Nerd Stalker

Rebecca Teasdale Shares How to Create a Culture of Openness and Candor Photo courtesy of Pablo by Buffer By Rebecca Teasdale Recently, a colleague and I were at a dinner function with a group of leaders from a client company. We found ourselves seated at a table with a new member of the executive team who we were meeting for the first time. Waiting for the plated meals to arrive, we eased into the conversation with small talk about sports and weather and then we went deeper inquiring about his family, his career, his thoughts on the industry. When the dinner wrapped up 45 minutes later, my colleague and I had learned a lot about him. We had learned about his years working abroad, his days as a partner at an IT consulting firm, and his time on Wall Street. Yet, he had learned nothing about me or my colleague. In 45 minutes of conversation, he hadn’t asked either of us a single question. Sadly, this common, self-absorbed style of relating has reached new, alarming le...

Audrey Epstein Shares Five-steps To Increase Your Leadership Awareness Image through Pablo by Buffer By Audrey Epstein There are lots of compelling reasons to build a better team. Great teams: Deliver stronger results faster Are more innovative Challenge you to learn more quickly and be at your best Are simply more fun Recently, I found a new reason to build a better team – because most of us are surprisingly unself-aware. Researcher and author Tasha Eurich uncovered this disturbing statistic through her multi-year study on the topic of self-awareness: about  95%  of us think we are quite self-aware, but only about 10% to 15% of us actually are! So how can better teams help with self-awareness? Here’s the important connection. We need feedback to help match our internal view of ourselves with the external view. And on the best teams, not only are teammates willing to provide feedback to each other, they are required to. On high-...

By Audrey Epstein The New Year brings with it the opportunity for change, growth, and renewal. We commit to accomplish new goals or resolve to finally complete old ambitions. Most of us feel more optimistic at the beginning of the year. New Year’s Resolutions are expected. Gym memberships go through the roof in January. The “fresh start” feel of each new year is infectious.

Ashley Welch and Justin Jones of Summersault Innovation Outline Ways to Help Your Team Kickoff the New Year   It’s getting to be “that” time of year again, when Sales and Sales Enablement leaders are planning their annual sales kick-off meetings. It’s no small task. In addition to the basic logistics of selecting a destination, blocking rooms and finding meeting space, there’s an unspoken pressure to top last year’s meeting. How can we make it bigger and better? What guest speakers will inspire? What awards will mean the most to our top performers? We get it. We’ve attended many of these ourselves over our careers, and we help our clients implement kick-offs for their teams by asking: “What if you planned your meeting from the customer’s point of view?” 

Linda Adams Shares Thoughts on Office Gossip (editor: We are grateful and pleased for Linda Adams of The Trispective Group to write a guest article on the workplace. Please enjoy) By Linda Adams   Work gossip. Some of us participate in it, and most of us see it as a relatively harmless reality of working in an office. But the truth is, gossip has the power to dismantle even the best teams and keep good teams from becoming truly great. Here’s why work gossip is bad news: It allows mistrust to grow.  When you start talking about coworkers instead of talking to them, you begin to see and assume the worst about their behavior. One of the hallmarks of a great team is assuming positive intent. This is the idea that we should assume that our teammates have a good reason for what they’re doing or what they’ve asked of us.When gossip spreads, your team will begin to do the complete opposite of this. Teammates will begin to assume that other individuals and groups have se...

Abby Curnow-Chavez Shares Her Insights on Fixing a Toxic Team By Abby Curnow-Chavez In the world of business it’s safe to say all work is done in teams. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you most of the teams they’ve been on are average or mediocre, or good but not great. And sadly, many can tell you in dreaded detail about the toxic teams they’ve been on where gossip, sabotage, and finger-pointing were the norm. Does this sound anything like the team you’re currently on? Are you the leader of one of these teams? If so, you know how these teams can suck the life out of you and it’s time to turn things around.   My partners and I wanted to understand what separates the best teams from the toxic ones so we studied thousands of teams, analyzed the data, and looked for patterns. We named the worst of the worst Saboteur Teams because, on them, someone is always working against at least one of their teammates.

Robert Glazer Reflects on How Summer Vacation Improved His Leadership Perspective By Robert Glazer,  Excerpt from  Friday  Forward , " RV REFLECTIONS – PART DEUX (#87) , RV ReFLECTIONS - PART ONE(#86) " I just returned from ten days traveling aboard an RV through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons with my family. It was an off-the-grid trip that recharged my batteries and gave me enjoyable, quality time with my wife and kids. This time off also lead to several breakthrough business ideas and lessons that I thought I would share with you:

I interview Jody J. Foster, MD MBA , a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Schmuck in My Office: How to Deal Effectively with Difficult People at Work . The book is about how to understand and effectively engage those people at work who display annoying personality quirks which hamper productivity and, occasionally, throw an entire office off-kilter. This book will allow you to recognize, understand, and help manage relationships with people who are in some way difficult or disruptive at work. Learn about the 10 types you need to be aware of, and how to work with them.

Nerd Stalker interviews Vern Oakley , founder, CEO and creative director of Tribe Pictures . Vern has produced and directed films that drive high-performance culture for the Global 1000 for over 30 years. He’s the author of the new book, Leadership in Focus: Bringing Out Your Best On Camera , which helps business leaders convey their authenticity on camera. Learn how to be picture perfect next time you are on camera.

You attend numerous presentations and meetings a year--filled with the typically dense and disorganized PowerPoint decks--and leave most of them thinking, "Well, that's an hour of my life I'll never get back." But out of this sea of mediocrity, a rare few rise up, captivating you and driving you to action. What makes these few so special? Despite what most people think, it's not because they were delivered well. It's because they were crafted in a way that deeply aligned with how your brain wants to consume information. The presentations that failed did so precisely because they violated the largely unknown "natural laws" that govern how people actually learn. In The Compelling Communicator , you will learn a proven process for designing presentations that touch your audience in a highly impactful way, motivating them to take your desired action by: Building around a small number of powerful ideas Keeping content within the audience's ...

The Future-Proof Workplace is a survival guide for the new realities of business. The future is no longer some far-off destination; it is here, right now, and already changing the way we work. Historically, the sea-changes have advanced humanity and inspired us to reach even further; from the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment, from agrarian to industrial societies—and today is no different. But only those who are ready for the changes will come out thriving. This book highlights the changes already taking place around us: the transition from skills to knowledge, the neuroscience approach to leadership and motivation, galloping technical advances, and more. Whether you're a CEO, a leader or manager, or just trying to survive the chaos, this invaluable guide is your wake-up call—the future is now. The new forces emerging must be understood now if your organization is to succeed. This book details the transformation every business must make to turn upheaval into opportunity...

Happy New Year everyone. We wrap a great year of Startup Blog Insights for 2013 with a Best of Startup Blog with Taffy Williams, Examiner.com writer and entrepreneur. We do a deep dive on the top five blogs of 2013. Listen or watch Taffy as he shares some stories around each blog.