The Most Powerful Force In Business.

When you think of a great executive or someone you respect, what qualities come to mind?

Ability to get things done? Knowledge of their space? Who they know? Schmoozability at parties?

What do you think is their most powerful ability to be successful?

The ability to LISTEN.

Listening is SOOO underrated. Most people don't even know it's happening — they are so engrossed in their professional soap opera. Why is it so important?

1. It allows you to listen to what is important and what isn't important - then you can comment. Not the other way around.
2. It makes the person you talk to feel more engaged, more important, more focused.
3. In addition, you look more engaged, more important, and more focused. If you talk too much, you are a know-it-all blowhard.

Our natural inclination is to talk, interrupt, and think about what we are going to say while the other person is talking. By listening, you turn the tables on basic business conversation — you seem more thoughtful, more introspective, and more calculating (in a good way) when interacting with others.

Try it — you might find that people treat you differently and you have the ability to truly understand situations before you dive in head first.

It Helps When You Talk To Someone.

I've been running my executive advisory and coaching practice for the past 10 years. I've never had a meeting like I had yesterday. Working with the marketing arm of the Rich Gee Group, called Nurenu Brand Marketing — BJ, Trevor and the crew took me through key thinking and planning that will help me move my business to the next ten levels!

I'm at the 'Critical Mass' stage right now - I have the foundational elements - I have the knowledge and experience — "we have the technology, we can rebuild him. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man."

Over the next few months, you are going to see the Rich Gee Group hit new heights — all because of a single afternoon conversation. Now don't get me wrong, there will be a lot of action planning, activities, tasks, sweat and tears — but it all started with a Conversation. Thank you Nurenu!

Who can YOU talk to? Who do YOU bounce ideas off of? As I say: "One conversation can change your life!"

Get It Done. Make It Happen.

That's my mantra. And I make all my clients tattoo it on their arms. Why? Because it works.

It all comes down to ACTION You can plan all day — and that's a good thing. But planning isn't everything. In fact, most executives do have some type of plan — either zipping around in their head or on a piece of paper buried on their desk. Unfortunately, execution is the real culprit. They are afraid or they don't know how to take that first step to begin the process. That's where I come in:

Make It Happen Take the first step. Do Anything. It really doesn't matter what you do first — what does matter is that you do something . . . immediately. I liken it to entering a pool for the first time — you can go in slowly and get used to the water (we all know how that feels) or just jump right in and the shock of the temperature is gone within seconds. If you need to do a series of informational calls to key executives, call one right now! Don't wait to plan — don't procrastinate to build a talk track — ring them up and start talking! You will surprise yourself.

Get It Done Check it off your list — complete it. So many people take a half-step into an activity and decide that it's too hard, will take too long, or it takes them too far out of their comfort zone. Here's where my coaching comes in — stop being a baby. You are an adult — with adult responsibilities. You must get it done. You are not in school anymore where a teacher will say "it's okay - you don't have to do that". You HAVE to do it. And the faster that you get it done, the faster you can move on to the next step.

And here's the best part: Once you start down this path, it gets EASIER. Trust me, it always happens.

Not moving forward? Get It Done. Make It Happen. No Excuses.

Who's Got Your Back?

Once again, Keith Ferrazzi's new book flips the idea of a self-help book on its head. Ferrazzi contends that people who build meaningful relationships with others can attain greater personal and professional success. Why you should read this book?

Your Four Mindsets: Intimacy, Generosity, Vulnerability, Candor This follows up on the mindsets Ferrazzi explored in his first book, Never Eat Alone. Building relationships, and repairing relationships, using these mindsets will greatly enhance and fuel all types of relationships, and increase your chances of maintaining strong, successful alliances. These four mindsets are core to building trust.

Build a Dream Team We all have dreams, and we need strong relationships to help us realize those dreams. Once we've accepted that conducting our relationships through the lens of the four mindsets contributes to our success, building a dream team to help us fuel our success is the next logical step. Ferrazzi outlines nine steps to building a dream team. Not sure if the steps work or not, since Ferrazzi doesn't present hardcore evidence that actual, real live individuals have used these steps successfully, but Ferrazzi's nine steps includes many practical and tactical ideas that logically should work, and seem worth trying.

Hold Each Member Accountable Without accountability in the group and among individuals, teams become lazy, complacent, loose focus, and derail. Ferrazzi does a nice job of explaining safe ways to implement accountability measures into your organizational, or dream, teams.

Hands down this will probably be the best book I read this year (Keith does it again!). Run out and get this book ASAP!

The Future of Work: The Last Days of Cubicle Life.

Presenting Part Ten of a Ten-Part Series (finally!) on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Seth Godin at Time.

When Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled the Johnson Wax Building in 1939, it showcased a new way of looking at work. One room, covering half an acre (0.2 hectare), was filled with women, lined up in rows, typing. Work didn't necessarily mean loud, dirty factories, but it still involved sitting in orderly rows, doing orderly work for a finicky boss.

