Are you guilty of setting goals that never seem achievable?  Do you feel overwhelmed and discouraged when trying to progress personally and professionally?  It’s time to discover the power of SMART goals.  What Does S.M.A.R.T. Stand For? In 1981, George Doran coined the SMART acronym, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound.  Setting

How SMART Goals Can Revolutionize Your Personal and Professional Life

That’s me with my broken car in the old-school selfie (tripod and SLR camera). I was on my way to meet up with my friend Kenny who, at a young age, taught me a lot about life lessons. A Little Background I grew up in a blue-collar, post-war-era cracker box with a brick façade that

Life Lessons From Kenny

Leadership and management training is crucial for any management role. Whether you have a large team or just got your first hire, leadership training can help you be the best possible leader. A strong foundation of leadership and management training will help you effectively direct your team toward success. This is a key part of

Leadership and Management Training Is Crucial

There is a great video by Drew Dudley called Leading with Lollipops that quickly and expertly explains how you can make a difference in other people’s lives without even knowing it. You’ll also get to feel the rush, through Drew, of how it feels to learn about making a difference in someone else’s life. Drew illustrates

Leading with Lollipops and Making a Difference

Conflict resolution definition: a disagreement proactively settled to eliminate, in each of the affected persons, organizations, or groups, a perception that their physical or emotional needs, interests, or concerns… are threatened. This threat element makes a conflict more significant than a simple “I like chocolate, you like vanilla” difference of opinion. As with a threat

5 Keys to Conflict Resolution

Any employee with a supervisor will be the first to confirm that some people lead effectively and some do not. The difference has a lot to do with leadership style and leadership skills, the soft stuff that allows some to connect while others flounder. Unlike marketing or accounting, leadership skills are not easily learned from

7 Leadership Skills You Need

Countless business books and other resources have been devoted to getting the most out of employees in order to maximize the bottom line. Yet, at the end of the day, the common theme essentially boils down to the fact that managers must be equipped with leadership skills. What is Leadership? How is leadership developed? What

11 Skills Successful Leaders Have in Common

Businesses have changed a great deal over the years, with previous structures and conventions often discarded for new and better approaches. In leadership, the business person of today is usually quite different from the authoritarian of the past. Still, some of the most recent advances in leadership skills and leadership development have yet to be

The Future of Leadership

In business, as in other aspects of life, there are those who lead and those who follow. However, these are not two mutually exclusive groups. While many people are under the erroneous impression that leaders are born, not made, leadership qualities that make up a leader can be learned. This learning process can be one

8 Qualities of Good Leadership

Great leaders that are making a difference in their community are interesting to watch and amazing to learn from. The leadership qualities of Frank Carney, the Pizza Hut co-founder, and business legend, made a difference in the way I thought about business and personal growth. And it only cost me an afternoon and $20! Back in the

Leaders Making a Difference: Frank Carney

Life goals are a purpose or main objective – the reason you do all that day-to-day stuff. Turning life goals into SMART goals or SMART objectives is like building a compass that gives focus and direction and makes decision-making easier. SMART goals turn life goals into crystal clear pictures that keep you on the right

Life Goals: Plan It… Live It… Achieve It.

Priority management these days is either like Groundhog Day or a circus juggling act with five burning bowling pins in the air while you’re blindfolded. Everyone has urgent to-do’s on their plate, and they hope they don’t get burned. Today’s priority manager has more stuff to do than anyone could ever hope to get done.

Priority Management Technology Tools

“Do I have to be born with an innate ability for leadership, or can I learn to be a leader?” This question is not only about innate abilities but also about leadership qualities and personal development – you’ll find it hard to have one without the others. It is a question that’s been asked often

Innate Ability or Learned Leadership Skills?

Here are three books I’ve read recently. I enjoyed each of them and highly recommend them to anyone looking to learn more about leadership qualities and build their leadership edge. The topic of leadership and leadership skills is huge. There are so many facets of leadership that the more you study it, the more you

3 Different Views on the Qualities of Great Leadership

Relax, effective leaders. This isn’t going to be another preachy, utopian article about superhuman leaders and their unattainable effectiveness. It’s about taking a few simple steps, starting today, toward being a more effective leader by improving our leadership skills. Buying in and adopting these straightforward actions will have immediate results. Of course, there are some

How Do I Become a More Effective Leader?