Each year, publications such as U.S. News & World Reports publish lists of the “best” colleges and universities in the U.S. Families are looking at significant investment in higher education, so it makes sense that they would want their children to have the best possible educational experience. As news of rising college costs continues to dominate the media, many so-called experts are offering incoming studen...

Interested in a way to maximize your potential and achieve greater levels of performance and job satisfaction? How about using that same strategy to help your company realize its most ambitious goals? Connectional Intelligence is proving to be a powerful conduit for achieving both. The brainchild of leading business strategists and researchers Erica Dhawan and Saj-Nicole Joni, Connectional Intelligence (CxQ) was coined i...

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” - Frederick Douglass Famed 19th-century author and orator Frederick Douglass was an eminent human rights leader in the anti-slavery movement and the first African-American citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery around 18...

Procrastination may be one of the most self-sabotaging and all-too-common behaviors leading to failure to achieve career or work-related goals. Some might say many forms of procrastination are “human nature.” Perhaps. You can Google hundreds of articles on the subject written by psychologists who tell us there is more to it than that. Regardless of the cause, the outcome is the same: your options are typically l...

Working for someone who is a people-pleaser may seem fairly innocuous or even desirable, but such leaders pose daunting challenges for their organizations. If you work for a people-pleaser, you most likely see the inherent problems and confess to seeking ways to maneuver around them. People-pleasing leaders have some beneficial traits, but their behaviors can threaten survival in today’s highly competitive an...

The entrepreneur’s brain at times can resemble the grand finale of a million-dollar fireworks show. Music’s blaring and things are blowing up all over the place. And while it’s pretty and entertaining, it’s also out of control, hard to follow, and a bit exhausting. It’s easy during these times for leaders to end up mentally drained and emotionally overwhelmed by the high-speed, explosive cha...

We all have a to-do list. To-do lists take all kinds of forms: written lists in notebooks, notepads, organizers, napkins, task functions on phones, Evernote, etc… You name it and you can probably put a to do list item on it, right? Me? I have a short term to do list I keep on post-its, these being the items I need to get done that day. I also have a running to-do list with long term items that can be done as...

Want some career advice? Look in the mirror. Appearance matters more than you think! Numerous studies on variables related to getting, keeping and advancing on the job revealed that appearance and looking young gives workers the competitive advantage in the job market and workplace. Noted economist, Daniel S. Hamermesh in his book, Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, shows that the attractive are m...

Twelve minutes before I was to speak to a large group in a hotel ballroom, I was struggling with A/V equipment. With hundreds of presentations under my belt, I’m accustomed to glitches, but no matter what I tried my presentation wouldn’t project. Hailing the meeting planner, he did his magic and within minutes an A/V tech arrived with another projector. That, too, failed and with five minutes remaining, he be...

Many American workers accomplish at least some of their work tasks remotely. Working remotely has many advantages, but it also has unique challenges. In fact, a recent Harvard Business Review study found that remote workers feel “shunned” and “left out” when it comes to office politics. If you work remotely, what can you do to still feel part of your organization? 1) Take the initiative to communi...