In order to understand what your workplace is going to be like in five or 10 years, you need to think about what your work is going to be like. Here's a clue: employers no longer need to pay you to drive to a building to sit and type. In fact, under pressure from an uncertain economy, bosses are discovering that there are a lot of reasons not to pay you to drive to a central location or even to pay you at all. And when work gets auctioned off to the lowest bidder, your job gets a lot more stressful. (See pictures of cubicle designs submitted to The Office.)

The job of the future will have very little to do with processing words or numbers (the Internet can do that now). Nor will we need many people to act as placeholders, errand runners or receptionists. Instead, there's going to be a huge focus on finding the essential people and outsourcing the rest.

So, are you essential? Most of the best jobs will be for people who manage customers, who organize fans, who do digital community management. We'll continue to need brilliant designers, energetic brainstormers and rigorous lab technicians. More and more, though, the need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away. It's too expensive, and it's too slow. I'd rather send you a file at the end of my day (when you're in a very different time zone) and have the information returned to my desktop when I wake up tomorrow. We may never meet, but we're both doing essential work.

When you do come in to work, your boss will know. If anything can be measured, it will be measured. The boss will know when you log in, what you type, what you access. Not just the boss but also your team. Internet technology makes working as a team, synchronized to a shared goal, easier and more productive than ever. But as in a three-legged-race, you'll instantly know when a teammate is struggling, because that will slow you down as well. Some people will embrace this new high-stress, high-speed, high-flexibility way of work. We'll go from a few days alone at home, maintaining the status quo, to urgent team sessions, sometimes in person, often online. It will make some people yearn for jobs like those in the old days, when we fought traffic, sat in a cube, typed memos, took a long lunch and then sat in traffic again.

The only reason to go to work, I think, is to do work. It's too expensive a trip if all you want to do is hang out. Work will mean managing a tribe, creating a movement and operating in teams to change the world. Anything less is going to be outsourced to someone a lot cheaper and a lot less privileged than you or me.

Godin is a popular blogger (sethgodin.typepad.com) and the author of 12 international best sellers. His most recent book is Tribes.

The Future of Work: Yes, We'll Still Make Stuff.

Presenting Part Nine of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By David Von Drehle at Time.

The death of American manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated. According to U.N. statistics, the U.S. remains by far the world's largest manufacturer, producing nearly twice as much value as No. 2 China. Since 1990, U.S. manufacturing output has grown by nearly $800 billion — an amount larger than the entire manufacturing economy of Germany, a global powerhouse.

But growth does not mean jobs. While sales soared (at least until the recession), manufacturing employment sank. Using constantly improving technology to make more-valuable goods, American workers doubled their productivity in less than a generation — which, paradoxically, rendered millions of them obsolete. (See pictures of retailers which have gone out of business.)

This new manufacturing workforce can be seen in the gleaming and antiseptic room in Southern California where Edwards Lifesciences produces artificial-heart valves. You could say the small group of workers at the Edwards plant, most of them Asian women, are seamstresses. Unlike the thousands of U.S. textile workers whose jobs have migrated to low-wage countries, however, these highly skilled women occupy a niche in which U.S. firms are dominant and growing. Each replacement valve requires eight to 12 hours of meticulous hand-sewing — some 1,800 stitches so tiny that the work is done under a microscope. Up to a year of training goes into preparing a new hire to join the operation.

Highly skilled workers creating high-value products in high-stakes industries — that's the sweet spot for manufacturing workers in coming years. After an initial surge of enthusiasm for shipping jobs of all kinds to low-wage countries, many U.S. companies are making a distinction between exportable jobs and jobs that should stay home. Edwards, for example, has moved its rote assembly work — building electronic monitoring machines — to such lower-wage and -tax locales as Puerto Rico. But when quality is a matter of life or death and production processes involve trade secrets worth billions, the U.S. wins, says the company's head of global operations, Corinne Lyle. "We like to keep close tabs on our processes."

Recent corner-cutting scandals in China — lead-paint-tainted children's toys, melamine-laced milk — have underlined the advantages of manufacturing at home. A botched toy is one thing; a botched batch of heparin or a faulty aircraft component is quite another. According to Clemson University's Aleda Roth, who studies quality control in global supply chains, the successful companies of coming years will be the ones that make product safety — not just price — a "big factor in their decisions about where to locate jobs."

Innovative companies will also stay home thanks to America's superior network of universities and its relatively stringent intellectual-property laws. Consider, for instance, the secretive and successful South Carolina textilemaker Milliken & Co. While the rest of the region's low-tech, backward-looking textile industry was fading away, Milliken pushed ahead, investing heavily in research and becoming a hive of new patents.

U.S. manufacturing will also be buoyed by a third source of power: the American consumer. Even in our current battered condition, the U.S. is the world's most prosperous marketplace. As global economic activity rebounds, so will energy prices. The cost of shipping foreign-made goods to the U.S. market will begin to offset overseas wage advantages. We saw that last year when oil prices zoomed toward $200 per barrel.

