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While outstanding leadership ability is defined by standards unique to each individual, there are guidelines. Here's the short list.

Many workplaces today are in the unprecedented position of having five generations working together, side-by-side. While the exact definition of each generation may vary slightly, any office or workplace today could include members from the traditionalists (born 1927-1945), baby boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1980), millennials/Generation Y (1981-1996) and Generation Z (those born in 1997 or later).

While most would agree that generalizations like generational buckets are helpful only to a point, multigenerational workforces challenge employers to meet a broad range of needs and expectations. Making the matter more complicated: Typical full-time and part-time positions are now being augmented with gig economy roles such as freelance, contract and temporary employment options.

Carly Guthrie has run HR for major restaurant groups and startups. Here, she shares lessons for startups looking to hold onto their talent.

You have a great product or service. You have the funds to make it happen. Now, the big question is "Do you have the people to stand by you and execute?"

The biggest question for entrepreneurs today is how to create a culture to keep your dream growing to its full potential. The answer is by creating a place for people to continue to develop both professionally and personally.

Dividing professional and personal development is an oxymoron. One feeds the other. And when you have an environment of mutual respect and open communication, more people want to hang around with you and make magic at work. The hardest part of work is the people piece. It needs on-going attention to keep productivity high and stress low.

Here are 11 questions to ask yourself and your team to make sure you are heading in the right direction.

We all hear about the importance of injecting fun into the workplace, and research has proven the benefits of fun. One recent study of 2,000 employees, conducted by Professor Sir Cary Cooper with BrightHR, showed that integrating fun into the workplace reduces absences, increases productivity and reduces stress.

Ditching the doldrums is becoming even more important as millennials continue to make up a larger percentage of the workforce. The Cooper/BrightHR study also showed that 79% of graduates believe fun at work is important. 44% believe it encourages a stronger work ethic.

Dave Hemsath, author of 301 Ways To Have Fun At Work, believes fun may be the single most important trait of a highly effective and successful organization. In fact, companies with “fun policies” cite greater job satisfaction and increased employee loyalty as two major benefits.

So the value is there. But how do you turn your workplace into a funplace? There are lots of ways to add play to work, ranging from the office environment to experiences beyond the office. In this post, I share some success stories.

So much of your job isn’t about hitting goals, but rather about being rooted in reality, constantly striving to bring perspective and empathy to whatever situations you encounter. Sometimes, finding the right words can be the biggest challenge of your day. But other times, you’re overthinking it, and it’s as simple as saying these six tiny sentences.

A 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology revealed that sitting up straight and sticking your chest out can boost self confidence, while slouching can lead to negative thoughts. Another study found that good posture actually increases your productivity and creativity.

In today’s world, organizations that fail to adjust their learning management practices and solutions often struggle with organizational growth or productivity. As a result, leading companies are abandoning traditional methods of learning in favor of more effective solutions—often involving technology innovation—that engage talent and improve performance. This report highlights key trends affecting the future of enterprise learning and recommendations for selecting the right provider.

Key Findings

First the bad news: 85 percent of companies report an urgent need to develop their leadership pipeline. But only 40 percent believe their current pool of high-potentials can meet their future business needs.

Now the good news: With Millennials taking over as the largest working generation, it would behoove current leaders to identify who amongst them have the key leadership traits that lead to success.

The brutal truth of what to look for in your high potential leaders. This will make or break your organization.

If you want your employees to work well together and get more done as a team, it might help to pipe in some upbeat tunes. Research from Cornell University has found that employees who listen to happy music—like the Beatles's "Yellow Submarine"—are able to cooperate and make group decisions better than employees who work without a background soundtrack.

"Retailers certainly use music routinely with the intention of influencing consumer behavior," says Kevin Kniffin, an applied behavioral scientist at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and lead author of the study. "The point of our new research is to draw attention to the role that music can have for employees, whether in retail workplaces or any other kind."

