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,

Social Capital How-To: 5 Steps to Build the #1 Competency You Should be Developing

Due to technical difficulties last week, we are sharing this topic again. We have made a few changes and added some additional tips and tools. We hope you enjoy the read and find the information beneficial!   One competency you need to be building, regardless of who you are and what you do, is social capital. But creating a to-do list or development plan for building this competency is not something that comes naturally. For most,it’s like something that grows organically and exponentially once you do it. And to a large extent, this is true. But like all good things

3 Reasons Why Social Capital Should Be the Number 1 Competency You are Developing

If you missed us last week, check out our first post on social capital. For those of you who want to keep moving along with this post, know that social capital “…refers to the collective value of all “social networks” [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other [“norms of reciprocity”].” Now, more than ever, you need to be developing social capital to bring your A game to work.  Why? Strong social capital saves you time.As a part of a few HR groups, it is rare for a week to go by