Interestingly, successful business managers are not that much different than world class athletes (physical prowess aside). They share one characteristic that separates them from others in their field: managing pressure. For this reason, we can learn a great deal from our World Cup and other sports heroes and how they deal with pressure. Here are five tips for maintaining your athletic mojo when faced with high pressure situations. (Inc.)
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By now we’re all familiar with the plight of the millennial generation, those born after 1980. They owe the bulk of America’s $1 trillion in student debt. They have little or no savings. A third still live at home with their parents. Those with jobs are often underemployed and underpaid. Not only have they delayed the typical trappings of adulthood – marriage, home, kids – they may be stuck in perpetual adolescence. (Businessweek)
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Angry? You could call a friend and vent. You could punch a pillow or break a plate. Or you could even record a rant on a website like RantRampage.com. Unfortunately, you may be doing more harm than good; research has found that venting actually makes your anger worse. (Fast Company)
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More success tends to create more of everything else – more meetings, more projects, more decisions, more items on your to-do list. But often doing more can mean achieving less. That's why subtraction can be the best addition, especially when you streamline your workday and, in the process, your professional life. Instead of doing a total professional makeover, the easiest way is to start small. So try a few of these. (Inc.)
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Many of us don’t like to say no to a coworker or a boss – for instance, when the boss asks for a tighter deadline, or a team member needs a longer one – because we’re worried about damaging the relationship. That’s because it often feels synonymous with confrontation. And whether you are conflict-averse or conflict-ready, your counterpart may not always handle hearing no the way you’d hoped. (Harvard Business Review)
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You can have your interview materials rehearsed and ready to blow them away, but it's the sound of your voice that could be holding you back. Try recording yourself speaking, and check for these common habits of speech that are proven to undermine your words. (Fast Company)
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Kelly Sortino had a tough time recalling what she'd accomplished at the end of each hectic workday. Her job as head of the upper school for the Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, Calif., often required working 12-hour days, including weekends and evenings. She enjoyed the work but worried that she wasn't accomplishing everything she needed to. (The Wall Street Journal)
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When it comes to the gender and ethnic diversity of its work force, Facebook‘s record is on par with the rest of Silicon Valley. It’s overwhelmingly male, white and Asian. And white men dominate the management ranks. (The New York Times)
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Google recently disclosed its unsurprising lack of employee diversity, reporting that its staff is 70% male and 61% white. In a blog post about their diversity efforts, Google’s SVP of People Operations Laszlo Bock provided some details on how they plan to build a more diverse workforce – like working with historically black colleges to build more robust computer science programs, for example. (Fast Company)
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E-commerce companies and banks in China are scrapping hardware and uninstalling software for mainframe servers made by American suppliers in favor of homegrown brands said to be safe, advanced and a lot less expensive. (MarketWatch)
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If headlines translated into trading volumes, the yuan would be well on its way to dominating the world’s currency markets. It once again graced front pages this week after moves to lift its status in London, the world’s biggest foreign-exchange market. This was the latest installment of a five-year-long public-relations campaign. Since 2009, when China first declared its intention to promote the yuan internationally, a string of announcements and milestones has cast the Chinese currency as a putative rival to the dollar. (The Economist)
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Who earns more, a recent graduate from a flagship state university with a bachelor's degree or one who finishes a two-year program at a little-known community college? The answer isn't so clear. As states for the first time mine graduates' salary data from public colleges, they are finding that paychecks for holders of associate degrees in a technical field are outstripping many grads with four-year degrees, at least early in a career. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Prospective business students taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will now be able to preview their unofficial scores before deciding whether to report or cancel them. The change, announced today (June 25) by the Graduate Management Admission Council, will take effect on Friday, June 27. (Poets & Quants)
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Every so often we find ourselves in all sorts of quandaries. It’s simply a part of life’s course. Join NBMBAA® as we provide practical steps to reset, refocus and recalibrate your reality and navigate the everyday compromises, sacrifices and adjustments across the eco-system of life.

The next NBMBAA Regional Symposium takes place July 17 at the Chicago Cultural Center. Tickets are $35 for students and $50 for members. Non-Members can attend at a special early bird rate of $75 until July 7. Tickets are limited, so register today!

