While visiting relatives in our hometown of Tulsa last week, I found myself on kitchen duty with my brother-in-law one afternoon. Cleaning the kitchen during the holidays is somewhat like trying to hit a moving target, because the activity never really ends — it just reaches a lull between two peaks.
But we eventually conquered the task, and with a final triumphant flourish I closed the door of the dishwasher and bent down to start the machine. When I hesitated for a moment to familiarize myself with the settings, my brother-in-law …

In her Shifting Careers blog this week, Marci Alboher shares an interesting self-assessment exercise. It is designed by career coach Michael Melcher (aka The Creative Lawyer) for people who are searching for passion in their careers.
According to Melcher, many of his clients don’t know what they want to do with their careers; they may have multiple interests and don’t know how to choose among them. They may have done so much self-analysis that they can “speak very fluently about the issues but find it difficult to make actual decisions.”
One way …

 
Do you see the dancer spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise?

 
If clockwise, then you are using the right side of your brain.
If counter-clockwise, then you are using the left side of your brain.
I have no idea about the scientific validity of this test, but it is true that people see it differently. I’m curious to know if you think it is accurate — please leave a comment.
Generally speaking, left brain thinkers are more objective, analytical, and logical. Right-brain thinkers tend to be more perceptive, empathetic, and imaginative.
Knowing your personality preferences …

When I wrote about sociable introverts last spring, I never imagined it would become one of the most popular posts on this blog. Even to this day, that post sometimes gets more hits than my current posts. There is much more interest in how introverts guide their careers than I ever imagined.
One of the biggest challenges for introverts is self-promotion. While self-promotion seems natural and normal for most extroverts, many introverts dislike self-promotion because they is draws too much attention to themselves. Self-promotion, however, is a key component of …

A recent study conducted by Dr. Nathan Bowling at Wright State University found that personality can be an effective predictor of job performance success. A couple of excerpts from the findings follow:
I’ve often debated with fellow graduate students and managers over the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction. Are employees satisfied at work because they perform at a high level? Or do employees perform at a high level because they are satisfied at work? Prevailing wisdom is that high performance follows job satisfaction, though there …

Thanks to the Be Excellent blog for pointing me to this article in Entrepreneur Magazine. In the article, Robert Kiyosaki stresses that businesses need to hire people with a passion for their mission.
Hiring the right people — the people with the right passion — is one of the toughest jobs for any business. But maybe not the toughest. The toughest job may be getting rid of the wrong people. Hiring for skills will get an organization only so far. Hiring for passion will help the organization excel.
Kiyosaki says his …

At a seminar I was attending recently, we were asked to divide ourselves into groups of self-described extroverts and introverts. Several people were surprised when I joined the introverts group. They pointed out that throughout the seminar, they had observed me

approaching strangers to introduce myself,
initiating conversations,
asking questions during the session, and
volunteering to speak before the group.

Surely, then, I must be an extrovert.
But not so fast… What they don’t know about me is that after the seminar I need to have some “alone” time to recharge. Whether it is reading, writing, …