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The benefits of an open culture — where frank, candid discussions about problems are possible — are immense, but building an open culture is difficult. However, once you establish the practice of open feedback across the company, you’ll likely find that it builds momentum quickly. Leaders can set their organization on the path to having an open culture by modeling three behaviors:

Performance Management

Many of us have to give presentations, and many of us feel anxious or stressed in the days leading up to them. Shifting the way you think about your presentation can help you feel less stressed about it. Here are some ways to change your mind-set:

It's your choice ...

Rich was a plant manager with a 10,000-person workforce producing a billion dollars of product per year. He was a pro at his craft and highly respected in his industry. I met with him and his team weekly as an organization development consultant for a couple of years. Someone from HR asked him to participate in a new program called “360 Feedback.” He had never heard of such a thing but thought it seemed worthwhile. “After all,” he told me, “feedback is the breakfast of champions!”

There’s growing evidence that conventional performance reviews are not working. According to a CEB analysis, organizations can only improve employee performance 3% to 5% using standard performance management approaches. Last fall, 53% of human resources professionals in a Society for Human Resource Management study gave a grade between B to C+ when rating how their organization managed performance reviews. Only 2% gave an A to their organization. As a result of findings like these, some companies are doing away with annual performance reviews altogether.

Do you have a coach?  If not, you could be limiting your career success. That’s because coaches help you identify and focus on what’s important, which accelerates your success. According to coaches.com, good coaches:

One of the hardest parts of switching careers is knowing which of your skills can be applied in a new way. The good news is many industries may value your talents as much as your current one does. Here's how to identify your transplantable core skills:

Few people bring a pen and notebook to meetings anymore. Instead of taking notes by hand, more and more of us take them on a laptop or tablet. This change makes sense: Digital devices just seem more convenient, plus they let you multitask during the meeting. But research has found that there are real benefits to taking notes by hand.

Who wants change?

It’s a fabled story about a janitor’s exchange with President Kennedy during the early days of NASA: “What do you do?” the president supposedly asked the man with a broom during a visit to Cape Canaveral. “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

When asked recently to name the one attribute CEOs will need most to succeed in the turbulent times ahead, Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell, Inc., replied, “I would place my bet on curiosity.”

We’ve all heard the axiom that to persuade others effectively, we have to win both the hearts and minds of our audience. For people who are naturally persuasive (or overwhelmingly charismatic) this comes naturally. The rest of us have to cultivate the ability to persuade others. All too often winning hearts and minds feels like a paradox. Why? People are complicated and so are the problems we’re solving. Trying to leverage both emotion and logic can actually make us less influential if we don’t have a plan.