How Your Board Should Guide Your Hiring Practices
“The Great Resignation” does not seem to be letting up any time soon, so take advice from your board in order to revamp your hiring practices to retain and recruit strong employees.
Just as the remote work trend brought on by the pandemic never seemed to go away, “The Great Resignation” is starting to seem like a permanent shift in today’s business landscape. People left in masses and moved on to better pay, more perks and greater flexibility — and are unlikely to give this trend up any time soon.
For a company to keep up with the changing face of business, its leaders need to be frequently evaluating their company hiring practices to recruit, attract and retain the right employees for the job. This can take a lot of time strategizing that CEOs may not always have to spare while running a business. For support in uncovering otherwise overlooked areas to maximize advantages in hiring, leaders should turn to their boards to guide them.
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These 4 Elements Are Key to Branding Your Business
In today’s world of rapid startup growth, branding your company is essential to stand out from your competitors and find success.
Competition in business today is tough, yet more and more businesses are entering the arena than ever before. While many companies never make it through their first five years, some hit it big overnight. There’s a treasure trove of wealth to be made for those of us who know how to unlock it, but times have changed, and these are unprecedented business waters.
With more avenues to reach consumers than ever before and more businesses starting up every day, all brands know they have competitors out there, but they can still take steps to stand out.
To rise above the rest, a clearly articulated and targeted brand identity is key. Here’s how to do it right:
1. Brand everything
Remember that just as important as branding your particular product or service is branding everything that goes along with it. Think about how your brand can define every aspect of your company’s identity. On your website, make sure your call to action is appropriately branded. Make sure your blog posts or social media branding all flows in line with the same branding inspiration. Especially when you put money into your company, make sure that every investment is going to be worth it for your brand identity in the long run.
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The Best Employees Display These 6 Characteristics
Good employees are rare and valuable. Here’s how to identify them.
When I sat for a panel discussion to go over my expertise in the board space recently, one of the main topics revolved around identifying a quality outside board member. To me, this is an easy answer: The qualities that make a great board member are the same ones that would make a great employee.
Like a great board member, a great employee has expertise and education, which are easily identified through the accumulation of credentials over time. But even without experience, good employees exist — people with untapped potential and the drive to work harder and excel at what they do — with a strength of character that’s challenging to build in someone when it doesn’t come naturally. To avoid letting these good employees slip through your company’s proverbial fingers, here are six traits to look for to identify them:
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The Perfect Blend: How to Successfully Combine AI and Human Approaches to Business
Combining a human and machine approach will change the efficiency, revenue and productivity of your business.
When looking to Hollywood for our data on AI — out-of-control robots taking over the world or coming back from the future to alter history — it’s no wonder we might fear it. But I saw an image the other day that illustrates the problem with this thinking perfectly:
A robot tries to pass a slice of bread to a prisoner, pressing it up flat against the prison bars. A human trains the robot to turn the slice sideways so it fits, and it successfully passes the prisoner their bread. Then, when the robot is unable to fit a bowl of water through the bars, they attempt the same solution: turning it sideways. The bowl passes through fine, but the water spills onto the floor.
There is no need to worry about AI making our decisions or taking our jobs. AI can present data, but it needs humans to provide the data. While that may sound like a simple, one-off task that could then spiral out of control, humans are needed not only to train and explain, but also sustain AI operation long-term. These three roles are vital to a healthy relationship between AI and humans. By balancing the speed and accuracy of AI with the human ability to identify right from wrong, you can create a powerful blend that will radically alter the trajectory of your business.
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You Can Think Yourself Into the Person You Want to Be
Use the power of thought for maximum success.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a mentor — someone to turn to for help, direction, motivation and the next big steps in your life. I know because I was one of those unlucky people, but sometimes you have to make your own luck. Even if you find yourself without a mentor, you can still establish that same relationship with someone that might not be as real through the inspiration they left behind.
What if you could turn to a roundtable of counselors that included powerful minds like Napoleon Hill, Augustine “Og” Mandino, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale and Orison Swett Marden? Imagine being able to call on any of history’s greatest success stories as mentors whenever you need help. Well, you can! They wrote everything down in their books with the very intent of having others find the answers they need.
Among my roundtable of mentors, the one who most influenced my life was James Allen. By picking up his book, I can call him any time and get the answers, life lessons and character-building I need. He may not be alive to know it, but James Allen’s mentorship taught me to understand the relationship between my thoughts and circumstances, which allowed me to become the leader I am today.
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3 Ways to Stay Family-Focused in the Face of a Demanding Career
A winning work-life balance is often seen as a lofty dream, but with some applied structure and discipline, it’s not just possible, but instrumental in becoming your best self.
It frequently seems that being successful in business means all of your time, patience and focus must be applied. After spending many years in the corporate world, some of them as a single dad coaching two kids in soccer, I learned that balancing career aspirations and family is a truly large task — difficult, but not impossible. Of course, who you are in business is an important aspect of who you are as a whole person, but it’s not the only or most important one. For maximum growth, fun and success in your career, family and individual life, a healthy balance of all three is essential. When you dedicate focused time to each, you prevent burnout, better regulate emotional responses and build and maintain strong relationships.
Here’s how I do it.
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To Become a Top Executive, Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today
Personal branding is the number one strategy you should employ in order to build trust in both you and your business.
In today’s search-engine era, numerous search platforms make it easier than ever to find out all you could ever need to know about products, businesses or even personal information about senior-level executives. At the same time, with so much information out there, it can be easy to go unnoticed — which is why companies dedicate entire teams to branding their image, mission, vision and values. This branding helps grow their business.
But when it comes to growing a career, personal branding is key.
If you aspire to greater things, it is more important to create a personal brand than anything else. Take your skill sets and make them shine in the places where everybody can see you. The stronger the branding, the better the chances of excelling and accelerating your career.
If your sights are set on becoming an executive or getting onto company boards, then personal branding is the best first choice you can make to get started. Here’s why.
Public profiles speak volumes
An overwhelming majority of employers say candidates’ social-media accounts affect their hiring decisions, meaning a poor public image can cost you a job. Before even scheduling an interview, the employers who work with my company to bring on board members do their own research on each executive outside of our platform. We analyzed years of this selection data from our clients and found that the common factor increasing an executive’s chance of landing an interview is personal branding.
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How Growing Up in a Communist Country Made Me the Leader I Am
Formative years in 1970s Poland impacted every aspect of my life, and taught me lifelong lessons that continue to enrich and empower.
I was born in Poland in 1971. Shortly after World War II, the USSR forced communism upon the nation, and it was basically under Soviet control. Essentially, anything extra that Poland produced was sent to Soviet Russia to line the pockets of or otherwise empower the elites. Meanwhile, the common people often hovered on the edge of starvation. This existence marked the first ten years of my life, and being raised under communism is something I’ll never forget. In part, the experience drove me to become an entrepreneur and a leader.
Lessons I learned from those formative days:
When life gets hard, work harder
By the time I was 10, I’d witnessed five years of my parents struggling under that oppressive system. Times were always tense, and for many, quite unhappy. We worried about having enough to eat, and there were no gifts at birthdays or on Christmas. When I was about 7, I had to go to the store in the early morning to stand in line, and there were frequently adults fighting around me. At times, it was terrifying.
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Growing Pains: How to Turn Hard Times Into Periods of Immense Personal Growth
Difficult times are often par for the course in business, but your response and approach to these hard times will determine whether they result in hardships or growth.
Almost every entrepreneur will identify with the term “growing pains,” especially in reference to a business’s early months and years. There are periods of time when almost every day presents a struggle to work through or a knot to untangle — I’ve certainly been there myself! If you’re not experiencing any growing pains, you’re probably not growing.
But the good news is that last week’s setback does not define you. In a year’s time, you probably won’t remember whatever problem kept you awake last night. It can be difficult to step back when you’re knee-deep in the latest challenge, but my advice is always to “take the long view.” Today’s trials will eventually fade into memory, as long as you put in the work to conquer them and avoid getting pulled off your path to success. Instead of seeing problems as obstacles cluttering the road ahead, try to view them as steps to climb. Put one foot in front of the other and you will ascend higher toward your goals.
Look outside yourself for inspiration
Many entrepreneurs default to looking inwards for inspiration, ideas and answers to problems. Under the right circumstances, that practice can serve you well. However, don’t forget that opening up to your partners, advisors, line managers and other members of your extended team can make all the difference. Sometimes, turning outwards leads to solutions you never would have considered.
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Stop Moving the Goalposts: Do You Recognize Your Own Success?
Here’s what you can learn from author Og Mandino’s self-help books.
I am a firm believer in personal development. Regardless of the cards that life deals you, it’s really how you play them that determines your level of success. In my journey, I have found many personal development books to be really helpful, but none more so than those written by author and speaker Og Mandino.
As someone who pulled himself back from the brink of suicide and alcoholism, Mandino is not your average self-help guru, and the lessons I have taken from his work are sometimes surprising.
Learning through stories
One of the things that draws me to Mandino’s work is that he doesn’t write like other self-help authors. For the most part, he writes stories, and within those tales lie the lessons. His work comes from a standpoint of sharing what he has learned and not necessarily teaching theory.
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