Thus, even if fewer cars are built by America's wounded automakers, there will still be plenty of car factories in the U.S. They will be owned by Japanese and Chinese and Korean and German and Italian firms, but they will employ American workers. It just makes sense to build the cars near the people you expect to buy them.

Raised on images of Carnegie and Ford, we rue the loss of once smoky, now silent megaplants but are blind to the small and midsize companies replacing them. Ultimately, what's endangered is not U.S. manufacturing. It is our deeply ingrained cultural image of the factory and its workers.

The Future of Work: When Gen X Runs the Show.

Presenting Part Eight of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Anne Fisher at Time.

By 2019, Generation X — that relatively small cohort born from 1965 to 1978 — will have spent nearly two decades bumping up against a gray ceiling of boomers in senior decision-making jobs. But that will end. Janet Reid, managing partner at Global Lead, a consulting firm that advises companies like PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, says, "In 2019, Gen X will finally be in charge. And they will make some big changes."

They'll have to, because the workforce Gen Xers will be leading will have altered almost beyond recognition. For one thing, Generation Y — the tattooed, techno-raised bunch born from 1979 to 2000 — is unlikely to follow in their parents' footsteps. They think putting in long years of effort at any one company in exchange for a series of raises and promotions is pointless — not that they'll get the chance. "Paying your dues, moving up slowly and getting the corner office — that's going away. In 10 years, it will be gone," says Bruce Tulgan, head of the consulting firm Rainmaker Thinking, based in New Haven, Conn., and author of a new book about managing Gen Y called Not Everyone Gets a Trophy. "Instead, success will be defined not by rank or seniority but by getting what matters to you personally," whether that's the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding. Tulgan adds, "Companies already want more short-term independent contractors and consultants and fewer traditional employees because contractors are cheaper. And seniority matters less and less as time goes on, because it's about the past, not the future."

Superannuated boomers won't vanish from the workplace altogether: people in their 60s and 70s — because of either need or desire — will be among the 40% of the U.S. workforce that will rent out its skills. "Boomers will be working part-time as coaches, strategists and consultants," predicts Joanne Sujansky, a co-author of a book due out in June called Keeping the Millennials. "By 2019, there will be many more of those opportunities than there are now because boomers will need the income and companies will need their expertise." Says Reid: "We'll see an increase in job-sharing at very senior levels.

You might have two boomers who share the job of chief financial officer, for instance, which lets them keep working and also have some leisure time."

The Gen X managers who will be holding all this together will need to be adept at a few things that earlier generations, with their more hierarchical management styles and relative geographical insularity, never really had to learn. One of those is collaborative decision-making that might involve team members scattered around the world, from Beijing to Barcelona to Boston, whom the nominal leader of a given project may never have met in person. "By 2019, every leader will have to be culturally dexterous on a global scale," says Reid. "A big part of that is knowing how to motivate and reward people who are very different from yourself."

They don't teach that in B school — at least not yet. In fact, Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees worldwide call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most gets to lead the team — until someone else contributes more. The game, which many Gen Yers learned as teens, is intensely collaborative, constantly demanding and often surprising. "It takes exactly the same skill set people will need more of in the future to collaborate on work projects," says Carter. "The kids are already doing it."

The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers.

Some background: First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy. Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad--something I don't recommend--we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology. By Robert Reich

When we think of manufacturing jobs, we tend to imagine old-time assembly lines populated by millions of blue-collar workers who had well-paying jobs with good benefits. But that picture no longer describes most manufacturing. I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades the robots.

Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. Even China is losing them. The Chinese are doing more manufacturing than ever, but they're also becoming far more efficient at it. They've shuttered most of the old state-run factories. Their new factories are chock full of automated and computerized machines. As a result, they don't need as many manufacturing workers as before.

Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in twenty large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002--before the asset bubble and subsequent bust--twenty-two million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The United States wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11% of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16% of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20% decline, and China had a 15% drop.

What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. As productivity rises, employment falls because fewer people are needed. In this, manufacturing is following the same trend as agriculture. A century ago, almost 30% of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5% do. That doesn't mean the U.S. failed at agriculture. Quite the opposite. American agriculture is a huge success story. America can generate far larger crops than a century ago with far fewer people. New technologies, more efficient machines, new methods of fertilizing, better systems of crop rotation, and efficiencies of large scale have all made farming much more productive.

Manufacturing is analogous. In America and elsewhere around the world, it's a success. Since 1995, even as manufacturing employment has dropped around the world, global industrial output has risen more than 30%.

We should stop pining after the days when millions of Americans stood along assembly lines and continuously bolted, fit, soldered or clamped what went by. Those days are over. And stop blaming poor nations whose workers get very low wages. Of course their wages are low; these nations are poor. They can become more prosperous only by exporting to rich nations. When America blocks their exports by erecting tariffs and subsidizing our domestic industries, we prevent them from doing better. Helping poorer nations become more prosperous is not only in the interest of humanity but also wise because it lessens global instability.

