Watching 16 candidates trying to make a good impression while fighting for survival is not only very entertaining (there are lots of tantrums and personality clashes) but is also great for picking up dos and don’ts for your own career or business venture. Read more here.

Many families have one or both parent working outside of them. When parents must work, they often have to stretch to balance working duties with parental duties. Finding time to clean and do household chores can also be a challenge. By planning in advance for such chores, the job is easier. For example, start a tradition of cleaning the home in a deep cleaning every Saturday morning. Also clean up right after meals, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor and taking out the trash. If you don’t clean up right away, these tasks will continue to pile up. Remember to assign chores to children as well and make sure that they help. The job isn’t as hard with more hard. This also teaches children responsibility.

Make sure to schedule in homework time every night. You can make the children do homework right before dinner for example and you can cook and help with homework at the same time. Plan out your meals for the week on Sunday afternoon and do shopping after planning so you only have to go to the store once a week, which will save time.

Make sure to balance duties between you and your spouse to make it fair. Share tasks like starting dinner, cleaning and picking up the kids. Be clear about the duties of each partner so that you don’t fight about the tasks later. If one spouse stays at home, the task of looking after the children might fall on that partner more, but realize that taking care of children is a full-time job.

Being a working parent is a challenge and makes for a hectic schedule, make sure to plan in advance to make life easier.

Stress (n.): A physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation; a state of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium. — Merriam-Webster

Few of us could give a word-for-word definition for stress like the one above, but we certainly know stress when we experience it. Racing nerves, pounding headaches, lower back pain – sound familiar?

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Stress (n.): A physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation; a state of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium. — Merriam-Webster

Few of us could give a word-for-word definition for stress like the one above, but we certainly know stress when we experience it. Racing nerves, pounding headaches, lower back pain – sound familiar?

Indeed, more than two-third of employees claim high stress levels, and 29 percent are too stressed to be effective at work on five or more days per year, reports the annual StressPulse (SM) survey by ComPsych Corporation, the world’s largest provider of employee assistance programs. As the economy continues to sputter, organizations are still doing more with less – and that can take a toll on workers. Employees are reaching a point of unprecedented burnout.

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It’s no amazing revelation to say that the first priority for women is relationships, and for men, getting business. DNA evidence and the roles men still play in our society support that fact. Men have been the hunters, protectors and providers of our clans since the beginning of time. This is not to say female breadwinners are not increasing in number every day as the sole supporters of their families, because they are. But let’s go back to who we are at a primal level.

As the provider, I feel it is my responsibility to bring home the bacon, steak, buffalo — or squirrel, if it has been a very bad day. When I’m bringing that catch home, I’m not trying to build a forever relationship with that meal that I’m hunting. I need to catch it, prepare it for my family and get it home, just like the sales and deals I go after in today’s world.

Unfortunately, we men approach everyone in our networks as if they were our next meal to be slain because we see the processes the same. Today we have to learn to be more relational and less transactional and to plant seeds, like women do, that will provide us with continued business over and over as the years go by. [more...]

Who is more loyal: The 20-year veteran employee who does just enough to get by, criticizes you and your company at work and in public, frequently and not so subtly undermines your decisions… or the employee who’s been there six months, embraces where you want to go, and works his butt off every day to help you and your company get there?

Experience matters, but I’ll take the six-month employee every time.

Loyal employees are loyal to your company. They work hard for their pay and are committed to your company’s success. Loyal employees may someday leave, but while they work for you they do their best and often even put the company’s interests ahead of their own.

Remarkably loyal employees hit the next level. They aren’t just loyal to the company.

They’re also loyal to you—even though their loyalty can be displayed in surprising ways.

Here are six qualities of remarkably loyal employees:

1. They treat you like a person.

Remember when you were in grade school and you ran into your teacher at, say, the grocery store? It was incredibly disconcerting. She wasn’t supposed to exist outside of school. You didn’t see your teacher as someone who wore shorts and had friends and wore a Grateful Dead t-shirt and actually had a life.

Your teacher wasn’t a person; she was a teacher.

Lots of employees see their bosses that way, too. That means they don’t see you as someone with dreams and hopes and insecurities and fears.

You’re not a person; you’re a boss.

Remarkably loyal employees flip the employer-employee relationship: They know you want to help them reach their professional and personal goals and that you want what’s best for them—and they also want what’s best for you, both at work and in your personal life.

They see you as more than just a boss, and they treat you that way.

2. They tell you what you least want to hear.

As a general rule, the more rungs on the ladder that separate you and an employee the less likely that employee will be to disagree with you. For example, your direct reports may sometimes take a different position or even tell you that you’re wrong. Their direct reports are much less likely to state a position other than yours.

And entry-level employees will sing directly from the company songbook, at least when you’re the audience.

Remarkably loyal employees know that you most need to hear what you least want to hear: That your ideas may not work, that your point of view is off, that you made a mistake. They’ll tell you because they know that while you may not care much for what you hear, you care tremendously about doing what is best for your company and your employees.

Many families have one or both parent working outside of them. When parents must work, they often have to stretch to balance working duties with parental duties. Finding time to clean and do household chores can also be a challenge. By planning in advance for such chores, the job is easier. For example, start a tradition of cleaning the home in a deep cleaning every Saturday morning. Also clean up right after meals, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor and taking out the trash. If you don’t clean up right away, these tasks will continue to pile up. Remember to assign chores to children as well and make sure that they help. The job isn’t as hard with more hard. This also teaches children responsibility.

Make sure to schedule in homework time every night. You can make the children do homework right before dinner for example and you can cook and help with homework at the same time. Plan out your meals for the week on Sunday afternoon and do shopping after planning so you only have to go to the store once a week, which will save time.

Make sure to balance duties between you and your spouse to make it fair. Share tasks like starting dinner, cleaning and picking up the kids. Be clear about the duties of each partner so that you don’t fight about the tasks later. If one spouse stays at home, the task of looking after the children might fall on that partner more, but realize that taking care of children is a full-time job.

Being a working parent is a challenge and makes for a hectic schedule, make sure to plan in advance to make life easier.