Researchers played "Yellow Submarine"; "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves; "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison; and the theme song from "Happy Days" on a loop in a workplace environment, says Kniffin. "A definitional feature of happy music is that it has a rhythm to it," he says. "Happy music significantly and positively influences cooperative behavior," Kniffin points out. "We also find a significant positive association between mood and cooperative behavior."

In spite of a significant imbalance between male and female leaders in business, new research from the University at Buffalo's School of Management suggests that in collaborative work environments where women are outnumbered, they often emerge as the natural group leader.

The findings fly in the face of the reality of the U.S. workforce, where many fail to recognize the extent of the female leadership gap. Women represent just 3% of new CEOs in the U.S., 5.1% of Fortune 1000 CEOs, and 4% of Standard and Poor’s 500 CEOs. A recent survey by the Rockefeller Foundation also found that nine in 10 respondents thought there were more female business leaders than there really are, and further research by the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University found that those women are more likely to be targeted by shareholder activism.

"We tend to see the man as more leader-like than the woman," says lead author Jim Lemoine, in a video interview by UB School of Management. "What we were interested in in this research were exceptions to the rule."

Research shows that in leaderless groups, leaders emerge by quickly synchronizing their brain waves with followers through high quality conversations. Simply put, synchrony is a neural process where the frequency and scale of brain waves of people become in sync. Verbal communication plays a large role in synchronization, especially between leaders and followers. Synchrony between leaders and followers leads to mutual understanding, cooperation, coordinated execution of tasks, and collective creativity.

On the surface, brain synchrony seems easy to understand. It simply implies that people are literally on the same wavelength. Yet, at a deeper level, interpersonal synchrony involves much more. Dr. Daniel Siegel explains that “presence”, “wholeness”, and “resonance” are at the core of the ability to develop synchrony. Recent advances in brain science can help leaders learn to synchronize with followers on these deeper levels:

Many of the most successful people had to fight tooth and nail for opportunities to learn new skills and advance up the corporate ladder. That’s often because what they wanted to learn and achieve wasn’t in sync with what their bosses wanted for them. You’re not a data scientist. You’re not cut out for engineering. Sales isn’t what you do. Lines like this are still used all too frequently when employees tell their managers that they want to move in a new direction.

But this is only half the story. Managers are under tremendous pressure to generate results. You have annual quotas, quarterly goals, and increasing competition. Who has time to let employees go learn skills that may not be relevant for years, or may not serve your unit at all?

I hear these challenges all the time as I work with managers at all levels, particularly in large corporations. I’ve also faced them myself with the companies I founded and scaled. It’s a tough balancing act. But I’ve learned key lessons to help managers turn lofty goals — such as making learning and development a central pillar of the workday — into real actions that mitigate damage to, and even help strengthen, the bottom line. Here’s how.

In a society roided-out on bling, cash, ego, nakedness, and status, we have lost our authenticity.

We have lost morals and what it means to be ourselves. So many are caught up in following the crowd they have gotten lost in it. How can any type of true success come from being a follower?

Followers are lost to their authenticity and are chasers of "status" and "wealth." Followers are competitive, insecure, and consistently positioning and provoking to one-up each other. The stand-out successes we all admire are not in the crowd, they aren’t chasing cash, or being cool.

It doesn’t mean they don’t love nice things or indulge in them; it means they approach success from a different mindset.

Of course, we all want to do our very best work. But is there a difference between simply striving for solid quality and obsessing so much over every last detail that it becomes completely counterproductive? To put it simply: yes—a big difference.

While I never want to be the one to discourage you from putting your all into something (hey, your dedication is admirable!), there are a few specific instances when it’s acceptable to stop chasing absolute perfection.

"Uh, like when?" is likely the question you’re asking yourself now. Well, here are four times you have permission to stop fixating and just settle for plain ol’ good enough.

Discovering your company's "purpose" is tough. Sustaining it can be even tougher. Even if you've zeroed in on a mission that your executives love, it won't do your company much good if the rest of your team doesn't share the same sentiment.

The challenge is to make sure your entire organization is willing to buy into its stated purpose. The consulting firm Radley Yeldar, which ranks brands according to "social purpose," gives the top spot to Unilever for its sustainability efforts, among other causes beyond the company's bottom line to which it has shown commitment.

