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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.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.”

– Lord Chesterfield

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which obstacles vanish.”

– John Quincy Adams

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

– Anthony Trollope

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Destiny is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

– Basil King

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

– William Butler Yeats

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.”

– Edgar W. Howe

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

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

– Carlos Castaneda

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

– William Blake

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

– Carl Rogers

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

– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– Dalai Lama

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.”

– Noela Evans

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

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

– Michelle Sedas

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

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

– Marcel Proust

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

– A wisdomism

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

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

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

– Zig Ziglar

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

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

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

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

– African Proverb

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

– John Lennon

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

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde

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

– Frederic Nietzsche

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

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

The only dream worth having is to live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.”

– Arundhati Roy

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

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

Remember that it’s okay to ask for help when you’re stumped, because sometimes you really can’t be expected to handle everything alone.”

– Martha Beck

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

Confidence is the most important thing you can teach someone… if you can teach them confidence, you don’t have to teach them anything else.”

– Vin Diesel