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Sharon Armstrong, Owner, Sharon Armstrong and Associates

COLUMN = HUMAN RESOURCES

Sharon Armstrong has more than 20 years of experience as the owner of Sharon Armstrong and Associates. She is a human resources consultant, trainer, and career counselor who consults with many large corporations and small businesses. She has facilitated training, completed HR projects, and provided career transition services for a wide variety of clients in the profit and nonprofit sectors. She is also the co-author of the The Essential HR Handbook.

Sharon received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Maine and her master’s degree in Counseling from The George Washington University. She is a certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR).

Sharon is the co-author of a humor book, published by Random House entitled “Heeling the Canine Within: The Dog’s Self-Help Companion” in 1998. Career Press published her first business book, “Stress-Free Performance Appraisals: Turn Your Most Painful Management Duty Into a Powerful Motivational Tool” in July 2003. “The Essential HR Handbook: A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager or HR Professional” was published in August 2008. Her latest book is “The Essential Performance Review Handbook,” which was published in the spring of 2010.

ABOUT THE ESSENTIAL HR HANDBOOK

This 250-page reference guide, published in the fall of 2008 by Career Press, is a must-have for everyone who deals with employees on a daily basis, believe Barbara Mitchell and Armstrong, who wrote the book to shed light on the issues that keep managers up at night.

With this easy-to-read paperback, you’ll learn how to effectively and efficiently:
• Individually manage each employee, starting on his or her first day.
• Manage a multi-generational workforce.
• Appraise job performance.
• Coach and counsel.
• Provide equitable pay, benefits, and total-rewards strategies.
• Minimize legal risk.

WHAT CRITICS ARE SAYING

“Finally, a complete, clear, and concise book that covers every essential element of that mix of art and science we call HR. It’s 100% applicable to the real-world challenges faced by today’s HR manager or business owner.” — Joe Calloway, author of Work Like You’re Showing Off.

“This should be required reading for all owners of growing businesses and new managers launching their careers. Seasoned HR professionals will also find value in this quick guide to the essentials of managing people.” — Stephen J. O’Connor, senior director of staffing, ESPN Inc.

“This book is easy to use, and full of solid advice and information from diversity to interviews to legal issues. If you are an HR professional, you should have this book at the ready every day.” — Chester Elton, co-author of The Carrot Principle.

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

Almost anyone can start a community, but it takes real talent and commitment to get people to show up and keep coming back.”

– Andy Sernovitz

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

– Anthony Trollope

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you.”

– Byron Katie

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice

You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

– Napoleon

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”

– Madam C.J. Walker

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

– Groucho Marx

But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind, I seen a lot of women, but she never escaped my mind, and I just grew, tangled up in blue.”

– Bob Dylan

He who wants to tear down a house must be prepared to rebuild it.”

– African Proverb

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Think of their needs.”

– Barack Obama

The goal of Life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature.”

– Joseph Cambell

With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”

– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

You must have chaos within you, to create a dancing star.”

– Frederic Nietzsche

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

– Lao Tzu

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

You don’t go into a field that requires cracking people’s heads open or operating on something as delicate as the spinal cord unless you are comfortable with taking risks.”

– Dr. Ben Carson

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"