Often times when coaching executives and managers we hear stories about someone they work with (not a direct report) who hampers or sabotages their productivity, and thus impacts their performance.
One example is that one person on the team who is ‘protected’. Or what we refer to as ‘privileged’ because of that person’s relationship to someone who is in a position of influence and power. Read more…
Now that the recession has come and gone, what have we learned? Something that corporate America has learned is this: they can pick-up the pace of outsourcing, the practice of contracting work to people or other companies outside the traditional organizational pyramid.
During the recession the economic slump became so pronounced that even outsourcing got scaled back. In addition, executives also reined in outsourcing on concern of government pressures against it. Read more…
For the majority of us, just waking up each morning can be stress inducing. From the blaring alarm clock to watching the morning news (“5 murdered last night”; “unemployment is rising”) to the grinding morning commute, stress seems to be lurking all around us.
And it’s even more stressful to read reports about how stress can practically kill us by causing heart disease, killing the neurons in our brains and making our immune systems weak, among many other horrifying things.
But it’s all a matter of perspective and how we deal with stress. If you’re the kind of person that reacts to stress with anger, guzzling a bottle of whiskey or eating two days worth of donuts, then yes, perhaps stress isn’t your friend. However, if you understand that stress can have its benefits, then maybe you and stress can get along.
No one ever invites stress into their lives; it just shows up, like a D-list reality “star” to an A-list red carpet event. Who invited that person? But unlike Snooki or the Kardashian clan, stress can actually make us better equipped to face the world.
Just look to the trees. Read more…