#HR #RRHH Making love and making personal #branding #leadership

During the past decade, business analytics platforms have evolved from supporting IT and finance functions to enabling business users across the enterprise. But many firms find themselves struggling to take advantage of its promise. We’ve found three main obstacles to realizing analytics’ full value, and all of them are related to people, not technology: the organization’s structure, culture, and approach to problem solving.

While it can be difficult to become a great leader and to achieve great things, practicing great leadership is actually quite easy. There is a tendency to overcomplicate or overthink what leadership is, but actually, leadership can be very simple. I have worked with teams all over the world, from dozens of cultures, and from different generations, Baby Boomers to Millennials, and I have found that if you provide these four simple things your team will appreciate you, follow you, and achieve great results.

I'm a big fan of Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Since taking over as CEO just three years ago, he's used a combination of effective leadership and brilliant business moves to return the tech company to relevance.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Nadella credits Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's best-selling book, Mindset, as the inspiration for the culture he's trying to build at Microsoft.

Geeks—the two of us might fit the profile. Yes we have tendencies to contemplate things that probably shouldn’t be contemplated. We question. We prod. We poke…at everything. And, we’ve been known to engage in long, seemingly meaningless conversations about random things like: “Is the love of curry a genetic disposition or a socially experiential acquisition?” Or, what is the real meaning of the word “of?” That’s a valid question, right? Or, is it just geeky?

Being geeky, according to research by Imgur, is actually cool in today’s world—especially among Millennials. In fact, 60% of the 83 million Millennials consider themselves geeks compared to just 38% of GenXers and Boomers. And, the study also shows that geeks are the trendsetters and influencers (84% of geeks say people look to them for advice while only 60% of non-geeks say they get asked for advice).

This is, of course, welcome news for all of us who happen to randomly know Peter Parker’s height and weight (yes, we’re referring to the fictional character who turns into Spiderman). But, more than that, it’s also welcome news for all of us who geek-out about our own work—passionately probing to innovate, improve, dissect, and lead others to the discovery of their best selves.

Lately I’ve been spending more of my time and energy on freelance work because sometimes running a startup can be hard on the personal bank account. I’ve been lucky to be able to set aside time to take on that work and look for more, but it’s been a huge learning process. Balancing freelance and startup work can make life kind of crazy. And since I do remote work I’m often scheduling meetings and conversations across several time zones. I’m loving being busy though and am learning so much. One of the things I’ve learned is to make sure I take the time to have quiet, slow moments throughout my day. It helps me appreciate each day more. Here's how I do it:

88 percent of employees who participated in the 2016 SHRM Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey, indicated that they were satisfied with their current job. This marks the highest level of satisfaction over the past ten years.

Although there are many reasons that contributed to this statistic, "respectful treatment of employees at all levels" was at the top of the list for the second year in a row. It even beat out major players like pay, benefits and job security. (Did anyone else start singing a little Aretha Franklin?)

I'm not sure why I was surprised by this stat. It makes sense that if you're spending the majority of your waking hours somewhere that interpersonal relationships and culture would be important. It's also no surprise that when the participants were specifically asked about engagement, 77 percent indicated "relationships with their co-workers" was the most important. Let's take a look at how you can cultivate the two biggest factors of employee happiness at work.

Visionary leadership and great management achieves the best results. Seems obvious right? Then why do so many companies get it wrong, especially during times of needed change?

There are core fundamental differences between leadership and management that apply to any team or organization, but the focus of this article is to explore the strengths of each as they apply to leading organizational change.

Generally speaking, management is a set of systems and processes designed for organizing, budgeting, staffing and problem solving to achieve the desired results of an organization. Leadership defines the vision, mission and what the "win" looks like in the future. It inspires the team to embody the beliefs and behaviors necessary to take the actions needed to achieve those results.

The most successful transformations occur when strong visionary leadership converges with great management. Both are required to define a clear path, plan accordingly and see the mission plan through to fulfillment.

I’m accustomed to handling clients who are at a crossroads in their lives and are looking for change—after all, I’m a career coach. So this usually involves guiding clients through some pretty heavy soul-searching to help them find the sort of truly fulfilling work that we all deserve.

This also means many of my clients are in an indecisive state at the outset—that’s to be expected. But I don’t think I’ve had a more indecisive client than Kevin. When I asked Kevin what sort of career he truly wanted to pursue, he blanked. I asked him what he enjoys doing and what he’s really good at, and he could never seem to articulate a direct answer.

Let's call this call this curator friend Cynthia. Cynthia wrote back, “Two other curators worked with me on this (and may join us!), so I can’t take full credit.” She asked that I instead reference her with the significantly less exciting descriptor, “one of the curators of this exhibition." She was understandably hesitant to get all the credit and wanted to make clear that there were other people involved with the exhibition. While accurate, the new version was far less descriptive and complimentary than what I’d suggested.

Feel familiar? The balancing act women navigate surrounding self promotion can be exhausting.

One in four American adults went to a healthcare provider for neck and back pain, according to a 2016 Gallup study. In addition, the report found 65% of adults sought care for neck and back pain at some point in their lives. When you factor in how many adults are hunched over computer desks, sitting for extended periods of time at work and bending their neck to read mobile devices, these statistics aren’t so surprising.

Just about everyone has been told to “stand up straight” at some point in their lives—and it turns out that mom was right. Posture is a key element to good health. It is right up there with eating healthy, getting enough sleep and exercising. Bad posture can lead to back, neck and jaw pain, breathing difficulty, balance issues and joint problems. A recent study also found that good posture can improve your mental wellbeing.

Life isn’t linear. No matter how well thought out your plans, they’ll eventually collide with a reality you didn’t plan on. Learning to "lean into the curves" when life doesn’t unfold as you’d hoped will help spare you untold stress, bounce back faster and emerge better off.  Here’s five ways to do just that.

One of the most frustrating aspects of job searching is feeling like you’ve already reached out to everyone you know. You’ve asked every contact you can possibly think of if you could buy them a cup of coffee—from your first boss to that former co-worker you didn't even particularly like. Yet, you’re still just as far away from a new role as you were when you started.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but there is another way to expand your network, meet new people and make meaningful connections.

Friday, March 3 is Employee Appreciation Day – here are ways you can show your thanks.