you stress over things and try to change people you have no control over…”

Continue reading Don’t Try to Change Things You Can’t

10 Reasons Your Team Hates You

From thoughtLEADERS: “Your team hates you. Really. They do. They hate their boss (you) but they just won’t say so because they like getting paid. But when they go home at night, they spill their bile about their taskmaster of a boss who does nothing but drive them crazy (isn’t that what you do too?).”

Read the 10 Reasons Your Team Hates You

 

How to cope with a critical manager

Does your boss constantly point out your mistakes?  Can she find fault in everything you do?  If so, you probably have a critical manager.  As a perfectionist, she feels it is her duty to point out everyone’s flaws.

Photo by a2gemma

Over time, that constant criticism chips away at your sense of self-worth.  Combine that with a boss who refuses to recognize your contributions at work, and you’re definitely in a toxic situation.

Some signs that you work for a critical manager:

• You feel like you can’t do anything well, in your manager’s opinion
• You spend a lot of time checking your work to avoid mistakes
• You worry most of the time about what faults your boss will point out
• Even when you accomplish something, it’s never enough
• You avoid your boss so you don’t have to hear his criticism

But you can cope with a critical boss.  Below are some suggestions for disengaging from your critical boss, not taking the criticism personally, and dealing with a critical manager.

 

December recommended reading

Photo by eloquentlight

The Good News About Good Bosses

From Bob Sutton’s Work Matters: “A recent poll by StrategyOne of over 500 American workers finds that over 80% of employees feel respected by their supervisors and believe their supervisors value their work.”

Read the rest of The Good News About Good Bosses

What I Learned from Oprah and Marcus Buckingham

From Escape from Corporate America: “The bottom line, according to Oprah and Marcus, is that your real job in life is to find out why you are here. In order to make any kind of lasting contribution, your job must “feed” you in some way.”

Read the rest of What I Learned from Oprah and Marcus Buckingham

Inspirational Quotes Blog

This inspirational quotes blog posts at least one quote every day; sometimes two or three.  If that’s not enough, you can follow him on Twitter to get even more quotes.

Start reading Inspirational Quotes Blog

Civility at Work

From Daniel Goleman: “People at work in any organization face a panoply of forces that easily overpower the urge to be civil: stress, multi-tasking, too much to do with too little time, or too little support. Stress and distractedness – not meanspiritness – are the most common enemies of civility at work.”

Read how to stay civil at work

Set up Outlook 2007/2010 to Master Your Now (MYN)

From Master Your (Workday) Now: “This video teaches you a subset of the complete MYN Outlook system; just enough so that you’ll be using the core of the Outlook MYN system in only a few minutes. You’ll have a system to get your long list of tasks for the new year organized, and then a way to stay ahead of too-many e-mails and too many to-do’s.”

Watch how to Master Your Now with Outlook 2007/2010

Winners of the 2010 World’s Best Presentation Contest

From SlideShare: Late each year, people are encouraged to enter presentation slides or videos in SlideShare’s Best Presentation Contest.  Then SlideShare members vote, and expert judges select the final winners in a variety of categories.

See the World’s Best Presentations for 2010

 

Recommended reading from September

Photo by Nufkin

If you haven’t already seen these six great articles on leadership and teams, I highly recommend them.  Each one is a quick read.

Who Says There is No ‘I’ in TEAM?

From Super Successful Manager: “Valuing the individual strengths, skills and experiences of every one of those in a team, can generate exceptional results.  Why?  Because a skilled leader can realize where best to focus key activities in their team.”

The Urban Legend of the Great Goal Study

From Three Star Leadership Blog: “Researchers surveyed the graduating seniors from the class of 1953 at Yale University. They asked if the class members had written goals for their future. Three percent did. The rest did not…  The only problem with this powerful finding is that there was no such study. Researchers at Yale and members of the class of 1953 all swear they never conducted or participated in a study like that.”

3 Important tips to help you destroy trust, but still make you feel like you are leading people

From Teamwork and Leadership Bloggings: “Do you want to destroy the trust of those you lead, but still feel like a leader? Well, I have three suggestions to help you get there sooner than later. Most leaders do one or all of these so I thought it might be helpful to pass them on in case you weren’t aware of some of them and needed some help.”

A Manager’s Skill – Balancing Fun and Focus

From Coach Train Learn: “Having fun is a vital component of any successful team. Managers will do well to encourage their people to enjoy their work, joining in when there’s a laugh to be had, where appropriate.”

Personality Poker

From 800 CEO Read: “You’ve got your own personality that helps or hinders others. And soon enough, it can be clear to see that work is not just about the tasks we do, but how we do them, how we internalize and understand our interactions with others, and how our reactions can change the path our work takes – for better or worse.”

What Makes a Great Team Member?

From Leadership Buzz: “I’ve learned from clients the best team members share common characteristics in both the ‘skill’ and the ‘will’ areas.  A common mistake leaders make when hiring is overemphasizing the need for skill and skill alone.”