The key to understanding life at work is to understand the relationship between power, fear and trust. Trust is a strong fuel source for any organization, but it is hard for some leaders to build and hard to maintain trust. It is easier and faster to lead a team through fear than to build trust into a workplace. To build trust, you have to know yourself and you have to tell the truth about things that many leaders don’t like to talk about.

Photo by Steve Dunlop We are intrigued by what makes a successful entrepreneur…what qualities and skillsets must you have in order to build a successful organization and positively impact those working with you? As we pose this question to the entrepreneurs in our network, we see an interesting commonality: Some of the most successful entrepreneurs – think Richard Branson (Virgin), Anita Roddick (Body Shop) and Ingvar Kamprad (Ikea) – have non-traditional learning experiences. Ross Hall, our Director of Education in Europe and a serial entrepreneur with...

Dear Liz, I am in a happy state of shock because I have two job offers at the same time! I am a recent follower of your job search advice. I’ve used three pieces of your advice in my job search and that’s how I got the two job offers I’m considering now. I was job-hunting for six months and I didn’t get even one interview during that time. I completed over 100 online job applications. Even as I was filling out the forms I felt that it was a helpless, useless process.

Silicon Valley has long been known as the capital of technology in the US. Companies like Apple have been there since the 1970s, and anyone looking to launch a technology startup wants to launch in Silicon Valley. It’s difficult to go far in this area without encountering highly educated MBA graduates and technological geniuses. Companies that currently reside there, like Google and Facebook, are known for their work cultures on their campuses.

A look at Asana’s new product, increasingly looking like a platform. (Credit: Asana) Justin Rosenstein says that when he and his cofounder Dustin Moskovitz left Facebook in 2008 to start their company Asana, they asked a simple question: “What if we could make every organization in the world 5% faster?” Eight years later, Asana has emerged as one of the leaders in project management software, helping teams within business track progress on group efforts.

Part of the series “Living and Working Better” Photo Courtesy: iStock Many years ago, in my first job in publishing, I had an amazing boss who mentored, guided and inspired me. I was so new and green, that I felt very vulnerable and insecure about my mastery of the work, but he was always supportive and uplifting, and encouraged me to continue to stretch myself and learn new skills, which I did. Truthfully, I would have done anything for him.

(image credit: Pixabay) Take a look at any successful enterprise and you’ll find innovation at its core. That was just as true a hundred years ago when Henry Ford perfected the assembly line as it is today, when modern day giants like Elon Musk bring cutting edge technology to market. Innovation, as I’ve written before, is how people come up with novel solutions to important problems. The tricky part is that every organization faces different types of challenges.

By Estelle Erasmus, Next Avenue Contributor  I always joke with my husband that I won’t have a midlife crisis because mine was having my now seven-year-old daughter in my forties. After struggling with infertility, I then stayed home to raise her. It was daunting because I had to reinvent every aspect of my life, socially and then professionally. Based on my experience, I have some advice on how you can reinvent yourself after a major life change, too.

We’re beginning to enter an interesting new era of professional work and office culture, but not all businesses are changing at the same speed. For every avant-garde startup in Silicon Valley, pushing the limits of what can be defined as “professionalism,” there’s a corporate, bureaucratic giant fighting tooth and nail to avoid changing the company culture they’ve taken decades to build.

Some people think networking is only useful for finding clients or landing a new job. In fact, an often overlooked benefit of networking is the opportunity to learn from others and connect with people you can bounce new ideas off of. If you are trying to solve a business or career problem, chances are that others have already dealt with it and can offer you good advice. Even if they don’t, simply discussing the issue with others may spark creative ideas.