First published in 1989, Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was life-changing for me in many ways.  I especially appreciated the concept of the Emotional Bank Account, even though it technically isn’t one of the “habits”.

Throughout my life, this simple idea of relationship “deposits” and “withdrawals” has helped me monitor the way I interact with others to ensure that my interpersonal “ledger sheet” is just as healthy as my financial one.

Not too long ago, there was a situation in my household where one of my children fibbed to me prior to bedtime. The next day, after discovering the truth of the situation, I found myself ever-so-slightly less trusting of answers being given from said child. I was shocked at my hasty conclusion– surely one fib does not a liar make! Luckily, I was able to recall the Emotional Bank Account and use the simple analogy to help the fibber understand that there had been a decrease in our Mother/Child trust account.

Yes, the “withdrawal” in the example above was small, but it reminded me how quickly our interpersonal resources can be ...

A few unique job interview tips to make you the one they want.

This is a guest post by Thomas Taylor. If you’d also like to guest post here on JobMob, follow these guest post guidelines.

Job interviewers read and hear so many clich?s these days that they just about walk and talk in their sleep during the recruitment process. No more “I should get the job because I’m honest, hardworking, and reliable” — it’s time to say something different if you want to them hire you.

In job interviews, you’ve not just got to talk the talk. You’ve got to walk the walk. Here’s how with these unique job interview tips.

1) Give examples

It’s more than likely that you’ll never have met the interviewer. Somehow, though, you have to convince them that you’re the person for the job.

How?

You prove you’re not just blowing hot air, by supporting your answers with examples: of problems you’ve solved, of (good) results, of how you’ve turned things around in some way (if that’s the case).

Show that you understand the job requirements. Demonstrate that you know about the sector by highlighting key ...

Recognize This! – Innovation is not just the big, market-transforming end result, but the little ideas along the way.

What’s the most powerful word in business today? Innovation.

Read any blog, any news source, any prospectus and you will quickly stumble over “innovation.” How the company pursues innovation, how innovative the products are, how “innovation” is a core value of the company. And this is all well and good – innovation truly is what propels industries and markets ever forward.

But the real question smart companies should be encouraging every employee, in every role, to ask is: “What can I do, in what I do every day, to be more innovative? How can I innovate our product, our service approach, to better serve our customers, change the market, or push the company forward?”

Unfortunately, too many people think innovation is too big for them or “not in my job description.” I believe that’s because we as leaders have failed to explain what real innovation actually looks like. David Steinberg, chief executive of XL Marketing, gives a much better definition of innovation in a recent New York Times ...

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by Allied Van Lines, a leader in the moving and storage industry with more than 75 years of experience. For a second year, they are championing a research project, Allied HRIQ, aimed to provide business professionals with data on current workforce trends. I’m honored to be working with Allied again and hope you find the information interesting.)

A few months ago, Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting. The response uproar backlash was swift. Experts from everywhere said telecommuting is essential to employee satisfaction and engagement. Some said this was the first sign of the apocalypse. All right – you caught me. No one really said that … but you would have thought the world was coming to an end given all the media attention.

Let me toss an idea out there. Maybe telecommuting isn’t the utopia we think it is. Or that it’s been hyped up to be.

By definition, telecommuting is when employees do not travel to a central place of work. Telecommuting is also referred to as telework or remote work. Typically when a person telecommutes, they’re working from home. So ...

Tucked away in Monday’s NYTimes business section is a highly significant—no, immensely practical—recommendation. The article by Nick Bilton initially describes the work practices of Robin Sloan, a former media manager at Twitter. As you can imagine, Sloan once taught news outlets how to use the hottest social media tools. But does Mr. Sloan follow his own recommendations? NOPE! He owns an old Nokia phone with just one application: making phone calls. He also takes notes with pen, paper and notepad. And—he reads books printed on paper—not the Kindle or the IPad.

It may be technical heresy, but it’s a very smart way of living your work life. Sloan found that his IPhone and other technologies were getting in the way of his book writing, so he simply got rid of them. I found it was more important and more productive for me to be daydreaming and jotting down notes. I needed my idle minutes to contribute to the story I was doing, not checking my e-mail , or checking tweets.

So I asked my Millennial protégé, a highly responsible project manager, about his use of gadgets. “I use my phone for talking and ...