Darla Bonk

While the sentiment, focus on goals, is often what people work towards and should not be excluded, to dismiss the grievance or personal needs of the team often impacts working together in the future. The world of work must be a place where celebrating diversity of thought, autonomy and understanding the needs of the team is crucial to success. The work and personal life is colliding more and more and to omit the personal needs or to ONLY rely on the business needs and not the people that make that business goal happen and function is not leading, it's managing. You don't manage expectations as a leader. You lead and engage with people. Remember that.

The dialogue is able to continue when all parties are realigned to the goal, collaborating to solve the problem, and committed to actively listening to everyone involved. And not listening to react, but listening to understand, process, and then respond accordingly, providing mutual respect to the differing views. By creating an understanding of all sides, common ground, the goal, can once again be found.

Problem solving and conflict resolution must be able to stand on a foundation that everyone is working to accomplishing a unified goal. When that breakdown in the foundation takes place, the house begins to crumble. Understanding the issues or conflict that is causing the breakdown in communication and in working together is paramount. First, as the leader, get both of the parties to agree that everyone is committed to working to solve the problem together. THEN, you can listen to each of the issues and ask that those be shared from a place of stating facts and what has been done to work towards the common goal. Often times, you'll find quickly that solves the problem faster by realizing people lost sight of the goal.

Networking is a crucial component in any business, but certainly in the world of consulting. Leveraging your social and networking capital allows you to build trust, establish rapport and allow walking billboards to help promote you so much more than passing out business cards ever could.

Content for content sake isn't value. Content that are snippets leaders can take that allow them to see your authority, your value, your knowledge and easy to steps, makes you desirable and will keep people coming back to see what you post or release next.

As the CEO and Founder of my own management consulting firm, I found the key was not in JUST identifying the niche, but also in HOW that niche is put out to market. For example, I consult entrepreneurs on how to B.A.L.L. Out: BUILD AND LIVE the LIFE they love! I do that by helping them fall back in love with their businesses and their life. HOW? By solving their business problems so the business is no longer the monkey on their back but the conduit through which they can live the life they are building. I still provide the same services everyone else does - but HOW I go to market makes me unique, piques interest and gets CEOs thinking and engaging.