Want to blame something? Blame new knowledge. Knowledge created the electronic gadgets and software that can now do almost any routine task. This goes well beyond the factory floor. America also used to have lots of elevator operators, telephone operators, bank tellers and service-station attendants. Remember? Most have been replaced by technology. Supermarket check-out clerks are being replaced by automatic scanners. The Internet has taken over the routine tasks of travel agents, real estate brokers, stock brokers and even accountants. With digitization and high-speed data networks a lot of back office work can now be done more cheaply abroad.

Any job that's even slightly routine is disappearing from the U.S. But this doesn't mean we are left with fewer jobs. It means only that we have fewer routine jobs, including traditional manufacturing. When the U.S. economy gets back on track, many routine jobs won't be returning--but new jobs will take their place. A quarter of all Americans now work in jobs that weren't listed in the Census Bureau's occupation codes in 1967. Technophobes, neo-Luddites and anti-globalists be warned: You're on the wrong side of history. You see only the loss of old jobs. You're overlooking all the new ones.

The reason they're so easy to overlook is that so much of the new value added is invisible. A growing percent of every consumer dollar goes to people who analyze, manipulate, innovate and create. These people are responsible for research and development, design and engineering. Or for high-level sales, marketing and advertising. They're composers, writers and producers. They're lawyers, journalists, doctors and management consultants. I call this "symbolic analytic" work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas.

Symbolic-analytic work can't be directly touched or held in your hands, as goods that come out of factories can be. In fact, many of these tasks are officially classified as services rather than manufacturing. Yet almost whatever consumers buy these days, they're paying more for these sorts of tasks than for the physical material or its assemblage. On the back of every iPod is the notice "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China." You can bet iPod's design garners a bigger share of the iPod's purchase price than its assembly.

The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills. More on that to come.

The Future of Work: It Will Pay To Save The Planet.

Presenting Part Seven of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Bryan Walsh at Time.

It's no secret that U.S. workers are in trouble, with the unemployment rate at 8.9% and rising. At the same time, the world faces a long-term climate crisis.

But what if there is a way to solve both problems with one policy? A number of environmentalists and economists believe that by implementing a comprehensive energy program, we can not only avert the worst consequences of climate change but also create millions of new jobs — green jobs — in the U.S. "We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects," President Barack Obama said recently. "We know the right choice."

What's a green job? It depends on whom you ask. Some categories are obvious: if you're churning out solar panels, you're getting a green paycheck. But by some counts, so are steelworkers whose product goes into wind turbines or contractors who weatherize homes. According to a report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, there are already more than 750,000 green jobs in the U.S. (See the top green companies.)

Environmental advocates say that with the right policies, those job figures could swell. The Mayors' report predicts that for the next three decades, green employment could provide up to 10% of all job growth. As part of its stimulus package, the White House directed more than $60 billion to clean-energy projects, including $600 million for green-job-training programs. The hope is that capping carbon emissions, even if it raises energy prices in the short term, will create a demand for green jobs, which could provide meaningful work for America's blue collar unemployed.

To some critics, that sounds too good to be true. In a recent report, University of Illinois law professor Andrew Morriss argued that estimates of the potential for green employment vary wildly and that government subsidies would be less efficient — and produce lower job growth — than the free market. "This is all smoke and mirrors," says Morriss. "I don't see how you can replace the existing jobs that may be lost."

The reality is somewhere between the skeptics and the starry-eyed greens. We won't be able to create a solar job for every unemployed autoworker. But with climate change a real threat, shifting jobs from industries that harm the earth to ones that sustain it will become an economic imperative.

Which Future Will You Choose?

Things are going from bad to worse, right? People have their priorities upside down. Marriages are falling apart. The economy is in shambles. The environment is deteriorating. Worse, the younger generation doesn’t seem to care. The future looks bleak.

If that’s what you think, then think again. Watch this video. Share it with your children, your youth group, and the 20-somethings in your workforce. Then have a conversation about what is possible if we make different choices.

From MichaelHyatt.com

Watch Out Boomers - The Millennials Are Coming For Your Jobs.

Watch out, baby boomers. The Millennials are coming for your jobs. By Nancy Johnston at The Baltimore Sun

This generational warfare is the story developing in the media, and as with most trend stories, it does have a kernel of truth. The baby boomer generation - born between 1946 and 1964 - has had a stranglehold on nearly every arena in American life, including politics, economics and the culture wars, since I was born. Even President Barack Obama, who campaigned on a promise to leave behind the boomers' old campus feuds, is, technically, one of them.

But with the rising technological wave changing the way we live, the way we work, and the way we think about the world around us, today's younger work force, born 1980 and after, is threatening the status quo. Even now, a coalition called 80 Million Strong is planning a D.C. summit in July to highlight this younger bloc, demanding that American leaders better serve this country's youth, both politically and economically.