 

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Samsung introduced new software for its tablets, called the Magazine UX. This was a revamped interface that resembled the table of contents in a magazine, allowing users to click directly into videos and articles. Manufacturers often apply their own design flourishes to Android, and this one looked good – not groundbreaking, maybe – but slick, intuitive, and completely unobjectionable. (Businessweek)
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A swift rise in competition from China threatens an important pillar of Taiwan's economy, according to Barclays: the tech hardware industry. Taiwan is home to global brands including smartphone manufacturer HTC, PC maker Acer and dozens of Apple component makers and has long been a world leader in tech hardware manufacturing. (CNBC)
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Here’s a sign the economy’s on a good track: More small business owners plan to take a full week off this summer than in any year since the recession began. That’s according to a survey by American Express (AXP) OPEN that suggests entrepreneurs are feeling more confident about the economy. AmEx’s Small Business Monitor survey shows that 60 percent of respondents are planning a one-week vacation this summer, the highest since 2006. (Businessweek)
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Got a business concept you know is a winner? NBMBAA's Innovation Whiteboard Challenge gives you the chance to put your pitch to the test by giving you a whiteboard and five minutes to sell your idea to a panel of experts. But to win big, you have to get in the game and that means uploading a 60-second video and your application by July 15.
Find Out More and Submit Your Video Today!

 

It’s difficult to accurately predict the future, but not impossible to see where it’s headed. Seventy-five years ago at the New York World’s Fair, for example, the public glimpsed a relatively new and unknown technology called television. Most people didn’t know what to make of it. The New York Times yawned, saying "The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it." Today, we are no better at predicting the future, but we are much better at spotting trends and recognizing where they can lead. (MarketWatch)
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On the morning of March 20, Shanesha Taylor had a job interview. It was for a good job, one that could support her three children, unlike the many positions she’d applied for that paid only $10 an hour. The interview, at an insurance agency in Scottsdale, Ariz., went well. "Walking out of the office, you know that little skip thing people do?" she said, clicking her heels together in a corny expression of glee. "I wanted to do that." (The New York Times)
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Dustin Taylor, who’s burdened with $50,000 of student debt after getting his master’s degree in government at Johns Hopkins University, is waiting tables at a comedy club to pay the rent. Taylor said his desire to get a mortgage to buy a home within five years is no joke. (Bloomberg)
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If you want to make extra money, you might consider getting a second job or paring back your budget. Both are smart strategies, but first consider whether you have any bad money habits you need to curb. After all, if you're always paying bills late and getting hammered with late fees, that may be what's draining your bank account. (Daily Finance)
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According to a survey released Wednesday by Discover Student Loans , as student loan debt nears record highs, more parents are just saying no when it comes to helping their kids pay off student loans. While 58% of parents in 2013 said they were very likely or somewhat likely to help out with student loan payments, just 52% said that this year – the lowest percentage since the survey began three years ago (it was 55% in 2012). (MarketWatch)
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I've never been very good at saving. I'm a spender – shoes, trips, nights out, you name it. It's a fact that became especially apparent to me when I found myself saddled with $10,000 of credit card debt after graduating from college. (Daily Finance)
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Some small and midsize companies that brought manufacturing back to the U.S. in recent years have found it a bumpy road. Shortages of skilled workers are a common problem, as are difficulties navigating complex regulatory systems that govern modern American manufacturing. (The Wall Street Journal)
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RJ Dourney learned his first lesson about being the top boss of a public company exactly five minutes after Cosi Inc. announced March 18 that he would run the struggling sandwich chain. A worried investor sent him an email to say that his Cosi stake was an important one for his family. "Protect this investment," the small shareholder implored. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Who will lead the fractured European Union for the next five years? That question has caused weeks of bickering, but finally a decision must be made. In Brussels, Europe's leaders are gathering to vote on the next president of the European Commission, a month after the European election revealed huge cracks in the bloc. (CNN International)
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I’m just amazed at how often people don’t take the time to listen. All the technology we have has facilitated our ability to know about things and to be productive, but it does sometimes decrease the ability to listen and to be effective. (The New York Times)
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In the movie Casablanca, there’s a famous scene where Captain Renault, the head of the French police, avoids investigating the murder of a Nazi officer by telling his people to "round up the usual suspects." The implication, of course, is that everyone should look busy and professional, even if the routine doesn’t really accomplish anything. (Harvard Business Review)
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You've got a problem at work and you can't stop thinking about it once you get home. It fouls your mood, distracts you from paying good attention to the important people in your life, and possibly even keeps you up at night. If this is a habit of yours, be encouraged – you can stop, no matter how thorny your work situation is. (Inc.)
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