Back then, it was “cool” to work long hours, brag about how little sleep you got, and tell your coworkers how much caffeine you could down to make it through the day.

I believe, in order to be more effective at work, we have to make a conscious effort to cut down on how often we burn the midnight oil - and how frequently, as leaders, we set this expectation for our teams.

Whether you are just taking your first step or have been pursuing your goals for years, you won’t get far without hard work. There are no shortcuts to success.

175 motivational quotes from people like Elon Musk, Maya Angelou, Serena Williams, Theodore Roosevelt, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs that are sure to keep you focused on achieving your goals:

“Most meetings are too long, too dull, too unproductive.” - Lois Wyse

She isn’t wrong. A lot of meetings are ineffective and boring. They only exist to make the person who organized it feel like they’re doing something.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. When managed well, meetings can be incredibly powerful tools. They can impart wisdom, improve staff morale, and help leaders make decisions.

Many managers go out of their way to avoid giving negative feedback to members of their team. They do so because they believe these conversations will make people upset or uncomfortable. 

If you are one of those managers, I have a little bit of constructive criticism for you. You need to start having those conversations, even if they feel slightly awkward at first.

Find Your Vocation in Order to Make Career Choices

At some point in their life, almost everyone pauses to ask themselves questions like:

What do I want to do with my career?

Do I want to work in my job forever?

Is it time for a career change?

As a coach, I often have clients ask me for help managing their team. Some people need tactics they can use to motivate their employees, others want tips for keeping their workers focused.

Every manager has different strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

A while back, I worked with a client who had a tendency to swoop in and handle projects herself when her team struggled or something went wrong. She found her leadership style draining and was aware it was having a negative impact on her workers.

As such, she wanted to shift to more of a coach approach to leading her team. She believed this style of management would give her employees more room to develop their skills.

We discussed her options for a while and eventually decided she should approach management with an apprentice model in mind.

To fully understand what that approach entails, we need to take a quick trip back in time.

We’ve all been there. 

You arrange a Zoom meeting, prepare your notes, double-check you don’t have any food in your teeth, make sure your background looks professional, log in to the system, and then…

Nothing. 

The other person isn’t there. So, you wait. Five minutes. Ten minutes. But still, nothing.

You try to be patient, but eventually, you start to get pretty annoyed. After a while, a little voice in your head tells you to send a snarky message like, “I’m here. Where are you?” or “You joining?” 

In They Ask, You Answer, Marcus Sheridan shows us that content strategies do not have to be complicated to be effective. They can be as straightforward as “answer the questions customers have about your product or industry.”

This philosophy, Sheridan says, offers two main benefits. First and foremost, it helps businesses build trust with the people who visit their websites. Customers generally respect companies that are honest and transparent about their products. They are often distrusting of organizations that cannot or will not provide them with the info they need to know before they make a purchase.

This increase in trust leads to the second benefit of the They Ask, You Answer philosophy: more sales. People want to buy from companies they believe to be honest and trustworthy.

As a coach, I often have clients tell me they are feeling overwhelmed at work. For most people, this feeling is caused by one thing: having too many projects on their plate at the same time.

Over the years, I have found the best way to reduce that stress is to create a list of those tasks or projects and review it while asking yourself the following three questions: