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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.

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

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

– Martha Beck

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

– Jim Butcher, White Night

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
 A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

– Erica Jong

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

– Thomas Carlyle

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

– Steven Schussler

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

– Leon Joseph Suenens

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

– William Blake

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

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

– Joseph Cambell

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

– Michelle Sedas

Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

My goal was to tell the life side of the story. We have become a nation of voyeurs that expect sensationalism, and that offends me.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

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

– Leo Jozef Suenens

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

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

– Tony Robbins

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

– Frederic Nietzsche

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

If you were independently wealthy and never had to work a day in your life, would you still choose to spend your time attempting to become a successful entrepreneur?”

– Steven Schussler

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

I always maintained that the greatest obstacle in life isn’t danger, it’s boredom. The battle against it is responsible for most of the events in the world — good or ill.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.”

– Ray Bradbury

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. The greatest failure is to not try.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Look at everything as though you were
seeing it either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”

– Betty Smith