Ways To Live A Happy, Positive, More Fulfilling Life

Hello from a small writing nook in Kalamazoo where all the walls are wood and there is a small beam of light shining through the windows. This is an introduction to the rest of your life. This is for you – the dreamer, artist, old soul, entrepreneur, creative who wants to do more with their life. And not because someone else is telling you to be better but because there is something inside of you keeping you up at night and resurfacing every single morning when you wake.

I have such a good feeling about your life. I completely believe that this year you will do something incredible. I believe in you. I believe that right now, in this moment, you have infinite amounts of potential. I think we are all so much more powerful than we realize. All change starts with an idea, a thought, and the determination and passion to keep the spirit alive. It won’t ever be without self-doubt, complications, failure, and heartache, but that’s okay – those are all things that make us grow into better, stronger people. We don’t have to do this alone. E-mail me koty@thoughtcatalog.com. We can face our fears together.

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1. The hardest part is always getting started but we have to start somewhere. It begins with a simple step, a sentence, a brush stroke, an email, a phone call. Life moves at you fast, so give yourself the chance to start something new. That’s all any of us need – a chance to shine.

2. Get rid of the things that fail to bring any value or meaning in your life.Minimize old possessions that mean nothing, rid yourself of one-sided relationships. Create room for space to grow in every area.

3. Concentrate on what you want. Visualize it. Consider the steps needed to take to get there. Accept the fact that things take time.

4. Connect with someone you’ve always admired. Send an e-mail to an author that gave you a new perspective or made you feel so completely understood in a way you never experienced before. Send gratitude to the people who have inspired you. Every connection you make can come up later in surprising ways.

5. Get out of your head. Take a walk, visit a museum, watch a movie, strike up a conversation. Let the world inspire you in the different formats that surround us every day.

6. Take note of the things that help you recover – meditation, comfort foods, best friends, live music. Take care of yourself when the time comes. Self-care is critical in the process of becoming.

7. Stop waiting for things to happen to you. So many people spend their entire lives waiting – waiting for the right person, the right job, the right time to do whatever it is they want to do. Stop waiting for other people to take notice. Find your voice and use it to get what you want.

8. Dedicate yourself to the things that move you. Give yourself a time frame for working on something – six months, one year, 14 months. Every single day remind yourself you have a purpose.

9. Give yourself the permission to say “no thank you.” Remember you don’t have to say yes to everything. This is your life, right? Stop saying yes to the things that don’t excite you, to the things you don’t want to do.

10. Focus on the things you love about your life. Think about how you can take small steps to make each of those things flourish in their own way.

11. If you’re in a dead-end relationship – leave. If you have a job you can’t stand – quit. If you hate your roommate – move out. It’s not that easy, you say, and trust me, I know. There are always reasons to stay a little bit longer, to prolong the inevitable. Find a way out. If you don’t fight for your own life, who will?

12. What’s your dream job? What do you hope to do some day? Find someone in the field and connect with them. Ask them if they need an assistant or if they could use a volunteer or intern in their office. Create opportunities for yourself.

13. Don’t worry too much about what other people think. Other people being your parents, your peers, your friends, randoms on the internet. Don’t get caught up in hive mind. Abandon other people’s expectations for your life. Forget what other people your age or in your profession are doing. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. It only matters what you are doing.

14. Rid yourself of other people’s negativity.. It’s so easy to succumb to other people’s bad moods, to get caught up in the negative emotions we each face every day. Don’t let it. Help your friends when they need a pick me up but don’t let them bring you down to the sadness well they can’t escape from.

15. Give compliments freely and without the expectation of return. Love people for who they are now, in this moment, flaws and all. Practice unconditional love.

16. Get lost. In busy city streets, on abandoned country roads, in the vibrations of your favorite songs, in the warmth of someone’s lips. Become unnerved once in awhile.

17. Be proactive in managing your moods. Take note of the things that piss you off, of the sadness you can’t come back from, of moments that make you deliriously happy. Figure out how to weave your way in and out of your emotions to overcome the thoughts that self-sabotage you.

