DRIVEN Blog
Your Control Freak Solution: Build Trust With Your Team!
Have you earned the label “Control Freak”? There are more than a few ways you can be sure, and they’re staring right at you in the workplace. I’m referring to your colleagues, who bear witness each time you dominate a project, shut…
Are YOU a Control Freak? And Why Does It Matter?
Uncertainty is an uncomfortable state of mind. Most of us wouldn’t mind a career GPS to help us navigate past the bumps and trenches flawlessly. In fact, we prefer the straight, empty highway to the meandering, unkempt country road. And our avoidance of the latter is a testament to our desire for Control…
“I’m Right, You’re Wrong”: Why We’re Resistant To Others’ Ideas, Part 2
“It doesn’t hurt to consider all ideas, even when they’re not your own.” This sentiment may seem tongue-in-cheek, but there’s an important reality behind it that can mean the difference between career stagnation and true accomplishment. In my previous article— the companion to this one, I explored with…
The Respect You Deserve: Re-Leasing Your Emotional Energy
In my exploration of self-care, I’ve so far given you some compelling reasons to re-lease your mental and spiritual wellbeing in order to enhance your career. It’s not every day that someone suggests you work LESS hours and resist trying to be the hero by always being available to your colleagues. But these mindset…
DRIVEN’s Best Blog Articles of 2018, Part 1
Each week of the year, DRIVEN’s blog page is updated with a brand-new, relevant article relating to the business perspectives and advancement strategies encompassed within our mission to “support the health, well-being and success potential of motivated professionals”. Composed by Deborah Goldstein, these…
Chit-Chat Credentials: Sharpening Your Social Skills with Two Distinct Listening Styles
Listening is a communications staple and should be utilized more than 50% of the time during conversations. But just knowing this doesn’t seem to guarantee we’ll act on it. For example, I laughed out loud when a colleague once confessed about the way he uses his listening skills: to hear when the speaker is finished…
Clever Conversation: The Positive Effects of Social Skills on Office Culture
After months of exploring the nooks and crannies of Emotional Intelligence, it’s time to tie up this concept into a neat little package. To do so, I’ll attempt to emulate an admired college professor’s talent of pulling themes through. This professor always amazed and amused me by spending 75 minutes lecturing about…
Gauging Your Personal Microclimate: How Bias Can Be Elusive
Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It’s been said a million times and was written about extensively by John Gray in his 1992 book of a similar title. And if you read my recent article What Planet Are You From: Dissecting Gender-Derived Bias At Work, you’ll have a clearer understanding of how…
Gauging Personal Bias: How We’re Blinded By Experience
Many of us consider bias to be an ugly trait, even when we’re referring to our own biases. But rather than suppressing our individual biases, it’s a wise idea to investigate them and learn to be aware of how these unique ways of seeing the world influence our mind and actions. If you read my recent article…
Expanding On Empathy: Why Bias Is Part of Your “Terroir”
Practicing Empathy is difficult because each of us experiences our own reality. This often reduces empathy to a nice-to-have, when in actuality, for a sustainable workplace where inclusion is built into the culture, empathy is a need-to-have. In my recent article I Feel Your Pain: An Empathetic How-To For…
The Outside Influence: How Society Raises The Bar On Confidence
In our recent introduction to GRACE In The WorkplaceTM, as I illustrated the relationship between our DNA “hardwiring” and our confidence level, you were reminded of the power pose. Have…
Social Intimacy Part II: The Obstacles Between You & Workplace Trust
Think for a moment about your idea of trustworthiness. Which attributes do you require in your colleagues to consider them trustworthy? What qualities do you strive to exhibit to…
Setting The Corporate Example: The Importance of Building Trust Among The Home Team
From the perspective of leadership or management, the most progressive outlook you can foster is the acknowledgment that your employees are your greatest assets. Think of it: In line-item…
Coming To Terms: A Macro Perspective on The Importance of Soft Skills
Soft skills: They’re universal. Why is this so essential to understand and act upon as a boss or manager? Well, as you may have learned in my September 2016 article introducing you to the stress-averse…
Workplace 2.0: It’s Diverse and Stress-Averse
If you’ve been reading our summer blog series exploring the causes and effects of workplace stress and the myth of busyness, you learned that there is good stress and bad stress. You also acknowledged…
The Social Shutout: How Women Can Direct a Business Conversation Away From Sports
When delivering workshops about business networking, an inquiry that I often get from the female participants is, “What if I don’t do sports?”. In other words, since they don’t follow college or professional sports, how can these women find a small talk entry point when the
Back To Business: 6 Ways To Politely Decline When You Get Hit-On While Networking
Women of the business world: There’s a type of awkward male/female interaction in the network setting that has likely taken many of you by surprise, but rarely gets discussed with or addressed by your…
A Smoother Operator You Will Never See: Superwoman Rosalie Mandel
In an age when professional women are still struggling to get noticed in their careers, sometimes it takes more than just being great at your job to pull ahead. But it takes a…
Leveraging Friendships In Business: 5 Tips For The Good-Intentioned
Warren Buffet once implied in a quote that, as a company, when you don’t consider hiring women, you’re limiting yourself to half the talent. Now, think of this in terms of business network contacts. Are you…
Corporate Social Responsibility: How Does Your Company Rate?
With all of the distasteful marketing approaches that have served to direct our attention to head-start holiday shopping in recent years, including the mainstreaming of the “Black Friday” phenomenon…