by Suzie Doscher,
​Executive and Life Coach, Zurich

According to the Business Dictionary personal power is “Influence over others, the source of which resides in the person instead of being vested by the position he or she holds.” In my opinion personal power in non-business language is the strength that lies within you. I feel I found my full personal power once I was aware and connected with my core values, had the life skills to handle difficult moments and situations, and had an influence on where my mind took me.  
 
Personal power is composed of:

• Knowing who you are
• Being comfortable with yourself
• Knowing what is right and wrong, a personal code of ethics 
• Being honest and trustworthy not only with others, but also with yourself
• Being dependable, again not only for others, but also for yourself
• Living your life from a place of integrity
• Handling your choices and their consequences, even the negative ones
• Knowing what you want, finding your way forward
• Knowing your weaknesses and your strengths
• Having an open-heartedand non-judgmental approach
• Taking responsibility for your actions and yourself

by Key Step Media  Time to read: 4 min.

​Whether you are a team leader or a member of a team, you will likely encounter situations in which you need to offer criticism or constructive feedback. While this can be difficult, giving feedback is a necessary part of leadership and being a member of a team. Teams that openly address counterproductive behavior create an environment that fosters continuous development, learning, and innovation. The ability to give effective, emotionally intelligent criticism is essential to high levels of team performance.

What Does It Mean to Offer Effective Criticism?

People who give effective criticism balance empathy and an understanding of the person they are giving feedback to with an objective and calm demeanor.

by Suzie Doscher

Somebody launches a verbal attack on you and you have no idea what triggered it. 
It is not always so easy to recognize, let alone acknowledge that you have been verbally abused. A verbal attack is aggressive language and delivered in a manner that it feels like an attack. Sometimes it is not even the words chosen that make it an attack, but the tone alone that can be abusive. Should the person raise the volume of his or her voice, it becomes slightly more obvious that this is indeed a verbal attack. The conflict is verbal rather than physical. Sadly, people tend to mostly talk of physical attacks and ignore just how much verbal abuse there is and how damaging this truly is.
These conflicts can start in many ways including these examples:

By Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter and Jason Beck

"The good news is that compassionate leadership can be learned. With simple practices we can become more compassionate and bring more wisdom to our leadership. This assessment will help you understand how wisely compassionate you are. Answer each question honestly. After you take the assessment, you will get a report outlining where you can improve, along with practical tips for becoming a more compassionate leader."
​

by Suzie Doscher
 
Incredible how one person’s bad behaviour in a team can touch so many and disrupt the working environment. Equally a more team spirited and communicative person tends to create a friendly open, even happy atmosphere.
The ripple effect – negative or positive – can touch so many. 
How about:

• Performing one good deed today – even if it is simply sharing a smile with someone. When you see someone without a smile - share yours!
• Observe how many lives you can touch with one small positive action
• Do this from your heart - unconditionally,
  not because you want to be thanked or achknowledged for it.
• Thank yourself , appreciate that you reached out.
• You will see it feels wonderful.​

BY STEPHANIE VOZZA 4 MINUTE READ

​Ever have to psych yourself up to go to work? If that’s the case more often than not, your job might not align with your personal motives, says Carter Cast, author of The Right (and Wrong) Stuff: How Brilliant Careers are Made and Unmade.
Strengths are your natural skillsets, and motives are the place from which you draw energy, says Cast. They differ from values, which are what’s important to you. “If you ask someone what their values are, they can rattle them off quickly,” he says. “Motives are much harder to identify because we’re often not conscious of them. They’re the river that flows under us.”
A mismatch in job and motives will wear you down and eventually cause you to fail to live up to your potential, says Cast. “Currently, the assumption is that if you took this job, it’s the right job for you,” says Cast. “But people who are smart, don’t have a skill gap, and are good interpersonally will underperform if they don’t have energy for position.”

By Monica Torres 
​
No good employer is going to outright say that they kill you, but new research finds that too many modern workplaces are grim reapers inflicting a fatal amount of stress on our bodies and minds.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, is ringing the alarm that job stress and poor management is killing us — accounting for up to 8% of annual health costs and leading to 120,000 excess deaths every year in the United States.
In his new book, “Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance — and What We Can Do About It,” he explains how long hours, a lack of job autonomy through micromanagement, and unstable health insurance are making us sick to death.
He talked with Ladders about his research and what leads otherwise reasonable people to stay in toxic jobs: