The past 2 years is a lot – whether you are an employee or an employer. It’s made many of us think about what we want in life, work and for our families in a way we may not have done so previously.

“The Great Resignation” is one of the most topical conversations for business owners in the past 6 months, and for good reason. Without employees, we don’t have a business.

Everyone wants to work under trustworthy leadership, but it can be hard to know exactly what that looks like. More often than not, it comes down to communication. Communication is an essential tool for a good leader. Whether they are communicating business successes or failures, the information must be shared in an open and safe environment for your employees to ask as many questions as they need. This is what trust looks like, and we all know that trust can’t be bought. Below, we have a few great ways to build trust with effective leadership communications.

We've all encountered a sociopath whether we have realized it or not. Most of us have had the unfortunately task of realizing long after the storm has cleared that we've been played by a sociopath and we are left to clean up the mess.

When trying to identify whether or not someone is a sociopath, it's harder than you think. We are all human and we all make mistakes - that's a fact. We all display different traits at different times, that has even the most observant of us all wondering whether we too could be inflicted by different mental health issues that taint who we are.

But the reality is much simplier than that. A good sales person spends their lives manipulating people to buy from them. Their ability to manipulate is second to none, so are they are sociopath? The answer isn't so simple.

Being a sociopath is a mental condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating people, exploiting them and/or violating the rights of others.

You want that damn promotion! You really do. You work 9 to 5 pm and have been with the company long enough. You do your job. So, why have you been overlooked?

Re-thinking how we do business and why we do business has been an exciting adventure. The fact that we realized that we have been a little laid back with a lot of things, has been an eye-opener. We all are committed as a team in Atlanta to build the business to heights that we never imagined possible and we are all going to do that by thinking differently - and often.

Waking up today, I have to say, I am feeling quite nostalgic about Atlanta and all it means to me over the past 5 years.

I came here with little or no expectations, just a desire to try something new. From there, and the people I met, something ticked. For many Atlanta appears from the outset to be quite sleepy, but once you cut through the leafy streets, and the urban sprawl, there is so much more depth.

If you run a marketing team, you will realise a few things; firstly that no marketing team can be all the same, and secondly, a mixture of personalities and skills is required for optimum performance. When choosing a team, it's best to steer away from selecting people just like you, or like another person who you rate as being a good marketer on your team. The reason is simple; a strong, competent, successful marketing team has to have a mixture of personalities that collaborate, support, encourage, nurture and push each other to reach their full potential both individually and as a team.

While this may seem idealistic, it's a reality for any competent marketing manager who has the 'balls' to think outside the box when they are putting together a team of people to take a company to the next level.

I found myself recently in a situation where in any normal situation, you would fire an employee who was responsible for a particular function in the business, and did not perform and was not achieving results. More than that, while their attitude was fine, they didn't put in extra effort nor did they 'think' about what they were doing on a day to day basis.

No matter how much coaching or development that took place, nothing changed.

They say that jealousy is a curse. I tend to agree. It hinders your judgement and affects your ability to see clearly - and that's just the start.

The green-eyed monster is a mental cancer (B.C. Forbes quote), and can be a huge culture killer, leaving employees that are affected by it disengaged and unproductive.

With a growing business there are pains, and sometimes things happen that are beyond our control.

Our Sydney office experiences an exponential inflow of leads every single day. We are completely miffed as to why we receive so many Sydney based leads from our social media and website, and as such, we need to employ more people.

In the recruitment process, we have received a lot of applicants, though honestly, we should have gone back to the original applications we received 6 months ago, who may not have re-applied this time around. With the quality of applicants in June last year was much higher than the quality we are receiving today.