Research shows that in less than six months, most new employees have already decided whether or not they will stay at the company.  A shocking 1/4 of new hires are gone from that employer within a year, and nearly half are gone within 18 months!

One of my core beliefs, one on which I’ve focused my business, is that you can love your job.  Work (yes, even corporate jobs!) can be meaningful, enjoyable, and rewarding.  And you don’t even have to be “living your passion” to feel this way.

You’ve made it through the hiring process, landed the job, and you’re ready to get started. You may be thinking that the hard part is over.  But before you get too comfortable in your new work environment, you might want to know some of the crucial mistakes that new hires often make that can derail that hard-won new position. 

Nine seconds. That’s all the time you have to gain someone’s attention. It’s your “door opener” timeframe, and it’s short.  What will you say?

Do you want to be part of the 20% of your colleagues who are proactively steering their careers in a meaningful direction, or in the 80% who just “wait and see”?

You don’t have to be looking for a new position (actively or passively) to benefit from reactivating your network of contacts - it is just simple, good career management. 

When we “detox” our bodies, we purge them of unhealthy inputs, and provide our systems with healthy foods and nutrients to repair any damage. The same principles can be applied to other areas of our lives, such as our households and even our work environments. 

Whether you’d like to get noticed by your boss, a recruiter, or the head of that department in which you’ve always wanted to work, just hoping that a spotlight will appear over your head, bathing you in glowing light at the moment a great opportunity becomes available, well, it’s probably not the best tactic.  You’ll probably end up sitting for a long time in the dark.

Why do so many employees feel so strongly (and negatively) about their work?

Periodically, we find ourselves at a crossroads in our career — a point where there may be several possible paths or directions we can choose.  The road we have been on is either coming to an end, or there are new options intersecting it that force us to make directional choices.

The ability to identify the forces at play in an organization and the key relationships that make things happen does not always come naturally.  Sure, there are those who are natural “political animals,” who seem to be 3 steps ahead of everyone else and always are “in” with the power players and up-and-comers.  But for most people, organizational awareness is something that seems to be a bit nebulous and hard to grasp.

When someone wields influence, or is able to effectively persuade others, it is a powerful skill.  The ability to influence others allows us to be heard, effect change, manage and lead more effectively, and ultimately get us more directly to what we want out of work and life.

When we talk about turbulent times, the words and phrases that come up include: unrest, disorder, agitated vigorously, wild, violently disturbed, tumultuous, roiling, churning, confused.  If this sounds like your industry or workplace, take some tips from others who have successfully weathered the storm and have even come out the other side stronger than ever.

This blog post is in response to a request from a friend who wondered whether I might be able to address whether telecommuting was positive or negative for an organization.  As we discussed the pros and cons of this (relatively) new way of working, we uncovered several layers of thought that stretched from individual experience to the culture of the company.

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with “passion.”  First of all, I think it is a tremendously overused term in our current cultural dialogue.

While women are increasingly learning how to be leaders in their own way, and creating new dynamics and expectations of what that means, we still have fewer models for success than men do.

This is an opportunity for you to experience your job when your actions and decisions are completely aligned with your personal values, see what that entails for you, and allow you to gain an understanding about different ways of being at work.

Influence is the ability to alter others’ thoughts, beliefs or actions. While effectively influencing others is increasingly important as you become a leader and executive, influence can be exerted at any level within the organization.