High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Making Joy a Priority at Work

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!

• Making Joy a Priority at Work: "By providing people with more of the experiences that engender joy in any team setting, leaders can tap more of the practical power of joy in their companies."

• 9 Tips for Avoiding Loneliness When You Work at Home: "Below, you’ll find a guide for avoiding loneliness when you work from home, including tips from writers like myself and other professionals who’ve learned the best ways to be social without an office."

• What Women Want at Work: "When working women have coworkers and an employer who has their backs plus the opportunity to grow and climb, both hierarchically and financially, their overall job satisfaction gets high marks."

• 10 Companies to Work For if You Want to Like Your Job: "Indeed says these companies got high marks from employees because they each provide an enjoyable work environment."
• How to Have a Difficult Workplace Conversation:"Your conversation is not only about the immediate message itself, but more importantly about the outcome and behavior you want to see afterward."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How Upskilling Programs Provide Employee Opportunity

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 Upskilling Programs Provide Employee Opportunity: "[Upskilling] is any sort of education training and development that leads to preparing someone for what’s next in their career."

• 6 Mindset Principles of Successful People: "When successful people chase after a goal, two things can happen: They achieve their desired result or they get feedback."

• 5 Types of Connections You Need in Your LinkedIn Network: "by actually adding your friends and family members to your LinkedIn network you will get insight into their unique professional network that you might not have known about otherwise."

• 6 Essential Things You Need to Do to Land Your First Job: "Your college degree is a great foundation, but it’s also not the reality of what it’s like to complete a process from start to finish."
• How to Work With Someone Who Thinks They're Always Right:"Slow things down to surface what’s really going on. No matter how outlandish their views seem, approach the conversation as if there is some legitimacy to them."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Productivity and Insane Success

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!

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• How to Get More Done in the Morning: "Hold off on opening your email until you’ve successfully completed your top three work-related tasks for the day, since email can affect your mood and derail you before you’ve accomplished anything."


• 4 Secrets of Insanely Successful People: "The leader has a clear idea of what he or she wants to do—professionally and personally—and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures."


• 9 Ways to Deal with Difficult People at Work: "The best way to deal with difficult people in a meeting is to engage them and not attempt to silence them or be dismissive."


• Be Open to New Ideas: "Remain open to ideas from anywhere.... When a leader demonstrates he is open to new ideas, he makes it known that he values others."


• Stop Hating Your Job and Love Your Life: "Your job is a place to learn from others, and also to teach them. What you learn and teach are more than merely job skills. You learn from others the value of shared humanity. And you teach them the gift of your unique perspective."

How to Deal With Difficult People

In an earlier blog post I discussed the 4-step approach to assertively request a change in behavior. As effective as this strategy may be, there are people - bosses, co-workers, mothers-in-law - where the strategy simply won't work. In these cases you will need to bring out emergency Step 5.

This final step of the process should only be used in extreme cases where earlier attempts at following the 4-step positive and assertive approach did not generate the results you desired. At this point you need to offer either rewards or consequences. Which of these two strategies you employ will depend on the situation and the person with whom you are dealing. Continuing on with the example from the earlier blog post, here are some examples of how you could offer the "office gossip" either a reward or consequence.

Reward: "If you are able to make the changes we discussed and are willing to stop talking about our co-workers when they are not part of the conversation, I know that our work environment will be so much more pleasant and productive."

Consequence: "If you are not willing to make the changes we discussed and are unwilling to stop talking about our co-workers when they are not part of the conversation, then I will be forced to take further action." At this point you need to clearly state the consequence, not as a threat, simply as a statement of fact, such as "I will have to inform Sarah, our supervisor, that our team dynamic is being compromised by your behavior."

It is imperative that you not make these promises lightly. Whether you are offering a reward or a consequence, if there is no behavior change and you do not follow through, all your efforts will be for naught.

Here are a few more ideas to help you deal with difficult people in all situations:

• Never approach a difficult person or situation when you are angry, upset, or stressed out. Walk away from a situation so that you can calm down, think about your approach, and speak in a planned manner.
• Try to see the situation from the other person's point of view. An assertive communicator goes into a situation or conversation believing that everyone intention's are good and trying to see the other person's side of the story.
• Treat the other person with respect. Never talk down to them or act as though they are incompetent or unworthy of your respect - no matter how you may feel inside. This will only escalate the problem.
• Know when to take your problem to the next level. If you have exhausted all your assertive communication options and the problem is not resolved, take the problem to your manager. However, make sure you have tried your best to handle the problem on your own first.