18. You will never be as young as you are right now. You will not be the same person tomorrow that you were today. Lose yourself in enthusiasm and passion and the drive to make your life exactly the way you want it. 

Koty Neelis

3 Ways to Simplify Your Company Culture and Build Trust

The 2015 books are closed and the 2016 kickoff meetings have concluded. Now is the perfect time to take one final look at what went well last year and what we could have done better. It’s also a great time to review our 2016 priorities. Which areas demand better performance? Which programs will we emphasize in the coming months?

Simplification is a major initiative for many organizations, including SAP. By reducing complexity and striving for simplicity, we know that companies can develop new opportunities for competitive advantage. In contrast, firms that cling to complex processes, structures, and tools hold themselves back. In a recent Knowledge@Wharton study, 74 percent of respondents said that complexity hurts their ability to meet goals.

And the cost of complexity is significant. Authors Simon Collinson and Melvin Jay characterize complexity as one of the biggest challenges facing modern business. They write that complexity “is slowing companies down, costing them on average 10 percent of their profits and harming employee morale.”

Complexity also has a negative impact on employees. Studies have shown that trust, diversity, and innovation suffer when employees are overwhelmed by complexity. In contrast, trusted leaders experience greater innovation and better performance. Yet only four in 10 employees trust their boss. I view this as a huge gap that can potentially shrink when we reduce complexity.

Leading by example.

Some leading executives of highly innovative companies clearly understand the need to share their authentic selves as a way to build trust. In 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly came out in an opinion piece published in Bloomberg Businessweek. In an essay advocating for human rights, Cook said he set aside his privacy and publicly declared that he is gay in the hopes that he could help others who might be struggling.

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote movingly about her grief over the death of her husband Dave last year. In discussing her painful loss, she talked about how she decided to be open about her feelings with employees. “I realized that to restore that closeness with my colleagues that has always been so important to me, I needed to let them in,” Sandberg wrote on Facebook. “And that meant being more open and vulnerable than I ever wanted to be. I told those I work with most closely that they could ask me their honest questions and I would answer. I also said it was okay for them to talk about how they felt.”

Closer to home, our own SAP CEO Bill McDermott recently suffered an injury that led to the loss of his left eye. He reached out to SAP employees and spoke from the heart about the accident, his gratitude to family and colleagues and his optimism about the future. SAP employees responded with heartfelt wishes for his recovery, many inspired by his willingness to be so open about such a tragic accident. The tragedy inspired him to increase his focus on individualized healthcare and the role SAP might play in making it better -- and simpler -- for people around the world.

Getting started on simplification.

These executives turned difficult situations into opportunities to build trust. But you don’t need a tragedy to begin simplifying your company culture. Why not consider ways to begin simplifying your corporate culture as one of your key 2016 initiatives?

Let’s define our terms. A simplified corporate culture strives to:

• Do things in the way that creates the most value and engagement for all, with the least effort for all
• Make it easier for people to be their best and do great work

According to a report by The Jensen Group, a simpler environment gives employees the power to get their work done, to make a difference, and to control their own destiny. Simpler workplace cultures also make it easier for employees to do their best and be their best selves. But how can you create an ideal balance of deep trust, real inclusion and maximum engagement within your organization?

There are three key steps that can help you simplify the company culture:

1. Develop senior executive alignment and commitment to the cause. Business leaders need to embrace the idea that ease of use and ease of effort can help create corporate return on investment. For example, at SAP, we have a shared aspiration to "make the world run better and improve people's lives." This is a bold but simple statement - and a sincere goal -- that is at the heart of everything we do and every business decision we make. Our executives and leaders are unified behind this goal. It is repeated and shared often so there is no doubt about our commitment.
2. Train mid-level managers to make simplicity for all a priority. Ensuring that managers on the frontline understand their role in simplifying, communicating, and exemplifying the organization’s messages and goals is critical. At SAP, we are proud of the training we offer to address the needs of those colleagues. There is often no greater representative of a group’s goals than the mid-level manager with whom you interact on a day-to-day basis.
3. Design work tools, communication, training, and development using simplicity criteria. SAP’s own CEO, Bill McDermott, sets the tone for simplified communication -- starting with our internal communication and meetings. He rarely relies on typical tools such as PowerPoint to share a message. Instead, Bill prefers to speak directly to audiences when possible (often via global broadcasts), engage in open Q&A sessions, or to send a simple one-paragraph mail -- no “bells and whistles.” We offer programs to help colleagues break messaging down to its most basic components, conduct “design thinking” training to enable out-of-the-box approaches to innovation and encourage simple storytelling whenever possible. While there’s still work to be done, I’m proud of my company’s commitment to be more engaged “human to human” -- and less reliant on slides or fancy presentations that can often complicate things.

Simplification won’t happen overnight, but with proper planning and commitment, you can begin moving your organization in the right direction. Resolving to simplify your company culture is a great first step toward meeting your 2016 goals.

Anka Wittenberg

These Mindset Shifts Will Transform Your Life Forever

As the saying goes, football is a game of inches. For all of you football fans, you know exactly what I mean by this. Some of the biggest and most painful losses throughout the course of my football career came directly from either being a second too late, a second too soon or an inch away from a favorable outcome of the game.

Just as football is a game of inches, so is winning in life and in business. If you want to start living life on a new level, then you will need to make some crucial mindset shifts. How we think largely determines our destiny. 

The quality of our relationships, business success and happiness among so many other things boils down to our mindset. We are all talented at something, and while I think there are quite a few different variables as to why others are more successful than the next person, I strongly believe that mindset ultimately separates the best of the best from everyone else.

Here are three mindset shifts that will transform your life forever.

1. Grow through the tough times instead of just going through them.

One of the most important mindset shifts that could instantly open your life and business up to new possibilities is to grow through the tough and discouraging times of life instead of just going through them. There is nothing easy about this mindset shift, and it will take a lot of intentional effort on your part to fully execute this, but the results will end up changing your life.

I talk about this mindset shift a lot in my upcoming book, Winning Plays: A Top Athlete’s Advice For Tackling Adversity and Achieving Success, and how it completely changed my life forever. Some of the biggest failures and adversities in my life ended up becoming some of the biggest blessings and opportunities -- all because I chose to intentionally grow through them instead of just casually go through them.

2. Fuel your faith, not your fear.

We all have faith and fear to some degree, however, where it becomes a major stumbling block for most is when you fuel your fears more than they fuel your faith. Fear is normal, and even the best of the best experience it from time to time, but what they do differently is they re-channel it. When they feel fear, they face it head on by acknowledging it, and then shift their mindset to instead fuel their faith.

What you give energy to will likely manifest. When I refer to fueling your faith, I am referring to seeing yourself beyond your current circumstances and flirting with all of the possibilities for what could go right instead of paying attention to what could go wrong.

This small and simple mindset shift will not only help you get to where you want to go, but it will ignite a fire deep inside of you and help you to push through all of the discomfort you will experience along your journey. There is absolutely nothing positive that could come out of fueling your fears rather than your faith.

3. Love the process more than the outcome.

I have never met an incredibly successful entrepreneur, athlete, business executive or any other high achiever who has reached a level of greatness in their life that didn’t love the process. So many people would rather focus on the desired outcome and destination instead of savoring the process that will get them to that destination.

The obstacles, the challenges, the sleepless nights. That pathway to success is what builds champions. You don’t just put together a football team and go out on Sunday’s and win a Super Bowl. You don’t just hire employees and expect to have a thriving organization right from the get go. You don’t just come up with an idea one day and fall into fame and fortune. In all three of these scenarios, a process is required.

The best of the best absolutely love the process and journey no matter how difficult it may be at times, because they know that’s where the real value is at. Of course, you are going to get inspired, motivated and excited about the destination or end result of something that you are deeply passionate about, but believe it or not, the value is minimal there.

The growth, strength, perseverance, skill set and courage that is instilled in the greatest men and women in the world all came from the savoring the process, not from the destination or end result. If you can learn to love the process, you will give yourself a competitive advantage in life and in business, that does a whole lot more than pay you monetarily.

Matt Mayberry

7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Invest in Themselves

Startup entrepreneurs often go it alone or almost alone, serving every function in their new companies. They are the idea people, the passionate leaders, the team builders, engineers, marketing experts, logistics officers, bookkeepers and strategists all in one.  

The reality is that often this phase is necessary. That means that one of the most challenging things for the startup-minded to do is to keep investing, keep building their own personal skills and abilities. Time and focus-wise, it’s a monumental challenge. Most entrepreneurs skip the personal investments because those investments seem disconnected from their businesses and products. If an entrepreneur has an extra hour, for example, many prefer to invest in their company over investing in themselves.

The problem with that approach is that most entrepreneurs are their brands and products.

Moreover, if you can take a step back and see that your entire entrepreneurial venture rests on a single set of shoulders, it makes business sense to ensure that those shoulders are as prepared, as skilled and as strong as possible. That means investing in yourself because, from that perspective, it’s the same as investing in your product.

Because entrepreneurs spend so little time thinking about boosting their personal skills and strengths, remaining focused on their work, they often don’t know where to start. Since I’ve spent most of my professional life at the intersection of business and education, I have a few suggestions on how you can keep making investments in yourself, even if you’re an overwhelmed entrepreneur. Here are seven:

Go to school

Few things do more to enhance both your credibility and intellectual capacity than higher education. The learning environment itself can provide new connections and spark creativity. There are incubators offering specialized training now in every city. Finishing your degree or starting a new one can make a big difference and just about every school has a part-time or returning student or executive program.

Teach

A school environment is just as powerful if you’re teaching. And, like an advanced degree, being a teacher confers a great deal of credibility. Teaching also forces you to know what you’re teaching at expert level, confront and consider new ideas and explain things in new ways. If you’re an expert in something, reach out to community learning programs or colleges in your area and get in the classroom.

Online program

While the online learning environment is still buyer beware, more and more very credible institutions and incubators are offering online courses and programs. It’s possible to earn certifications in a variety of business-related subjects from places such as Harvard or Stanford or any number of state universities.  Even if you’re just exercising your mind or staying up-to-date on current topics and trends, it’s a good investment.

Read unrelated things

If you’re a reader, make sure your reading list includes topics that are unrelated to your business endeavors. Read crime thrillers or romance novels or theoretical physics – whatever will distract you from your hour-to-hour obsessions. Giving your mind a break will inspire creative problem solving and invigorate your work when you return to it. Just a few hours a week of reading about ants or Adam Ant can make a big difference.

“I read spy and espionage thrillers exactly because they district me from trying to run and grow my business,” said Edgar M. Duarte ofDuarte Monteiro Group in Miami. “If I read all business books or things in my field, I’d absolutely get sick of it. Taking a mental break allows me to really focus on business when I need to.”

Physical health

Among the biggest oversights entrepreneurs make is neglecting their physical health. If your ability to work is the most essential thing to your business success, it makes no sense to risk it. I know how hard it is, but get to the gym, make good health and diet choices. Take vacations. As with all these suggestions, staying healthy is an investment in your business – it may help to think of it that way.

Co-working

Consider moving yourself and your business to a co-working community. The collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit of shared ambition and sacrifice can be intoxicating and empowering. By co-locating, you’ll find mentors, partners and different-thinkers – all of whom can add to your personal growth and strategic creativity.

Network

Join organizations and attend events. Most people view networking as opportunities to advance their businesses. But they are just as important in building personal connections – assets you can take with you from project to project or business to business. Investing in networking and getting to know your network personally will increase your personal reach and capacity.

Amy Rosen

18 Of The Most Bittersweet Feelings You Experience In Your Last Few Weeks Of College

1. That moment when your friends are all together, doing nothing extraordinary besides enjoying one another’s company. And you look around, feeling incredibly grateful and simultaneously heartbroken that it will never be exactly this way ever again.

2. Walking back from class and stopping to say hello to various people sitting on front lawns or bar patios.
 And appreciating these special little interactions, while knowing there are only so many left.

3. When you walk by a building or area of campus where you spent a lot of time freshman year, and you start reminiscing on how much has changed since then – how much you’ve learned, how much you’ve went through, how much you’ve grown.

4. Spending most of your remaining days goofing off with your friends, instead of being productive or studying. And not feeling guilty about it at all. You know that won’t remember what you got on your sociology term paper, but you will remember sitting on the porch with your friends for 5 hours on that one Thursday afternoon.

5. Deciding to go out with your friends at the last minute, even though you have an exam the next morning, because you know there are few opportunities left for you to be able to do this.

6. Hearing advice from people about how life truly does go on after college, and knowing that they’re telling the truth but still having a really hard time believing them.

7. Walking around campus on a particularly beautiful day, and feeling a deep pressure in your chest that is both joyful and painful.

8. Remembering how awkward and unsure you were when you first got here, and thinking back on that insecure version of yourself with a knowing and highly amused smile.

9. When you feel tears well up in unexpected, ordinary moments, like when you walk to the nearby store with your best friend to grab a six pack, or you sit at your kitchen table with one of your roommates and shoot the shit for a couple hours. And you know that even though it’s random to get emotional in these types of situations, it’s also not, because these ordinary, special moments are the ones that made up your entire college experience.

10. Observing ridiculously cliched college things, like people reading books on blankets outside or throwing a frisbee around, and smiling because as cliched as it is, it’s also extremely real and true.

11. Looking around at all the random furniture in your house or apartment, and loving it all the more for how disorganized and mismatched and cluster-fucky that it is.

12. Feeling the blissful release that comes after finishing your last final or turning in your last paper, but knowing you only have so much time in-between this moment and the moment that you drive away from campus for the last time as a student.

13. Feeling a strange relief about your sadness, because you know that even though it’s painful, it means that you truly grew to love this place and you honestly felt like you found another home.

14. Stopping what you’re doing, only for a second, to watch all of your friends in this moment, to observe how happy they all are, and to let those feelings of thankfulness wash over you in order to help you to ease the anxiety that keeps churning in your stomach.

15. Looking at all the decorations in your room and loving the fact that instead of having a structured, well-designed adult living space, your walls are just covered with posters, banners, pictures, flyers, papers, t-shirts, postcards, notes, and other memorabilia that you’ve amassed over the past 4 years.

16. Being at the bar with your friends when that one song comes on that you’ve all been wanting to hear all night. And feeling the excitement and the energy that rushes through the bar as the song plays, while you watch everyone screaming the words and you know that this is just a special, special moment that you will not ever let go of.

17. Experiencing random, unexpected moments of disbelief where you look around and simply can’t believe that you’ve gotten this far. That you’re this person who’s done these things and taken these classes and gone to this school and made a life for yourself in this place.

18. Hating the fact that this will all be over too quickly, while simultaneously feeling a comforting sense of peace about the fact that you lived out every last moment and had a better experience than you could have ever imagined. 

Kim Quindlen

HOW TO USE INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS

Instagram is an awesome platform for sharing your brand and business with the world. It’s simple, it’s clean, based around great photography and easy to use. Best of all, unlike Facebook and Pinterest, every single one of your followers will see your posts in their feed. It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Instagram and the power it has for your business.
But where’s a business owner looking to dominate on Instagramm to start? Let my list of ideas for How to Use Instagram for Business guide you below!
I’ve been on Instagram for years but it wasn’t until one year ago that I started ‘analyzing’ my online presence. What was I sharing and why was I sharing it? Did I take notice of how certain images looked in my feed or did I simply post whatever I wanted? I’m not saying we should “perfect” our lives by any means, however, it’s important to understand how our feeds represent our business and what we share (photos and content) does matters.

