(Photo credit: iStock) Leah was discouraged with her job search and hired me to help her. “I’m really good at what I do, but I’m not a dynamic interviewee,” Leah told me during our first meeting. “My resume gets me the telephone interview. That gets me the in-person interview. But then I never get the job offer.” She took a sip of coffee and sighed as she set her cup on the table. “It’s happened over and over. I practice. I study.

Dear Liz, I’m in a quandary. I have been consulting for a growing consumer products firm for three months and they’ve just made me an offer to join them full time. I like the people and the work a lot, but I find their policies and their overall posture toward employees less than sensational. For instance, I was shocked when the company’s HR Director (we’ll call her Pam) handed me my offer letter and told me “We need this back by tomorrow afternoon.

Dear Liz, I got laid off last week and the best part is, I trained the temp who replaced me. I was a Senior Contracts Administrator for a healthcare organization. I oversaw several million dollars worth of contracts every year and I was replaced by a temp who has never worked in healthcare or managed a vendor relationship. She’s a nice person, though! Obviously it’s not her fault that my bosses made the decision to terminate me and promote her, but it still burns me.

Shutterstock A first tendency of many business people is to fix things. After all, they’re paid to solve problems, so the metaphor of the mechanic seems natural. Unfortunately, some leaders then try to “fix” people. How many of us want to be fixed? Not many. We may be open to persuasion or influence, but we don’t want to be “fixed.” Rather than adopt the role of mechanic, great leaders adopt the role of gardener.

Every company I encounter is trying to do more with less. I know numerous executives and managers who seem to acquire additional titles as often as they receive year-end bonuses. Employees at every level juggle To Do lists more prolific than rabbits. Unbelievably, most accept this fate and persevere the best they can.

Swedish home furnishing giant IKEA has suffered more than a black eye in China with its clumsy handling of a product recall.  It received a broken nose, a fat lip, and probably more.  All, unfortunately, a result of its own bad decisions. On Tuesday, IKEA announce it would recall almost 1.7 million chests and dressers in China.

Good managers are easy to spot. They say things like “Great job!” and “How are you doing?” all the time, because they know how to interact with their teammates and how to listen to them. They know that encouraging their teammates is the most important part of a manager’s job. Lousy managers are a different story. Some poorly-equipped managers will act friendly toward you one day and blast you the next. A poor manager’s behavior can be hard to predict.

$170 Million Reasons To Smile: Taylor Swift is the world’s highest-paid celebrity. (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images). Taylor Swift’s income is the stuff of wildest dreams: the pop diva pulled in $170 million over the past year, giving her the No. 1 spot on the 2016 FORBES Celebrity 100 list. Our full ranking of the top-earning entertainers can be found here. Swift’s payday comes courtesy of her massive 1989 World Tour.

Photo via Benjamin Child, Unsplash Everyone knows what it’s like to slog through Mondays.  Science backs up that they can be a grind. But I don’t think it has to be this way.  I believe Mondays are an opportunity to set the tone for the rest of the workweek. You can position yourself to thrive by being proactive with your time and energy. Here are five ways highly effective people turn the Monday Blues into an opportunity to succeed. 1.

The rise of Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com and other gig companies shows how strong the demand is for part-time remote work opportunities. But if you’ve seen those sketchy signs blaring ‘WORK FROM HOME!!! EARN THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS MONTHLY!’ on subway trains or local bulletin boards or even parking signs, you know that not all such opportunities are legitimate.