Articles of Interest • Newsletter | Podcast | Video Recommendations • Job Lead (January 28, 2025)

Articles of Interest have a limited window where you can read for free: 

• How To Maintain Work-Life Balance—And What Companies Can Do To Help (Jack Kelly, Forbes, January 23, 2025)

The article discusses the importance of maintaining work-life balance and what companies can do to support it.

• 9 Positive Character Traits You Should Show Whenever You Speak (The Genard Method, Gary Genard, January 26, 2025)

Articles of Interest • Podcast and Newsletter Recommendations (January 26, 2025)

All three Articles of Interest have a limited window where you can read for free: 

• How positive leadership changes culture (Washington Post, January 14, 2025)

The article focuses on the turnaround by owner Josh Harris of the NFC Championship Finalist Washington Commanders.

• Deciding if a management role is right for you (Fast Company, January 23, 2025)

The article offers guidance for individuals contemplating a managerial role. It emphasizes the importance of self-reflection to determine if management aligns with one's skills and career aspirations.

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Forbes, January 22, 2025)

The article emphasizes the importance of embracing change and continuous learning to achieve ongoing success. 

Podcast Recommendation 

• Jon Gordon Podcast: Your Circle Determines Your Future - Check it out at https://tinyurl.com/3vmwpmyt.

Newsletter Recommendation

• Sports Marketing and PR Pros Smart Brief - Sign up today to receive it at 

smartbrief.com/smpr/?referrerId=gGdcANcVaO

Articles of Interest (January 23, 2025)

 

Articles of Interest:

• The Power of Small Commitments—How They Lead to Big Change (Cory Gregory, January 23, 2025)

The article focuses on the critical distinction between being interested and being committed when pursuing goals. 

• Overcoming analysis paralysis with a decision grid (Elbin Group via HERC SmartBrief for the Higher Ed Leader, January 23, 2025)

The article provides real-life examples of decision grids used for career choices and relocation decisions, demonstrating the tool's effectiveness in clarifying options and preventing indecision. By systematically evaluating options against defined criteria, you can make well-informed decisions without becoming overwhelmed.

Articles of Interest (January 22, 2025)

Articles of Interest:

• Communicating in Classrooms: How Brands Can Approach Partnering With Schools (PR News, January 21, 2025)

The article explores the evolving landscape of brand partnerships within K-12 educational settings. 

• How leaders can solve their organization’s creative deficit (HERC Smart Brief/Leadership, January 22, 2025)

The article emphasizes that fostering creativity within an organization is a leadership responsibility, not merely a cultural attribute.

• Mistakes to Avoid During a Crisis (Claire Doan, O'Dwyer's E-Mail Newsletter, January 22, 2025)

The article outlines critical errors organizations often make in crisis situations and offers guidance on how to navigate them effectively.

Editor note: I have recently started to read and receive the O'Dwyer's E-mail Newsletter to further enhance my skills in media and public relations. Check it out. 

Articles of Interest (January 21, 2025)

Articles of Interest:

• 3 Ways To Age-Proof Your Resume & LinkedIn Profile (Cheryl Simpson / Jenna Arcand, October 17, 2024)

The article offers strategies for minimizing age-related biases in job applications. It emphasizes the importance of updating your LinkedIn profile picture to convey energy and professionalism, removing dates from your education listings to prevent assumptions about your age, and omitting employment dates prior to 2000 to focus on recent experience. These steps can help in reducing the likelihood of age discrimination during the hiring process.

Read more at https://tinyurl.com/2k4bcst9

• The Business of Your Life (Cory Gregory, January 21, 2025)
The article emphasizes the importance of treating one's life with the same diligence and structure as a business. It suggests that individuals should assess their personal affairs, identify areas of chaos or disorganization, and implement strategies to streamline and improve these aspects. By doing so, one can achieve greater efficiency, productivity, and overall satisfaction in life.

Read more at https://tinyurl.com/5yr6cxt7

• Work It Daily Newsletter (January 21, 2025) - J.T. O'Donnell - CEO, Work It Daily

How to Leverage Your Feed for Career Change

Think of your LinkedIn feed as your live portfolio.
Start sharing insights, analysis, and thoughts about the industry you want to enter. Comment on relevant trends, engage with industry leaders, and showcase your understanding of the field's challenges and opportunities. This accomplishes two crucial things:
1. It provides evidence of your knowledge and capabilities in your target field
2. It helps you appear in recruiters' searches thanks to LinkedIn's algorithm, which picks up on the consistent themes in your content

January 20, 2025 – Daily Email Routine • Articles of Interest • New Product

Read more about my morning e-mail routine.

Morning E-mails (January 20, 2025)

Each day, I receive a series of emails that inspire and support my personal and professional growth. These include:

1. The Daily Verse - Provides daily spiritual inspiration.
2. Minute with Maxwell - Offers leadership insights from John Maxwell.
3. Keep Chopping Wood, Kevin DeShazo - Delivers motivational and practical content for personal growth.
4. D1/D2/D3/NAIA.Ticker - Provides updates on collegiate athletics across various divisions.

Through these emails, I am actively listening, learning, and reading to foster your personal and professional development.

Confidence Runs Your World (Cory Gregory, January 20, 2025)

Summary:
The article emphasizes the crucial role of confidence in shaping personal success and achievement. Cory discusses how confidence is the foundation for taking action, making decisions, and overcoming challenges. He highlights that confidence is not about being arrogant or perfect but about believing in one's abilities and staying resilient in the face of setbacks.

