Shutterstock The antidote to the excuse mentality is accountability where people take ownership, fix problems and bring solutions. Mentally and emotionally, accountability is where every leader wants their people to be. But accountability is not an either/or kind of phenomenon. Denial, blame, excuses and anxiety are all stages leading up to accountability that are part of the excuse mentality.

Shutterstock Dear Liz, My first boss out of college was Lloyd, and he was a great boss. I didn’t really appreciate how awesome it was to work for Lloyd until I left that job. I took a better job at an international consulting firm and I liked the travel, but I missed working for Lloyd. My second boss was Clara. Then I worked for Jeanine. Both Clara and Jeanine were angry, competitive, difficult managers. I would go home half in tears at least once a month.

Shutterstock Dear Liz, I had a weird experience at work the other day. I’m a graphic designer and marketing coordinator for a publishing firm. I work on marketing projects for four publications, and it’s very busy and a lot of fun. My boss is the Marketing Manager. We can call her Debbie. The other day I was working on a marketing piece for an upcoming virtual event. I was in Debbie’s office.

Shutterstock Most if not all of us were raised to follow rules and to be obedient. If I had to pick one word to describe my earliest training, the word would be “obedience.” When I was a kid, teachers were scary. Parents were a lot scarier back then than most parents are now. Following the rules was a really big deal. When we leave school and go to work, we are given new rules to follow. Some of the rules make sense, like rules concerning safety and security.

Shutterstock Most businesses are run by highly intelligent people. Yet, when things fall apart it’s usually due to these highly intelligent leaders’ stupid mistakes. Tragedies happen when smart leaders, who are otherwise great, sabotage themselves, day after day, with mistakes that they can’t see but are obvious to everyone else.

Shutterstock There has been a lot of news coverage recently about Wells Fargo committing massive fraud. CEO John Stumpf repeatedly promised that he would take “personal responsibility,” but as yet there has been no indication that he will keep to his word. I often work with companies who want to hire people who take responsibility for their work and who hold themselves accountable if things go wrong.  Of course this is an excellent way to move business forward.

Dear Liz, I’m in an awkward position at work and I could use your advice. I am the Regional HR Manager for an educational software firm. We’ve been hiring quite a few people this year and my problem has to do with one of our new hires. We made “Jerry” a job offer last Tuesday, when he was at our office for a meeting with our Director of R & D and our VP of Engineering.

What causes some of us to bounce back and persevere in response to failure or disappointment, while others are left despairing and defeated?  In my experience as a psychotherapist and host of The Failure Factor podcast, I’ve identified seven qualities of resilient entrepreneurs (and people!): Image Courtesy of Pexels 1.

I’ve been writing about the “gig economy” and the future of work for a while now, and up until this point, I’ve been treating the potential of the gig economy as a distant vector pointed toward the horizon.

Historically, when new technologies become easier to use, they transform industries. That’s what’s happening with artificial intelligence and big data; as the barriers to implementation disappear (cost, computing power, etc.), more and more industries will put the technologies into use, and more and more startups will appear with new ideas of how to disrupt the status quo with these technologies.