"Today's 20-somethings are likely to be the first generation to not be better off than their parents." This is the first line of Economic State of Young America, a report released by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in New York City. And that's a troubling thesis for a generation that grew up being told they can do and be anything.

Sure, it's no surprise that with college tuition rising and job opportunities plummeting, the future isn't looking too bright for the youth of America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, after factoring for inflation, the average young white man in 2005 earned $35,100 a year, compared to $43,416 in 1976. While tuition at public universities has doubled since the 1980s, income has declined by 19 percent.

Those who can't afford college in the first place, or can't find employment after earning their degrees, have also helped raise the unemployment rate for Americans in the 16-24 age range 9 percentage points higher than the general population. Insurance and pension benefits are steadily shrinking, and no one my age labors under the belief that the dollars we send to the Social Security Administration over in Woodlawn will be waiting for us when we retire.

This recession isn't good for anybody. But blaming baby boomers for staying at the workplace at the expense of Millennials, or insisting that the youth are stealing jobs from their more experienced counterparts, are arguments far too simplistic to explain the destruction of the American dream.

If there's anything I've learned from the no-limits nature of the world that the Internet has wrought, it's that we do not live in a zero-sum society. We must foster an economy that provides jobs for everyone. From the traditional manufacturing and service jobs that have built the American middle class since after World War II, to the new "green" jobs and cyber-focused industries the Obama administration has declared a priority, there can and should be opportunities for everyone.

Yes, we need to make hard decisions now to address the problems the young and those not yet even born will inherit - climate change, Social Security and Medicare, the national debt. But setting them up as flash points in an ageist conflict between the me-generation boomers and the supposedly altruism-minded Millennials isn't going to accomplish that. The only way to solve those problems is to create an economic and social order that is fair to all - and the only way to agree on those hard choices is to embrace a political order in which all ages have a seat at the table.

Too Busy? You Must Delegate.

The hallmark of a great leader is effective delegation. Effective delegation develops people who are ultimately more fulfilled and productive. Managers become more fulfilled and productive themselves as they learn to count on their staffs and are freed up to attend to more strategic issues. Delegation is often very difficult for new supervisors, particularly if they have had to scramble to start the nonprofit or start a major new service themselves. Many managers want to remain comfortable, making the same decisions they have always made. They believe they can do a better job themselves. They don't want to risk losing any of their power and stature (ironically, they do lose these if they don't learn to delegate effectively). Often, they don't want to risk giving authority to subordinates in case they fail and impair the organization.

However, there are basic approaches to delegation that, with practice, become the backbone of effective supervision and development. Thomas R. Horton, in Delegation and Team Building: No Solo Acts Please (Management Review, September 1992, pp. 58-61) suggests the following 9 general steps to accomplish delegation:

1. Delegate the whole task to one person. This gives the person the responsibility and increases their motivation. 2. Select the right person. Assess the skills and capabilities of subordinates and assign the task to the most appropriate one.

3. Clearly specify your preferred results. Give information on what, why, when, who, where and how. Write this information down. 4. Delegate responsibility and authority. Assign the task, not the method to accomplish it. Let the subordinate complete the task in the manner they choose, as long as the results are what the supervisor specifies. Let the employee have strong input as to the completion date of the project. Note that you may not even know how to complete the task yourself -- this is often the case with higher levels of management.

5. Ask the employee to summarize back to you. Ask to hear their impressions of the project and the results that you prefer. 6. Get ongoing non-intrusive feedback about progress on the project. This is a good reason to continue to get weekly, written status reports from all direct reports. Reports should cover what they did last week, plan to do next week and any potential issues. Regular staff meetings provide this ongoing feedback, as well.

7. Maintain open lines of communication. Don't hover over the subordinate, but sense what they're doing and support their checking in with you along the way.

8. If you're not satisfied with the progress, don't immediately take the project back. Continue to work with the employee and ensure they perceive the project as their responsibility.

9. Evaluate and reward performance. Evaluate results, not methods. Address insufficient performance and reward successes (including the manager's).

Convince Your Boss to Let You Become a 'Workshifter'.

Over the course of the life of this blog, other authors will approach this different ways. I convinced my supervisor at a wireless telecom company (this was in 2005) to let me become a workshifter for three out of five days a week. It wasn't easy, but I found several keys that got me the freedom to work out of a coffeeshop, and the flexibility to do more with the two hours a day that shift brought me. By Chris Brogan at Workshifting.com

Get On the Boss's Side of the Fence If you're going to convince your supervisor to let you workshift, it's not going to be because they really want you to enjoy an extra cup or two of coffee in the morning. Start the process by identifying what's in it for the boss. In my case, my commute was over an hour each way, so I told him that giving me a few days to work remotely would add two hours of productivity per day. Showing him the benefit up front gave him a chance to wiggle his eyebrows on what six hours (2 hours x 3 days) would give him each week: practically another working day!