INSTAGRAM “DO’S” FOR BUSINESS

• DO post consistently to your feed.
• DO include a link to your most recent blog post in your Instagram profile.  When you post an image, let followers they can click the “Link in profile” to access the latest.
• DO tag the location of your photo to provide your account extra exposure. (But be safe – don’t tag your home or office.)
• DO try to vary the composition of photos posted. For example, share an image with lots of negative space next to an image where the subject fills the frame. It allows “breathing room” for the look of your feed. (The two examples below are from the feeds of J.Crew and Anthropologie.)
• DO schedule your instagram posts sometimes using Latergram.me. It’s handy to not have to think about your feed in real time. (I find it really handy to schedule an image that specifically relates to a blog post you have pre-written. You can also use Latergram to preschedule a Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s post, etc.)
• • DO design quotes in Photoshop or a free online program and share in yourinstagram feed for variety. Pay attention to the branding and colours – keep consistency in your feed’s theme.
  • DO ask for engagement! Ask your followers an insightful question that will encourage comments. It really works. 
  • DO follow users in your niche and comment on their posts. You get what you give!
  • DO share behind-the-scenes of your blog, business, customers, portfolio, etc as well as personal photos of your life (in limited doses – but sharing personality makes you human!)
  • DO carefully consider which images you share in your feed, taking time to note the colours/contrast and how they’ll pair with your already-posted images. (If I’m near my computer, I’ll pull up my Instagram profile on Instagram.com to compare the image on my phone to my feed side by side.) Instagrammers @emthegem and @imkristen_ model a consistent style really well in their feeds:
  • DO treat your Instagram feed like an extension of your brand. I struggled with this for a long time, I felt that carefully choosing what to post and when was “inauthentic.” It’s easy to fall into this trap, our brands are ourselves and we feel silly sharing a curated version. However, when you look at Anthropologie’s Instagram feed do you ever think, “That silly social media manager, this is not her home. She carefully thought about what to post and styled those candles on the ‘breakfast in bed’ tray on the white fluffy king size bed?” (If you do that’s weird, because that’s the social media manger’s job.) We are our own social media managers – so don’t feel bad about your feed representing you.
  • DO engage with your followers. If somebody takes the time to comment, take the time to comment back! I love using Iconosquare.com for this if there are a ton of comments. It’s easier to type on the computer than my phone!
  • DO edit your Instagram photos using VSCO or a similar app. Use similar filters each time to keep consistency for your followers!
  • DO post an introduction of yourself (#fridayintroductions) ask your followers to introduce themselves every now and then! It’s so fun to hear who’s following you and this encourages engagement, too!
  • DO use hashtags to categorize some of your best content. For my business, I use#jamiedelainephotography to keep all of my photography work in an easy to access portfolio. Search for popular hashtags in your business and use them.
  • 
    DO create a iPhone shortcut on your phone for easy hash-tagging. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts and hit the “+” button in the top right. Enter in your phrase (what you want to hashtag) and your shortcut (what you’ll type to have the phrase inserted.) Create a list of different hashtags for different photos and next time you post, save yourself 2 minutes of time! 
  • Do create your own custom backgrounds for clean iPhone photos! Read this postto learn more about taking great iPhone photos (and watch a free tutorialon iPhone photo editing!)

  INSTAGRAM “DON’TS” FOR BUSINESS

  • DON’T share hashtags in the main caption of your image. That can get obnoxious to viewers. A better way is to share your hashtags in a “comment” on your photo rather than in the caption. Once you have a couple comments, your hashtag list will be hidden and less annoying. (Bonus tip: create your hashtags shortcuts–see tip above–with a few line breaks with periods. Then when your hashtag comment is posted, users won’t even see your hashtags!)
  • DON’T forget that primarily your Instagram must be curated to reflect your brand and business. (Ten photos in a row of the hilarious trick your pet was doing last night won’t cut it.)
  • DON’T post more than 1-3x a day, depending on your audience and niche. Respect your follower’s feed space.
  • DON’T post those 3 photos in a row – space out your posting times strategically!
  • DON’T switch between crops. Choose all squares, all squares with a border, all circles using a fancy app, doesn’t really matter, but consistency is the key with the Instagram platform. See this example below of my feed one year ago, compared to recently. I’ve found providing a consistent look is key for followers.
  • DON’T hesitate to create a secondary Instagram profile for “personal” use. Keep it private, share whatever photos you like, don’t edit them, crop anyway you want, post 10x a day and follow close family and friends. This is wonderful! But remember you = your business, so your “business” Instagram needs to reflect professionalism.
  • DON’T forget to add a caption to every post! Captions matter.
  
