One of the ideas that I share with my career coaching clients is to start and maintain a "Career Journal" -- usually in the form of a three-ring notebook. The purpose of the Journal or Notebook is to serve as a placeholder to gather, collect and maintain relevant career development and career management material -- including items such as:1.Your Professional Development Plan, 2.Your "Learning List" -- things you need to l...

QUESTION: What are you planning to do differently the second half of this year to springboard your career success?As you embark on the second half of 2010, consider the following 10 QUESTIONS and how they might relate to your current level of career success -- also consider how answers to these questions might correlate with your future career success:• Who do you routinely call upon for career advice and career counsel? W...

Team member recognition is absolutely essential. Look for every opportunity you can to reward and recognize excellent results, "above and beyond" effort and value added.Listed below are seven relatively easy, but highly effective, ways for you to recognize your team members' effort, time and results:• It's all up to YOU. Financial rewards, your company's "brand" or the quality of your executive team will not, by themselve...

Business As Usual so far in 2010?In the day-to-day, week-to-week conduct of our work, business life and personal life, we do the things we need to do to accomplish our job and get things done. We exercise our talents to get these things done; we utilize our key skills to do those things as well as we can. Six months go by, a year goes by, lots of work is done, lots of things get done. but...have WE gotten better?... or ar...

All to often I find that my coaching clients, faced with an impending job change -- voluntary or involuntary -- realize very quickly that their contact network is "stale" and rather shallow. It is MUCH easier to maintain and nourish your network on an ongoing basis rather than play "catch-up" when you find yourself in need of help from others.Your network of business, professional and personal contacts is the most valuable...

A Preamble to Today's Article:In the earlier part of my career, I was a CPA with the firm now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers ("PwC"). I quickly gravitated into PwC's highly profitable corporate finance consulting practice as a Director in the firm's Atlanta office, where I spent 10 years specializing in Financial Advisory Services to Fortune 500 companies. The last 15 years of my work life have been oriented around my new...

Before email, SENDERS shouldered the burden of mail. Writing, stamping, and mailing a letter was a lot of work. Email bludgeoned that system in no time. Now the RECEIVER shoulders the burden of filtering, reading and responding to the endless stream of emails we receive on a day-to-day basis.Taming email means training the senders to put the burden of quality back on themselves. What's the best way to train everyone arou...

How effective are you at keeping the promises and commitments you make - those commitments you make to others and those commitments you make to yourself?The cost you pay for not keeping your promises may not seem like much at the time, but the true cost is a cumulative cost, a cost that, over time, will significantly erode (1) the trust others place in you, (2) your personal integrity, (3) your self-esteem, (4) your self-co...

Hey, listen up...Want to really accelerate AND sustain your career success?Then, you've GOT to be a highly effective listener. As a leader, LISTENING skills are MORE IMPORTANT than your speaking skills...No question. You learn much more from listening -- you pick up details and key information that you tend to if you don't really dial into what the other person is saying. Others feel much more comfortable with you if the...

Balancing "highly focused work effort" with adequate rest and recovery is invaluable in any performance venue - work, athletics, sports, hobbies, etc. Without adequate recovery time, we overstress our bodies physically, emotionally and mentally. Energy levels suffer and peak performance is impacted.Energize Yourself!With regard to work activities, recovery time not only includes planned vacations and time away from work on...