Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How to Connect with Your Team

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from Success magazine discusses ways to begin to find commonality with those you work with. Check out the video to learn more.

4 Ways to Reduce Conflict in a Work Team

If you work with human beings, you are going to experience conflict at some point. And if you work primarily in teams, it is likely you’ll experience conflict on a regular basis. Conflict doesn’t have to drag you or your team down, though, if you handle it correctly, and it can lead to work breakthroughs and the deepening of relationships with your colleagues.

Here are a few ways to manage conflicts among your work team.

Set clear expectations. Work teams need to be clear about what behavior is acceptable and the appropriate ways to communicate. This should be modeled by leaders and supervisors at work, and teams need to have conversations around expectations for how the team will function and work together to ensure everyone is on the same page from the start, and a process is put in place to specify expectations for new individuals who join the team later.

Define terms. Sometimes arguments and disagreements take place in a team because common terms related to the work have not been defined and understood in the same way by others on the team. 

Seek to create a shared vocabulary that will reduce tension and conflict in a group. It can helpful to write these definitions down and provide access to the team so when conflict arises this document can be referred to.

Meet face to face. When conflicts arise, it is best to meet face to face and communicate in person with a specific person or with the team. It becomes easier to understand nuance and read body language, which can help come to a resolution. When setting expectations, it can be useful to come to an agreement on the types of information or communications that will be handled in person and those that can be managed through email or text.

Seek to understand and practice empathy. A practice to model and stress for the team is habit five from Stephen R. Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Implementing this practice will go a long way toward preventing or resolving conflicts when they arise within your team.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Triumph Over Rejection During a Job Search

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Triumph Over Rejection During a Job Search: "A few days after the inner voice urged me to redouble my efforts, I decided to turn my rejection experience into a teachable moment."

• 5 Ways to Supercharge Your Personal and Professional Success: "The world is full of people who start stuff but never follow through. Successful people do what’s required. They keep going even when it’s hard and they don’t want to."

• 4 Ways to Inspire Your Team to Greatness: "They develop a culture of trust, encouraging each team member to be open about goals, progress and achievements, obstacles and struggles."

• How to Plan for 2 or 3 Different Careers in Your Lifetime: "Being willing to learn is a vital ingredient for navigating the vicissitudes of an episodic career."
• 10 Powerful Ways to Master Self-Discipline:"By simply removing your biggest temptations from your environment, you will greatly improve your self-discipline."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 10 Powerful Attributes of Insanely Successful People

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 10 Powerful Attributes of Insanely Successful People:"If you want to achieve your wildest dreams and become phenomenally successful, you’ll need to find ways to go from ordinary to extraordinary."

• 3 Exercises to Build Stronger Teams: "start with the premise that we’ll build stronger teams when we first build stronger relationships with the people on them."

• How to Have a Life Even After Getting More Responsibilities at Work: "in these situations, you need sharper focus and stronger filters. These five strategies can help you with both."

• How to Discover the Strength of Your Personal Brand: "When thinking about your online personal brand, you should start with one goal in mind: to build value through your online authority as an expert."
• 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Leaving Corporate Life & Starting My Own Business: "understand that you’ll most likely have to spend infinitely more money launching and building your business than you ever imagined."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Get the Job Without the Degree

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Get the Job Without the Degree: "When the interview rolls around, ask pointed questions to show that you not only understand the company’s pain points but also see where potential solutions are and how to implement them successfully."

• How to Figure Out If You're in the Wrong Job: "A mismatch in job and motives will wear you down and eventually cause you to fail to live up to your potential."

• 3 Steps to Creating a Disruptive Mindset: "When it comes to making big changes in the world around you, you must first challenge your mindset. Mindset is a powerful thing. Our mindsets determine everything."

• 6 Warning Signs You Need More Sleep, Based on Your Work Behavior: "Because sleep deprivation affects cognition and focus, it's much harder to make sense of information or to remember it. You might have to ask people to repeat themselves because you unintentionally tune out from fatigue."
• Building a Great Team: "The greatest leaders ... are the ones who provide additional opportunities for learning and growth at all levels, requiring participants to continually stretch."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Use Criticism to Your Advantage

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Use Criticism to Your Advantage: "In order to keep a relationship or work team performing well, five or six positive interactions were needed for every one criticism or negative interaction."

• 7 Ways to Stay Connected, Relevant, and Powerful When Working From Home: "What doesn’t get on your calendar doesn’t happen. Many business owners I spoke with were surprised by how much more intentional they had to be about scheduling in connections, breaks, and routines into their workday."

• How to Train Your Team to Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset: "If they don't make their own mistakes, and suffer the pain and embarrassment and anxiety that comes with them, they will never grow like you did. That's why you need to give them room to fail."

• Break Bad Habits With a Simple Checklist: "You can set goals to achieve your dreams or improve your behavior, but without actionable ways to move forward and a way to measure progress, you’ll fall back into your old bad habits once again."
• This 5-Minute Routine Will Save You Hours of Wasted Work: "Stand-ups are a great alternative to email because they're not just quick, they increase engagement between workers."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Tips for Showcasing Soft Skills on Job Interviews

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• Tips for Showcasing Soft Skills on Job Interviews: "As more companies recognize the importance of soft skills, they're becoming more interested in figuring out how candidates will respond to certain scenarios."

• 6 Good Daily Habits for a Fulfilled Life: "My best daily habit is waking up each morning feeling grateful for the opportunity to live another day and have impact on the world around me."

• How the Best Companies for Women Neutralize the Mommy Wars: "Ultimately, I find that most women will say there is gender equality at their firms if an equal amount of sacrifice is required of both men and women, whether they have families or not."

• If Your Team Agrees on Everything, Working Together is Pointless: "What we need is collaboration where tension, disagreement, and conflict improve the value of the ideas, expose the risks inherent in the plan, and lead to enhanced trust among the participants."
• 28 Best Habits to Have in Business: "Considering the difficulties involved with building a notable business, it's important to stay inspired. Find something that inspires you every single day."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: The Top 5 Ways Work Changed in 2016

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• The Top 5 Ways Work Changed in 2016: "In April, New York and California both enacted legislation to progressively raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next few years. That proposal gained prominent support on the campaign trail."

• 9 Things to Do When You're Feeling Burned Out: "Part of the high level of stress and burnout that we currently experience is the intense connectivity and demand for attention placed on us by the supercomputer in our pockets. By checking emails, social media and text messages every few minutes, it’s easy to burn out"

• 7 Ways to Live With Job Stress That Isn't Going Away: "Recognizing the first signs of on-the-job-stress is crucial to finding ways to cope with it. Focus on your core goals, organize yourself correctly and establish a routine of calming your nerves so you can be sure to keep anxiety in check."

• 3 Ways to Increase Productivity While On a Team at Work: "recognize that what feels 100 percent correct and true to you is no more important than what feels 100 percent correct and true to someone else – even (or especially) when the truths are not the same."
• When You Want to Be #Boss (and Beyond) Reach for These 10 Books: "But the thing I wish someone had told me sooner is that you can learn a lot about being a leader today from reading books."

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In this Fast Company video CEO Nirav Tolia discusses the most important task for a leader: