And what you can do about them!
Even if you can’t see your blind spots, others can see them very clearly. Blind spots limit your career because they impact your ability to have productive relationships with those you work with, your members, customers, vendors, sponsors, exhibitors, and professional colleagues.

Here are the blind spots that others can easily spot:

Blaming others.
Throwing people under the bus.
The need to be right.
Being a know-it-all.
Complaining constantly.
Operating in a silo.
Interrupting.
Justifying self.
Finding excuses.
Resisting others.
Procrastinating.

90% of the failure in the workplace is the inability to build and maintain relationships. To be respected and to build productive relationships, be intentional …

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It’s a clean slate, a new day, a new season…A NEW YEAR!

A new organization, client, colleague, boss – an opportunity to redefine yourself, to become the leader – the colleague – the friend – the parent you imagine yourself to be!

We all have a list of things we wish we had done in the past year. We have a list of things we want to do this next year. It is a new beginning and you get to say how the next year is going to unfold for you!

You might start by looking at those two lists and to ask …

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The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace , a book by Gary Chapman and Paul White, is a gift for anyone who struggles with how to express appreciation to others; especially in the workplace where sometimes you just don’t have a clue about how to give the person something that will be meaningful to them.

In what the authors call the “Motivation by Appreciation” model, they describe the five languages as: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Tangible Gifts and Physical Touch.  They even offer an assessment so that you can see what the preferred language is for …

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Like it or not, there is no new normal that looks anywhere near what the old normal looked like – a nice period of stability between periods of change. Change is the order of the day – not just periodic incremental change, but big disruptive change – permanent whitewater as Gregory Shea describes in his book Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change. Naturally this calls on us to develop a different approach to what our real job is – thriving in change no matter where you are on our career path. Shea uses …

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For almost everything we do, we can approach “It” with a mindset that makes it a big stakes game of win or lose OR we can approach it as “an experiment.” When you make it an experiment, it isn’t just about doing it the right way or the wrong way, it is about learning from the actions you took, the technique you applied, and the learning that resulted from the experiment.

If you see everything you do as having a huge meaning for you, if you focus on the horrible consequences if you don’t do it perfectly, or when something …

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And a related question we will answer here about the interview PROCESS: who is interviewing whom?

You are there to find out what they need. And when you find out what they need you can share with them what you have that will help them address that need and get the results they are looking for.

The key to finding out what they need is to ask questions.

In order to ask good questions you need to get a little insight into the context of the job, get a general understanding of some of the needs they may have and results they …

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After a happy and satisfying stint with an organization for which you thought you were a great match – until you got downsized and out-placed – what can you do to move on?

Celebrate what you accomplished!

No doubt you left behind a long list of accomplishments. If you can’t make a list of 10 – 20 things you accomplished there, ask some of your former colleagues or look at your past performance reviews and make a list of all of your successes, both big and small.

Close the door on what you didn’t accomplish!

You also probably left behind a few unfinished …

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