Douglas Ross explore the links between problems, growth and integrity; and the choice of whether to see your problems as a curse or a blessing.

How many times have you regretted an impulsive action — but realized the error too late? How often have you found that, after jumping in like that, you maybe didn’t get the whole story or see the complete picture? Are you obsessed with the feeling that you need to do something, so you shut down collecting information in favor of acting on the little you already know — or think you do. Peter Vajda has some important questions to ask anyone with a knee-jerk, reactive response to engage in some way, rather than take enough time to listen first.

While not necessarily perfect, today’s corporations do in fact offer far greater opportunities for women to achieve influential leadership positions than any other time in our history. And these trends seem as though they will continue. But, as with anything else, don’t wait for society or a corporation to ‘make things right’ on their own. Take responsibility for your circumstances and proactively request what you genuinely believe you deserve.

Kath Lockett can’t stand the thought of wearing her ID card on a lanyard around her neck and joining all the other ‘lanyard losers’. But even she has to give in eventually. So much for being a contrarian!

The Prussian general Von Moltke famously said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. There doesn’t need to be a literal enemy for this to be true of other sectors also. The real challenge for an organization is how it deals with the unexpected, bearing in mind that the unexpected is the one thing that always happens. These days, most organizations, with their cultures of central command and micro-management, don’t deal with it very well. John Fletcher explains one reason why.

Many managers, supervisors and employees have become conflict-averse. The corporate culture demands an environment where all are in agreement, always smiling and saying “yes”. Yet all leaders have a responsibility to foster dissent in the organization, since conflict is the genesis of creativity. It’s also how you get people engaged. No conflict, no passion; all that ‘niceness’ leaves people feeling little or no interest in the outcome.

In Part 3 of her series of tips on how to de-stress yourself and manage demands in all areas of your life, Kath Lockett looks at steps 6, 7 and 8: eating only quality food, learning to meditate, and blowing your cares away through cardio-vascular exercise. These are all good ways to find better physical, as well as mental, balance and clear out the stress hormones your body will have created when stress comes along.

Does your leading, managing and supervising performance and behavior provide cause for celebration on this Fourth of July? Here’s a not-quite-lighthearted quiz from Peter Vajda to help you find out.

The three essential steps in leadership can all be defined by the act of looking: first within, then to the future, and finally behind, to see who is willing to follow you. Do this, again and again, and you won’t go far wrong.

Life in the 21st Century should be getting easier to manage, not harder. Our working hours have increased in line with jobs being vacated but not filled, and employers expecting overtime as the norm instead of the exception. All of which is leaving us with less time for anything else but work. Do we have to stick with this gloomy way of living? Maybe there is another way.