Get Accountability Figured Out Right Away The biggest shift I encountered in workshifting was that my boss (like many supervisors) was still considering me productive as measured by "hours spent with butt in chair." Yes, sadly, with all the world has brought us in technological advances, it's human nature to equate physical presence with productivity.

The truth of the matter was, because of my position, people often sought me out at my desk to discuss technology changes and work-related issues. I pointed out to the boss that we had some fairly tangible deliverables to my work, and that if wasn't turning things in promptly, it would show pretty quickly, and he could reassess whether I should be a workshifter. He bought this reasoning, and I endeavored to deliver ahead of time as often as I could.

Touch: the Art of Presence Management When you're out of the office, silence on your part is always met with frustration and concern. It's again a matter of human nature. The cure? Connect with your supervisor often through electronic means. Send a brief email every hour or so with some work-related piece of information. If your company is cool enough to use something like Socialcast or Yammer, that would be the very best tool for the "touch" job.

Another point on this: brief emails with very succinct needs listed are better for you (and your boss) than longer emails that bundle things together. It would seem that bundling things is better, but most times, this serves two purposes: it allows you to properly thread pertinent conversations, and it keeps your supervisor abreast of situations. Is this the best? No. Does it ease tensions? Yes, indeedy.

Be Very Available and Flexible Early on in my workshifting efforts, I found myself suddenly saddled with lots of local chores. Because I was down the street at the local coffeeshop (I prefer to work out of the house, because if I stay home, I play with the kids too much), I'd be tasked with things like picking up prescriptions or all the other various family-related things. This was okay, but it meant that I had to stay very available.

Simple things like answering the phone as often as you can when the boss calls go a long way towards easing relationship tensions and management concerns around workshifting.

Sometimes, the boss might need you to come in on your "away" day. As long as this doesn't become a habit, I've taken the stance that it's still a job and that onsite is still the primary way of doing business. As a concession, you might ask for a different day that week. That said, be attentive to whether or not your supervisor might be potentially abusing your agreed-upon experience. Tread gently here, but be firm. It may be a sign that things aren't working out.

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, as well as the home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.

Negotiate Salary Without Tipping Your Hand.

You’ve gotten pretty far in a job discussion. You like them. They like you. And it's getting down to the nitty gritty. by Marci Alboher at Yahoo.

Then your prospective employer pops the question you’ve been dreading: “So what are you making now?” (or some variation like, “What were you making in your last position?”) You freeze. You know that answering the question can only hurt you. It might peg you at a salary you feel you’ve outgrown or that you improperly negotiated. And you know that you’re always supposed to let the other person name a price first in any negotiation.

So what do you do?

Avoid revealing your salary. Never reveal your prior salary, says Ramit Sethi, creator of the blog, IWillTeachYouToBeRich, and author of the recently published book of the same title. He is clear and unequivocal. “It’s just none of their business,” he told me. “You’re focusing on a new job and if you reveal what you made previously, two things happen. First, you’ve laid out all your cards. Second, you’re admitting that you are inexperienced in interviewing and negotiating.” (That last bit was particularly painful for me to hear since I’ve made the mistake of revealing a prior salary and I’m in the business of advising people about how to manage their careers.)

Focus on your value. If the employer persists, Sethi suggests steering the conversation to the value you’ll be bringing to the position. If you can focus, say, on the hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue you’ll help the company generate, it becomes harder for them to focus on the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars you might be haggling over. If your position doesn’t have a clear connection to the bottom line, Sethi says to emphasize how your job will allow your manager to do his or her job more effectively. In the end, it’s all about how you’re going to help the organization achieve its goals.

Discuss salary ranges. If you get the prior salary question, steer the negotation to why you should be at a certain number or range, says Carol Frohlinger, managing director of Negotiating Women and author of the book, “Her Place at the Table."

One instance where it's fine to reveal your salary is when you feel like your current salary is in a reasonable range and you are only seeking a slight bump--say around 10 percent--according to Susan Cain, president of The Negotiation Company.  "If you're not there, which is often the case, then you'll want to deflect at least until they love you and don't want to lose you," says Cain. "At that point, you can say that you don't think your current employer would be comfortable with your disclosing what you earn." If you ultimately feel you have to disclose, Cain says you should just explain, in a non-defensive way, why you think it's low and why you should be in a higher range. She recommends saying something like: "I've had various training and experience and am now looking for a position that will reflect my acquired expertise."

Know your worth. When you do sit down to talk numbers, make sure that you do your homework so that you know what the range should be for the position. “It’s not just what the job pays, but what does it pay in your geographic area, in a company of the size of the one you’re looking at, in the same industry,” says Frohlinger. “And also think about what there is other than salary, what other things people have gotten for a total compensation package.”

Do your homework. In order to build a picture of what a job is worth, canvas your entire network, looking especially for people who have left a company you’re talking to. In addition, check out sites that offer comparative salary details, like Vault, PayScale, Salary.com and Glassdoor. If you work as an independent contractor or freelancer, ask your peers what they charge. “Talk to at least five people,” says Sethi, “since not everyone charges properly for their work and you might get a range of anywhere from $30-$200 an hour.”

