The following is a guest post by Darcy Eikenberg.

“We’ve cut back on our training—nothing I can do about that.”

“Our conference budgets have been cut, so it’ll be hard for me to stay current.”

“My manager doesn’t know any more than I do—how am I going to grow?”

Heard those comments in your workplace lately? If so, you’re not alone. One of the biggest laments uncovered in survey after survey is that the current lack of learning and development programs is a strong contributor to disengagement.

Makes sense, right? After all, you’re human. You want to learn, grow, and increase your professional contribution—not sit there like a lump. You want to feel you’re making a difference, using all of your abilities and talents. You want to be prepared for the future world of work—whatever that will be.

So why are you waiting for permission to grow?

It’s a losing game to wait for your boss/your CEO/your organization to change in order to accelerate your own learning and development. Sure, it would be great if all leaders recognized that coaching, teaching and training are investments, not expenses, but until then, it’s time for you to take control.

Here are three simple actions you can take right now. Try one and create dramatic changes in your career and your overall growth. Click here to continue reading »”Are You Waiting For Permission to Grow?”

As more organizations continue to shift their approach from recovery to growth, there’s naturally a growing concern developing about the potential risk of losing their key talent to competitors, as well as how to attract the talent they need to help their organization strengthen their competitive edge.

In most cases, these discussions tend to focus either on discovering key talent within your organization or how to attract the talent you need to join your team. Unfortunately, these strategies tend to be limited in scope and can cause leaders to overlook the advantages of developing their employees to meet the evolving needs of their organization.

One of the most effective ways to do this – with the added bonus of increasing employee retention – is by offering training programs. By offering such programs, employees are given the opportunity to not only refine and develop their skills in order to be more effective in their roles, but it also encourages them to take the time to evaluate their career goals and come up with ideas of how their organization can help them to achieve them.

Granted, one of the reasons why most employers are reluctant to provide employee training is because they fear that they will lose the investment made through such efforts if their employees leave the organization to work elsewhere. However, such fears don’t Click here to continue reading »”Are You Employing This Tool To Fuel Your Organization’s Growth?”

With the holiday celebrations now at an end, many of us are returning to our usual daily grind – refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to dive into the tasks at hand.  On the heels of celebrating the start of both a new year and decade, most of us have also been making plans or resolutions for what we’d like to accomplish over the next 365 days, and possibly beyond.

It’s only natural that we’d be motivated right now to create these lists of goals, as the start of a new year often inspires that feeling of a new start; of turning to a fresh page that’s filled with the promise of new opportunities and possibilities for our future.  Indeed, this sentiment is quite beneficial as it encourages us to take time for some personal self-reflection, of creating these aspirations of what we’d like to change in ourselves or what areas we’d like to further grow in.  The only point we need to remember though, is to include in this exercise the process of reviewing the events of the previous year, of taking note of what we endured, learned and gained from those past experiences so that we have a solid foundation on which to build upon as we move forward.

Of course, in developing these lists of goals, we should also consider Click here to continue reading »”How to Make Your Resolutions Have A Bigger Impact”