Michael Phelps with Bob Bowman, courtesy Bob Bowman Spend some time with U.S. Olympic men’s swimming coach Bob Bowman, as I recently did, and you’ll understand why some people go from good to great in a chosen field, while others, like Bowman’s longtime student Michael Phelps, go from good to record-shattering. Phelps’ record is extraordinary. His 22 total medals and 18 gold medals is the greatest medal performance in all of Olympic history.

Meet Our Summer Collegiate Intern- Lila! I’ve spoken to numerous entrepreneurs over the past few months, and each told me how difficult it is to find, hire and maintain a good intern. This holds especially true if your organization isn’t a big company with whom affiliation will offer a bright spot of the prospective intern’s resume and/or good pay with benefits like daily lunch, access to VIP events or even travel.

Shutterstock Even the best leaders get invited to work on projects or teams in which they are not in charge. Maybe you need to learn new skills or gain knowledge, or maybe your boss just wants to see how well you play with others. Whatever the case, you’re now in a situation you haven’t been in for a while. Learning to hold back a habitual behavior requires adopting a different mindset, which is easier said than done.

Shutterstock Do you blame your boss for your inability to get more done at work? One of my core productivity principles is to stop checking email all throughout the day, and to turn off the vibrations, dings and other notifications we get with every new message. Shelby told me, “I can’t turn off my email notifications, because my boss will think I’m not working if I don’t respond to him within five minutes.

People complain about business meetings, but they are part of nearly every white-collar job. It’s hard enough to remember all the meetings your job requires and to find time for the pre-meeting preparation you have to do. It’s worse when your colleagues forget their business manners and make the staff-meeting mistakes listed here! Watch out for these ten staff meeting “Don’ts!” and your team members will appreciate you even more than they already do.

Angela Duckworth was an outstanding student growing up, so much so that she was admitted to Harvard University. All the while, however, she was reminded often by her beloved father that she was “no genius.” Many years later, with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Pennsylvania under her belt, she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow.

Congratulations on your new job! While you’re busy creating your 30/60/90 day game plan and thinking of other ways you can make a good first impression, don’t forget to consider ways you could (accidentally) damage your reputation. Here are four mistakes to avoid. Question the way (and why) things are done. You are excited about your new job and want to make a positive impact quickly, so you can demonstrate your value.

Photo: Shutterstock According to an analysis of 145,000 positions across 200 industries, conducted by the Hay Group division of Korn Ferry, the average base salary for a new graduate is $48,270 with technical positions paying above-average. The top five paying positions are engineer (29% above the average), software developer, actuary, scientist/ researcher, and environmental professional. Customer service representative is the lowest (34% below the average).

Sue, CMO at a Midwest insurance company receives a litany of excuses from her VP Marketing when deadlines are missed. And he continues to miss them. Dan, VP Sales at a Silicon Valley software company runs ragged tracking the performance of his sales people and cajoling them into using the CRM. He often donates time from his own assistant to do the sales people’s CRM data entry.

Being a great employee pays off with better positions, higher pay, and more frequent promotions. But some workers struggle to know exactly what it takes to become a truly great employee. As an Entrepreneur and CEO one of the most important elements of having a successful company is having a workforce of great employees.