4 Tips for Succeeding as a Woman in Male Dominated Career Field

Today’s post comes from a guest blogger, Sara Beth Wilcox.  Sara Beth is Project Manager with a large construction company. With high aspirations to be an architect, I went to Auburn University and spent a year in the program before my professors told me what I already knew: I was not a good fit.  I switched to Building Science and found immediately that it had all the things that made me want to be an Architect and was a better fit for my interests and skills in organizing and scheduling activities in a sequence to reach a finished product. As

Being a Great Leader Is a Lot Like Being a Standout Salesperson

Through involvement in a community group, I had the opportunity (or drudgery, depends on how you look at it, I guess) to sit through six companies presenting their “solution” to a need. After they were all done, it was obvious which company was the best. And everyone, meaning about ten people, who had heard the presentations, agreed. When was the last time you had ten people agree on something easily? Yeah, that’s what I thought; hard to think of a time when you have, right? With this being said, the obvious winner knew what they were doing. But it wasn’t

Why Communities Should Focus on Building Social Capital and How They Can Do It

I drive within a 50-mile radius of my home quite often to meet with clients or potential clients. On one particular drive from one town to the next, the highway used to be lined with dozens of nursery wholesalers. Thousands upon thousands of trees, shrubs and plants used to grow along this stretch of the highway and many of the remnants of these nursery farms can still be seen. Why would all of these nurseries locate side by side? Wouldn’t that increase the proximity of their competition, thus decreasing their potential sales? This small, rural Alabama phenomenon about nurseries can also be

Career Assessments – The Key to Your Career

Career assessments are a great tool for determining your career path. Assessments can help build self-awareness and then link you with career options based on your talents, passions and values.Whether you are taking your first leap into the workforce, contemplating a college major or making a mid-career change, assessments are certainly a resource you should consider. If you do any research on career assessments, you will find there are a vast number ofoptions. There are formal ones that must be administeredby a professional as well as informal onesthat can be done by others or even self-administered. So, how do you

6 People You Need to Build Social Capital With

“The moment you partner with somebody, you tap into something you never had access to before. You gain their knowledge, experience, influence, and potential. When you are already achieving at a highly efficient level, you don’t gain a great increase by getting significantly better yourself.  You gain it by partnering or connecting with other good people who bring something different to the table.  And that makes you better.” John Maxwell, Intentional Living John Maxwell points to a great truth in this quote.  We can only make ourselves exponentially better through partnerships with others. As we round out a focus on social capital,