  
  Jamie Delaine Watson

Are You Building Leaders for Tomorrow?

The outlook for future leadership certainly seems bleak, judging from the current landscape managers describe nationwide:

• The 2015 Business and Human Capital Challenges report from the Society of Human Resource Management found that one of the top concerns among HR and business leaders was the development of the next generation of leaders.
• Workplace Trends’ Global Workforce Leadership survey in February and March said that leadership is the hardest skill to find in employees.
• A 2015 Gallup study of 2.5 million manager-led teams found that a mere 18 percent of current managers said their companies had the talent required for leadership.
• Not surprisingly, among the 1,000 employees surveyed by Workplace Trends, only 36 percent said leadership was a strength in their organization.

With the demand for leadership development on the rise, companies are scrambling for solutions that are effective and quick and require a minimal investment of time and money. Fortunately, there is good news.

That news? Leaders are made, not born. While no one is created with leadership in his or her bones, many people in business are ambitious, strong communicators from the start. So, it’s up to employers to determine who shows the motivation and tendency toward leadership -- and then develop it.

But how does an organization find these diamonds in the rough? The answer is, observe how employees communicate, and identify those who seem to be the most motivational team members These young leaders are usually hiding in plain sight. They solve problems creatively, take charge and plan strategies well, and are the people others go to when they have questions or need guidance.

Once these "A" players are found, organizations should cultivate their leadership skills and "grow them" within the company using the following simple techniques:

1. Use technology to educate.

Fires don’t start with roaring flames -- they need kindling, logs, access to air and, finally, a spark. Those who want to learn leadership skills will do so, given the right opportunity andtools. Give them their spark.

Many employers worry about the cost of professional development, which is understandable. Why would they invest time and money into employees who may leave at the drop of a hat? Good news: There are many free online resources employers can offer to their staff to develop their leadership skills. Examples include Coursera, Alison.com, Open Learn, andMindtools.com. MIT even offers an online version of Organizational Leadership and Change, a graduate level university course.

Other resources vary in cost, but may be worth a look. For example, career counselors help employees gain confidence and feel more inspired. They typically use processes and build action plans geared toward goal achievement.

Webinars are also great tools. Professional organizations like the American Management Association offer webinars that are interactive and offer step-by-step guides to learning new skills.

2. Encourage networking and engagement.

Great leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry. A great method for keeping informed is regularly networking and engaging with colleagues.

Teach employees to create professional relationships and confidently initiate conversations. Expanding their networks builds crucial leadership skills like communication and makes them strong representatives for the company.

Refer them to tools like Let’s Lunch, so they can easily coordinate and meet with experts in their field who can help them achieve career success.

In addition to outside experts, focus on internal mentors. The 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey found that 94 percent of 7,700 respondents surveyed said their mentors' advice was good, and 91 percent said their mentors showed a good level of interest in the their development. When managers can create a relationship with employees that makes the former feel less like a boss and more like a guide or a coach, they can have a great influence on employees.

Establish this dynamic to earn trust and respect. Employees are more apt to listen to and engage with leaders who develop a strong sense of camaraderie on the team. When those employees see an investment of time and energy from their employer, they will reciprocate and show an eagerness to grow in the company.

3. Suggest personal development techniques.

Personal development is a major part of any great leader’s life. Encourage employees to explore techniques in their personal lives to improve their awareness, develop their talents and build human capital while enhancing their quality of life.

There are various tools companies can use -- like exercise.  An April 2015 study from Leeds Metropolitan University found an increase in productivity and satisfaction and improved time management skills when employees exercised during business hours. Encourage exercise regimens and offer flexibility during business hours to provide employees with gym time.

Mindfulness practices are another tool. Yoga, tai chi and meditation are all great for building a sense of "present moment" awareness that helps with decision-making and productivity. There are several free and low cost online resources that can teach meditation, such as Headspace, Calm,Sattva and Buddhify.

These lifestyle choices can increase knowledge and effectively reduce stress and improve productivity. A less-stressed, more productive employee is more apt to learn and develop his or her leadership skills.

Heather R Huhman