The Dance of Conflict
When faced with the prospect of meeting with a confrontational employee, the project manager of a New Hampshire insurance company heaved a sigh. Not again, he thought to himself. Every conversation with this guy is a struggle.

The Fantasy: Your marketing budget is packed to the brim with money to help build your dream marketing team. You hire nothing short of the best and life is good.
The Reality: Your staff is overworked, your budget's tight and you complete about half of the projects on your to-do list.

1. Involve them. Many employees want to be involved in the ongoing development and progress of their company. Plus, they often have insightful ideas that can make a significant difference in the company.

If asked to look at your work calendar for the week, the odds are pretty good that you have a few if not several meetings already scheduled. Now, if asked how you feel about attending some of those meetings, the odds are even better that you may either roll your eyes, groan or mutter something under your breath. Sound familiar so far? Okay, that was the easy part.

I'm often asked, "Why is my team always fighting fires instead of preparing for changes?" Finding the answer may take some digging. Here are a few possibilities. Team members:
* assume others are already aware of changes and problems.
* have trouble determining what information is significant to share.
* perceive that they have limited opportunities to exchange information.
* are reluctant to bring up problems for fear of being labeled as "doom-sayers."

What's the Secret Ingredient That Turns Groups into Teams?Working together building and maintaining long-term team relationships is the key behavior and skill of the most effective people in any organization.
Mutual Trust is the secret ingredient that turns groups into teams. It leads to cooperation, productivity, faster problem solving, loyalty and high morale.
Some of the key elements that create trust:

It's frustrating when your co-workers, audience members, teenager or even your dog (!) won't listen. While you can't control how they receive what you say, you can control how you send it. Here are a few tips on why people don't listen and what you can do to change it.
1. Short Attention Spans

Once you've set a goal for yourself as a leader - whether it is to create your own enterprise, energize your organization, build a church, or excel in sports - the challenge is to find good people to help you accomplish that goal. Gathering a successful team of people is not only helpful, it's necessary.
So to guide you in this daunting task of picking the right people, I'm going to share with you a four-part checklist.

At a time when many companies are scaling down their marketing budgets, big design firms are finding it harder to win new clients and projects. Things maybe tough for the larger design firms, but the situation could be ideal for freelancers and other smaller boutique operations that can operate virtually.