There is a world of difference between normal activity and peak performance.  It’s the glimpses into the peak state that fuel the intuition that we’re meant for greater things.  In this article, we’ll take a look at peak performance and a surprisingly simple strategy for more consistently tapping into our peak mode.

The Psychology of Peak Performance

Two elements turn ordinary activities into performance activities: 1) we keep score of the outcomes that matter and 2) we institute practice measures to systematically pursue the improvement of our scores.  Such deliberate practice lies at the heart of the development of chess players, athletes, Broadway stars, and elite medical facilities.  Once we keep score and devote ourselves to a continuous improvement in what we do and how we do it, we transform routine into growth.  Recreation is not a cumulative activity.  It is activity pursued at the time for its own sake.  Peak performance, on the other hand, is cumulative: it’s a focused, ongoing attempt at improvement.  We can go to the gym for enjoyment or we can go to the gym to train for aerobic conditioning.  The first activity is expressive and present-centered; the second is instrumental and forward-focused.

Make a list of the 5 leaders you most admire. They can be from business, social media, politics, technology, the sciences, any field. Now ask yourself why you admire them. The chances are high that your admiration is based on more than their accomplishments, impressive as those may be. I’ll bet that everyone on your list reaches you on an emotional level.

This ability to reach people in a way that transcends the intellectual and rational is the mark of a great leader. They all have it. They inspire us. It’s a simple as that. And when we’re inspired we tap into our best selves and deliver amazing work.

So, can this ability to touch and inspire people be learned? No and yes. The truth is that not everyone can lead, and there is no substitute for natural talent. Honestly, I’m more convinced of this now – I’m in reality about the world of work and employee engagement. But for those who fall somewhat short of being a natural born star (which is pretty much MANY of us), leadership skills can be acquired, honed and perfected. And when this happens your chances of engaging your talent increases from the time they walk into your culture.

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.

Stress has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it, but how you respond is only half the battle. The secret to winning the war against stress lies in what you do when you aren’t working (and presumably aren’t as stressed). Otherwise, you fall into bad habits that can magnify your stress, rather than alleviate it. You need to shift gears to these relaxing and rejuvenating activities during your time off.

Does it ever seem like some people you know are advancing rapidly in their careers or businesses, while you seem to be just plodding along? Chances are you're not doing one simple thing that can make all the difference to achieving your goals. You're not putting yourself first.

In the personal finance world, experts often advise people to "pay yourself first." The idea is that when a paycheck or other payment comes in the first thing you should so is put a portion of it into your savings and only then pay your bills and other financial obligations.

Most of us, of course, instinctively do the opposite. We first pay our bills and then put money into savings if there's any left over. The problem, of course, is that there very rarely is any money left over. So our bills get paid, but we never manage to save much, making it impossible to reach our financial goals. This is why 401(k) programs are so powerful: They literally force you to pay yourself first by putting money into savings before you can pay anyone else.

The truth is that life can be tough, business can be hard-hitting and success comes with challenges. What separates those who can hold their own and keep going in times of adversity is a cluster of habits that center on resilience.

Resilience means developing a strong solid level of mental toughness. We aren't born with it--it's a habit you develop, a skill you learn. And it's absolutely essential.

Here are four core habits of the most resilient people:

1. They're connected to their emotions.
Resilient people understand their emotions and how to manage them. Some people say that suppressing what you feel is the best approach when you're going through tough times, but it's just the opposite--suppressing your emotions can backfire. People who are highly anxious or have a lot on their minds tend to struggle with unwanted thoughts. Resilient people are connected to their emotions and self-aware, which gives them more control.

2. They don't listen to negative voices in their heads.
Resilient people are able to get past the negativity and dig deeper to discover what's triggering it. Then instead of taking it to heart, they're able to turn it  into positive intentions. Resilient people are optimistic and believe in their own strength and ability to overcome any problems. In a crisis, a resilient person will be positive, open and willing to find the solution. They will not be dwelling on the problem but looking forward to the future solutions that should be considered.