What if you reveal too much? So what if you’ve messed up and revealed more than you wanted to? The best way to recover, says Sethi, is to start collecting evidence of your success on the job and immediately plan for an opportunity to sit down with your manager about how you’re doing. You’ll have to let some time pass--Sethi suggests about six months--but it’s important to let your manager know far in advance that you are preparing for a conversation that will include revisiting your compensation as part of it. In fact, Sethi says that by the time you have that conversation, your manager should fully know that you’re seeking a raise since you will have been laying the groundwork and showing off your accomplishments along the way.

Care and Feed Your Key Contacts.

Dipchand "Deep" Nishar, vice president of products at networking site LinkedIn Corp., doesn't view online networking as something you do only when looking for a job. By Jennifer Saranow at WSJ.

The 40-year-old spends about 15 minutes every morning reading his business contacts' status updates and responding. To keep up his connections, he sends congratulatory notes to those who have received promotions, restaurant recommendations to those who have moved, contact suggestions to those who have changed jobs, and article links to those he thinks might be interested.

About two to three times a month, he reads his social connections' status and news updates and sends them similar kind or helpful notes. He also posts his own status updates weekly, sharing what he's reading or a personal project he's working on -- sticking to topics he thinks his networks would be interested in.

Keeping in touch in this way, Mr. Nishar says, helped him get his current job: His connections recommended him for the post before he even knew about it. "Your network is most valuable when you don't need it," he says.

To get the most out of his networks, Mr. Nishar is picky about whom he lets in and ignores invitations that don't make the cut. He restricts his LinkedIn network to professional contacts he knows well and would want to do business with. (Those he's just met once or twice wouldn't make the cut.)

He limits his Facebook network to friends and social acquaintances. (Very few present or past coworkers can be found there.) All this eliminates the need to delete contacts down the road. "I try to keep my network unpolluted so I don't have to sift through it later," Mr. Nishar says.

Mr. Nishar uses Facebook to stay up-to-date on the lives of those who want to share their videos and photos there -- but he doesn't include himself in that category. Seeking a greater degree of privacy, he posts his family photos and videos to Picasa and YouTube but makes them available only to those he invites to view them. With close friends, he keeps in touch by phone.

Read more great career-oriented articles by Jennifer here.

7 Ways to Be Happier at Work.

A recent report listed the happiest nations in the world. Guess what? The US didn't even make it into the top ten. So much for the American dream. Why are we so unhappy? Let's start by looking at the origin of the word. Happy is derived from the Icelandic word happ, meaning luck or chance. Is happiness then, by its very definition, elusive due its randomness? With that in mind, here are a number of suggestions that I hope can turn our collective frowns upside-down:

1. Smile. Turns out, smiling is directly linked to happiness. It may have started as a correlation but, over time, the brain linked the two. Don't believe me? Try this: smile (a nice big smile) and attempt to think of something negative. Either you will stop smiling or you won't be able to hold the negative thought.

2. Stop worrying. Worrying happens to be one of humanity's best traits. It is the underlying emotion behind foresight, planning, and forecasting. We worry because some future event is uncertain and that feeling is a cue for us to start thinking about how to address it. The problem is, we worry too much about things that are out of our control (like the economy, stupid). The US has one of the highest rates for mental disease and yes, worry is among the leading indicators. While it's true that there are plenty of things to worry about these days, take a deep breath, America, and stop sweating the small stuff.

3. Take a break. The US is one of the most overworked industrialized nations. But this is counterproductive for a nation of "knowledge workers." Overworking people to exhaustion is a horrible way to extract knowledge from people. Taking a break provides an opportunity to reflect and often it is during such times when the best ideas, our deepest insights, emerge. I insist on taking lunches out of the office; I insist that my colleagues do the same. Call it a siesta, naptime, or a mini-vacation. It works for many of the happier nations too.

4. Do things differently. Part of the problem at work for many people is boredom. We are stuck in a rut where we come in and do the same thing over and over and over again. Get your enthusiasm back by doing things differently. Make every effort to learn, to grow, and to challenge yourself. Take on more responsibility or attempt something you never thought you were capable of doing. Even if your responsibilities don't allow for much flexibility, try a different approach to your existing responsibilities.

5. Stop managing and start leading. If you're in management, you need to find ways to motivate and stimulate your employees. How? Stretch their minds. Empower your team by giving them more responsibility, more decision-making power, more autonomy. Equally important: be inclusive. Explain what is happening in the company as a whole and give your employees a broader perspective on how their jobs influence the overall business.

