There are a few kinds of people we might regularly find in a group setting or common work environment. If you watch carefully, you’ll recognize assertive people, aggressive people, and passive people. An assertive person establishes boundaries and states opinions while respecting others. The assertive person is open about what they personally need. An aggressive…

You are assertive and the people around you are aggressive or passive. Yes, you can deal with them while remaining stress free, and keeping your cool. TIP: People experience different levels of assertiveness, passivity, and even aggression during different circumstances and times in their lives.  6 Tips on Dealing with Aggressive People You can call…

You’ve had a great success: the project came in 3 months early and under budget; the team rallied like it never had before; the client sent a letter to the CEO congratulating him on a job well done and the quality of his employees; and you received a bonus. Boy, are you depressed?! First, you…

When talking about SMaRT (Stress Management and Resilience Training) we don’t offer magic beans, magic pills, or magic wands.  We’re not about the superficial bandaids and coping methods that make our lives and situations seem better for the moment.  It’s about finding long-term, permanent solutions that build us up from the inside out while reducing…

Necessity may keep you going at work and in your personal life, but necessity is a demanding master. If everything you do is because you are forced to do it by circumstances, your stress and anger builds. Your ability to reach a goal despite obstacles—your grit—disappears when you are not interested in (and my actively…

Fear interferes with productivity and innovation in the workplace. Leaders face fear when dealing with a difficult client, handling tension on the team, asking for a raise, giving a presentation, worrying about the permanence of their job: any number of situations may engender fear. Fear in a leader causes intense stress, a lack of concentration,…

You feel stuck. No matter what you do you can’t seem to get ahead.  You work hard to fill the schedule only to have it fall apart. Paid marketing attempts fail to bring in the new clients you so desperately need.  The nanny you recently hired is already showing signs of not being the right…

Working together as a group, whether at work or at home, presents challenges in scheduling, resources, motivation, and type of experience. The group size, diversity, interdependence, and trust also influence the ability of the group to work together. If you add the need to solve a problem on top of already difficult group dynamics, you…

Problem-solving is easier if you have a way to determine the complexity of the problem and a set of rules to guide you. The following approaches and rules work for both personal and professional problems. Once you have defined the problem, knowing the complexity helps you to determine how much help you need, how quickly…

The solutions we come up with to handle personal and professional problems have one common denominator: they are risky—the chief risk is that they may fail and leave us worse off than before. Therefore, we lean toward solutions that may not be the most effective or even the most in line with our goals, but…