Begin with Trust (Harvard Business Review, May 4, 2020)

Summary:

The authors argue that leaders must actively build trust with their teams to foster engagement, productivity, and resilience—especially in times of crisis.

Blanchard and O'Connor outline key principles for leaders to establish and maintain trust:

1. Credibility: Leaders must consistently act in ways that demonstrate their competence and reliability.
2. Transparency: Open communication about decisions, challenges, and uncertainties builds trust and helps teams feel included and informed.
3. Consistency: Acting with integrity and consistency, especially in difficult times, strengthens trust and allows teams to rely on their leaders.
4. Empathy: Understanding and addressing the needs and concerns of team members enhances mutual respect and trust.

New Product: Former Athlete Society (Adam Ringler, January 20, 2025)

Adam Ringler, an Assistant Athletic Director of Sport Performance at Colorado University, has started a new initiative, "Former Athlete Society." He explains that it is: A dedicated online community for former college athletes looking to reclaim their fitness, performance, and competitive edge. With tailored education, expert support, and a like-minded community, it’s your ultimate playbook for thriving after sports.

Interested? Click here to visit.

Need a quick way to measure belonging on your team? (Leaders Lens, January 20, 2025)

Summary: 

The article highlights the importance of belonging for team cohesion and performance, suggesting that leaders can quickly assess this through surveys, conversations, and feedback loops. The article emphasizes the need for regular check-ins to gauge team members' feelings of inclusion, safety, and support. It also recommends using tools like pulse surveys and specific questions during one-on-one meetings to track changes in belonging over time. These strategies help leaders identify issues early and create a more inclusive environment for team members.

Articles of Interest (January 19, 2025)

• 7 Trends That Will Shape HR - AI's Impact on Talent Strategy (SHRM: January 7, 2025)
https://sidassistant.blogspot.com/2025/01/7-trends-that-will-shape-hr-in-2025.html

• Saturday Blueprint With Michael Lombardi (The Daily Coach: January 18, 2025)
https://sidassistant.blogspot.com/2025/01/saturday-blueprint-with-michael.html

• How to pave a promotion path year-round (CNBC, January 9, 2025)
https://sidassistant.blogspot.com/2025/01/how-to-pave-promotion-path-year-round.html

How to pave a promotion path year-round (CNBC, January 9, 2025)

Takeaways

1. Look for natural moments to signal your ambitions outside of a dedicated sit-down.
2. Frame your compensation discussion around “alignment” or “reflecting current responsibilities.

Saturday Blueprint With Michael Lombardi (The Daily Coach: January 18, 2025)

Quotes from the Article of Interest:

1. "So much of the problem with assessment comes back to a lack of direction. If you don’t define who you intend to be, how can you ever figure out what’s wrong with your organization? Without that clarity, you’re just lost—making really good time, but going nowhere."

2. "You’ve got to create a sense of belonging so people can take coaching, not criticism. Building a team is a spiritual challenge—it’s about creating a connection that’s bigger than any one person. It’s a profound communion between people, tied to a purpose greater than themselves. When you have that, you can assess the team. Without it, you’re building on shaky ground. You might be right; you might be wrong, but there’s no real foundation."

3. "Building a winning culture comes down to these three core areas: devotion versus loyalty, accountability versus responsibility, and being on the same page versus alignment. If you don’t have these worked out—if you haven’t clearly defined them and built your organization around them—you have no chance of building a championship team, no matter how much talent you have. But when you focus on these principles, you create the right culture. And when you create the right culture, the right people will follow."

7 Trends That Will Shape HR in 2025 (SHRM, January 14, 2025)

 

AI’s Impact on Talent Strategy

As AI usage becomes ever more ubiquitous, an increasing number of organizations are harnessing this still-evolving technology to transform talent acquisition. However, that’s a relatively recent development—of the 1 in 4 organizations that use AI to support HR-related tasks, nearly two-thirds only began doing so in 2023, according to SHRM’s 2024 Talent Trends: Artificial Intelligence in HR report. 

In other words, most organizations have yet to tap into AI’s vast number of potential applications. Those who are, though, most commonly put AI into play to support recruitment, interviewing, and hiring by streamlining or increasing efficiency. What does that look like in practice?

• Nearly 2 in 3 companies use AI to develop job descriptions.

• More than 42% use it to customize or target job postings to specific groups.

• Around two-thirds use AI to review or screen applicant resumes, communicate with applicants during the interview process, or automate candidate searches. 

“By streamlining these tasks, we’re really seeing employees who feel they’re able to be more efficient and effective, and as a result, they’re more engaged,” Link says.

The use of AI can also be a boon to improving diversity in the applicant pool, SHRM’s research shows, with nearly 30% of companies reporting that AI allows them to better tap into underrepresented talent networks.

In addition to talent acquisition, HR professionals are drawing on AI to increase and encourage workforce knowledge and development, identify gaps in employee knowledge, and track employees’ learning and development progress.

“The best employers today are basically offering very large learning management systems (LMSs) so people can tackle any type of learning that they want to have,” Link says.

That is key, he explains, because many younger employees are no longer content to wait years to gain exposure to certain skills or experiences. Employers that give these workers the knowledge they seek may be able to hang onto them longer.