Identify What Drives Your Career
Knowing what motivates you can lead you to do your job better and drive you to contribute more at work. Here are four ways to find out what drives you and use it to improve in your career.
What You Need to Know About Using StrengthsFinder For Employee Engagement
More and more, managers are being encouraged to use positive reinforcement in their employee reviews, rather than focusing on weaknesses. The argument is that by doing this, employees are more productive and engaged in their work. Opponents of such a management technique say that discussing negatives, or ranking employees against each other, can actually encourageRead… Read more »
Improving Police-Community Relations Before It’s Too Late
Civil unrest in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore has local government leaders across the country concerned about police-community relations in their own cities and towns. While it’s true that larger cities with greater diversity – whether economic, ethnic, racial or religious – are more at risk, government leaders in cities of all sizes canRead… Read more »
12 Signs You Are an Emotionally Intelligent Person
Emotional Awareness You can answer the following questions: • What am I feeling? • Why am I feeling like this? • How is it impacting me right now? Emotion Management and Impulse Control You can control the fight or flight tendencies of your emotional brain. You can step into a neutral place to control emotionalRead… Read more »
Creating a Digital Transformation Plan of Action: A Guide for Leaders
In earlier SMART Articles, I discussed the evolutionary phases in becoming a digital organization, described how all business functions are being transformed by social and digital technologies, articulated the primary barriers to digital engagement, and offered a digital transformation framework (to read these and other related pieces, click here). This article extends those pieces by proposingRead… Read more »
How to Be Grateful, Not Hateful
When we are grateful instead of hateful, it fills our hearts so we have more to give. In mental health care, we are faced with a lot of “What if’s”. What can you can keep after giving it away? Your word.
A Good Quote is More Interesting Than This Headline
Let’s start by admitting that, sometimes, all a reporter needs is a quote to finish a story. Any quote, as long it’s relevant and they meet their deadline. What they’d really like, however, are birds flying backwards. That’s the gist of a legendary quote used in one of my journalism classes, from a guy tellingRead… Read more »
What Government Agencies Need to Know About Emoji: Part 2
Believe it or not, government agencies have started to use emoji. So far, the little digital characters have been used sparingly, yet experimentation is happening. Emoji may or may not be the right fit for your agency. At the moment, they’re youthful and fun, and are often used tongue-in-cheek or with a dose of attitude. But, understanding emojiRead… Read more »
10 Great Podcasts for Government Employees
I love podcasts. Podcasts are a great way to get smarter while you’re doing the dishes, working out, or on your morning commute (unless you’re bike commuting in traffic, in which case I can’t recommend using headphones). Some of these will make you better at your job. Some will inform you about current events andRead… Read more »
Four Leadership Opportunities You May Be Overlooking
When I was early in my career I discovered the catch-22 of gaining leadership experience: to be selected for a leadership position I needed to show I already had some previous leadership experience. So I had to get creative to break the cycle and get my feet wet. If you find yourself facing the same situation,Read… Read more »