We’re happy to announce our second Content Roundup Section. We’ve scoured the web to find the best blog posts about leadership, improving your life, and career advancement. Check it out and let us know some of your favorite posts from May.

Switch And Shift

Want to know the key to leadership success? Switch And Shift breakdown some of the factors to help you have leadership success.

“Some define a good leader as someone who can attract followers, and this rings true to a point. But a leader and her followers need to know where they’re headed, or they’ll wander aimlessly.

To be a true leader, you must be committed, pay attention to detail, and stay focused on your company’s core goals. Without a steadfast sense of direction, your goals become blurred, and slowly but surely, your company loses momentum.”

Leader Chat

What should you do when a key component of your identity decides to take a break? How do you improve your motivation to get it back? Leader Chat has some great advice to follow.

“The end-of-race medal is a great goal to work towards—but if I’m to keep running, I need to find a kind of motivation that isn’t external. It’s not because of the promise of a piece of “race bling.” It’s because the only person who can fully motivate me—is me!”

Leading With Trust

An organization is only as good as its employees and its products. Having a team of highly motivated and engaged employees is what most managers dream of. So, how do you create that ‘Dream Team’? Randy Conley says this:

“Trust is the foundation of any successful, healthy, thriving relationship and it’s essential to your success as a leader. Research by Gallup has indicated that a person’s relationship with his or her direct manager is the leading factor influencing employee engagement and that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.”

Skip Prichard

Skip breaks down what the difference between what being helpful is and being a coach is. That includes learning about active listening and how to do it right.

“Almost everyone knows the basics of active listening. The problem is that this has given rise to FAL: fake active listening. That’s when you put your head to the side, nod occasionally, look concerned, and make small “nonverbal” noises of encouragement — all the time while thinking of something else completely.”

Orrin Woodward Leadership

How do we become a leader? Orrin dives into the conundrum of Freedom and Force, and how it makes someone a leader.

“It is unfortunately none too well understood that in a free society leadership is freely given by followers, not physically coerced by the leader. All the alleged power of the leader, is in fact merely the display of confidence the community has in his ability to take them where they want to go. Therefore, any attempt to physically control the community, whatever else it may be called, should certainly not be labeled leadership. In effect, influence is something a leader earns through his character and competence whereas coercion is the non-leader’s substitute for the lack of the aforementioned qualities.”

CMOE’s Top Blog Post For May

A Nonverbal Communication Cheat Sheet

Fifty-five percent of communication is nonverbal. What if there was a way to know exactly what someone is saying without them actually having to say it? We’ve come up with a nonverbal communication cheat sheet to help.

“Poor communication in a company can create frustration, problems, and distrust between coworkers. Learning how to effectively communicate can remedy those problems and prevent future problems from arising. While we view communicating primarily as written or spoken, there is another form of communication – nonverbal communication. It can be difficult to diagnose what someone’s body language is actually saying to you, so, we created a nonverbal communication “cheat sheet” to help you out!”