6. Delegate. One of the most destructive and counterproductive byproducts of the downsizing era is fear — many managers are scared to let go of control for fear that doing so will make them obsolete. I have news for you: if you feel that way, you already are obsolete. Being controlling is bad for business, not to mention bad for your physical and mental health. The best leaders always look for people better, smarter, and more capable than themselves. 7. Have fun. Here is some tough advice: If you don't like what you are doing, stop doing it. Life is too short to not have fun. I love what I do and when I stop loving it, I do something else. Even in this economy, you will be in high demand if you are good at what you do — and can do it with a smile on your face.

What are your tips for being happier at work?

How David Beats Goliath or When Underdogs Break The Rules.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of today's most innovative 'connectors' of knowledge. His most recent New Yorker article again proves he is the master.

Gladwell again uses history to reinforce his argument that with the proper planning and doing something different — something that your opposing team (i.e., competition) isn't expecting — even though you are the underdog — You Will Succeed.

Enough of my blather — go read this great article!

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward.

Most people don't realize the power of personal connection on the job. I have many clients today that have lost their jobs and are looking for new employment. Unfortunately, they have worked at their respective companies for a very long time and they find themselves unable to get back that one specific position.

Even though I do coach them to 'reach for the stars', there is a law of diminishing returns. After a certain amount of time (let's say 4-6 months), one needs to be realistic about their search. If you are busting your butt getting interviews and not getting that position, it may be time to click your search down a notch and focus on easier pickings. This happens frequently with C-Level clients that NEED to have another C-Level position. Honestly — they're not many C-Level (or others of that ilk) spots out in business-land today.

My suggestion — instead of beating your head against a wall — take a lower position that will be easier to attract/lock-in. When you get into the invite-only party, show them you're able to do much more than you've been hired to do. Most likely, they will see your capabilities over time and offer you increased responsibility or a better position (with increased pay).

But this scenario only comes with a successful and clear set of personal connections in the new job (I will talk about building personal connections later this week). And you will only get those if you are On The Job.

So don't be so picky and go get that position. Good things sometimes don't come to those who wait.

The Best Kept Secret In Business.

It boggles the mind. I can't tell you how many times in my career as an adviser and coach to executives that I've heard phrases like:

• "You're a lifesaver Rich — I don't know how I could have done this without you."
• "You're there when I need you."
• "You helped me reach farther than I've ever reached before."

But I'm not here to extol my accolades . . . I just wanted to let you in on a little secret many executives use to climb up the corporate ladder and stay at the top for a very long time:

They all have a Personal Coach.

You would be quite surprised how many of us are out there working in the background, helping our clients jump from one great opportunity to another, celebrate success after success, and have fun doing it. Oh — and along the way making gobs of money.

If you just asked them if they have a coach, you would be surprised by their answer.

So I have a little bit of homework for you to do next week:

Sit down and think of the most successful person that you know. Call them up. Ask if they have a coach.

They probably do.

Micromanagement Is Bad For YOU.

If you’re a micromanager and want to change, you need to understand why you’re micromanaging and develop skills to allow your team to produce while you focus on leading.

Whether you’re a star performer who was promoted to management or you’re managing in a new area where you haven’t done the work yourself, micromanagement can creep in. There are many drivers, such as loss of control or a sense of inadequacy. These all arise from the same inner issue: fear.
Why fear? Ask yourself: “If I don’t micromanage, what could happen?”

Team members could make mistakes. They might not do the work as well as you would. They may do it in a different way than you did; their way might be even better, which could make you feel less valuable. Or maybe micromanaging is the only way you know how to manage. If you stop doing it, then you won’t know what you should do. What’s worse, your boss and peers may see that you don’t know what you’re doing. When you think about these possibilities, how are you reacting inside? Does your “fight or flight” response kick in?

The problem with fears is that they lurk just below the surface and remain unexamined. When you become conscious of them, they lose their power. Have a look at what worries you and assess how realistic it is. For fears that have a lot of power over you, create alternate responses. For example, instead of “their way is different, so they must be wrong,” try: “Their way brings new possibilities, which reflects well on me as their leader.” Once you have addressed any limiting fears, it’s time to change your behavior.

Your goal is to have a successful team. To do that, you need team members who perform well and a team leader who leads them to success.

Focus on communication and trust. To help your team members excel, try these tips:

• Assign tasks that include clear, specific and time-bound expectations.
• Allow employees to develop the specifics of how they’ll accomplish the task.
• Set up status reporting that fits the scope of the assignment. (Beware of burdensome reporting, a classic sign of micromanagement.)
• Let employees know that you’re trying to change, and give them a safe way to point it out if you slip.

Be a leader. Try the term “microleader.” You never hear it, because it makes no sense! The language of management lends itself to command-and-control approaches that no longer work in many environments. Instead, leadership skills bring more value and will increase satisfaction for everyone, including you. Options include:

• Investing in each employee through coaching, challenging work and development.
• Removing barriers to success that your team members face.
• Expressing a meaningful vision that helps team members see the value of their contributions.

Most team members don’t want or need to be hovered over. As you let go of fears about creating a different type of relationship with your team, you’ll break your micromanagement habit.