5 Keys to Creating the Ideal Work Environment

One of my favorite interview questions to ask candidates is “what’s your ideal environment?” If the environment is not right, skills, values and other intangibles may not matter. Different individuals thrive in different environments. The key to craft an ideal environment is to understand a person’s drivers and primary behavioral style.

In “What’s the Color of your Parachute,” author Richard Nelson Bolles explains there are several variables leading whether a person will be happy with his or her job.

To name just a few, one has to have strong interest in the field or job function. They need to be able to use skills they possess and enjoy using those skills when doing the job. Finally, they need to be happy with the people around them. Read More

Make Your Team Better with DISC

By Whit Mitchell

Why do people lose their jobs? Managers hire for skill, but they rarely fire for incompetence. Instead they fire because of bad behavior.

“Bad” behavior comes in many forms. It can be behavior that the manager doesn’t understand, or a reaction to a recent responsibility change or a promotion. What if you had a tool to understand employee behavior? What if that tool could even help you anticipate where an employee might succeed, where an employee might struggle, or where conflict on the team might appear? Well you do, and it’s called DISC. Read More

5 Things You Need to do to be Successful at Just About Anything

By Dave Clark

Like the elusive fountain of youth, people are constantly looking for the magic recipe or the secret sauce to become successful. While there are far more successful people in the world than I am, I would like to share some things that have worked for me over the years.

I am proud to say that I’ve been able to reinvent myself several times over the years, making “hard shifts” between unrelated industries, successfully landing on my feet – and thriving – each time. There were a few consistent themes each time I made one of these drastic changes. Since they worked for me, they may work for you, as well. As far as I’m concerned, these are the 5 things you need to do to be successful at just about anything. Read More

Why Should I Care About EQ?

By Ron Price 

To some, emotional intelligence (or EQ) can sound like the modern version of standing in a circle holding hands and singing kumbaya.

Many people undervalue the significance of developing emotional intelligence as part of professional development. However, there is an abundance of research that indicates this type of thinking isn’t very intelligent.

It turns out that the single most important element in a group’s intelligence is not the average IQ, but instead the emotional intelligence of the group. A single participant who has low EQ can lower the collective IQ of the entire group. Read More

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

By Todd Fox

An important life theme I’ve always tried to live by is to never to judge a book by its cover. Talking recently with a coworker who had an unfortunate incident at a local car dealership got me to thinking about that.

In today’s fast-paced world, we tend to make quick decisions about everything, including how we judge people. In our quest for speed, we can often and easily make judgments based on superficial evidence we see on the surface. The problem with rushing to judgment on anything, especially people, is that we may make an entirely wrong assessment about someone when we don’t have all the information. If we make a point to treat people equally, regardless of what we may experience in our initial introduction, we may come to find our judgments couldn’t have been more wrong. Read More