Susan Bender Phelps is an instructor at CLIMB who teaches workshops and courses focused on thriving in the professional work.

Keeping your project running smoothly can take a lot of leadership, and it means a lot more than just ensuring you have the right team members on tap. It means knowing best practices and more importantly, having access to the right tools to help your team get the job done quickly, efficiently, and under budget. We recently created a project management guide that packages some of these together into a kit for you and your team to use.

In today’s post, we’ve included a few best practices that every good project manager should keep in mind. It’s just a taste of what our Project Management Charter Project Kit will go into more thoroughly:

It goes without saying that customer service is vital. More than 75% of consumers see customer service as representative of how much a brand values them. Another 70% say their experience is defined by how they feel they're being treated. What you may not realize is that delighting your customers takes more than just standard customer service — it's not enough to give them a smile and a can-do attitude.

In today's post, we'll discuss three of the biggest factors in how to delight your customers.

Working with difficult people is neither pleasant nor stress free. We also know just how unavoidable it can be. Accomplishing your project and career goals requires you to be good at handling difficult people in the workplace, so take a moment to reflect with our top tips for how to handle difficult people in the workplace.

This is the summary of a paper written by Global Corporate College, a partner with CLIMB.

Businesses large and small can see major benefits from using a project manager. Even your team — or you as a business professional — can experience the benefits of being trained in project management. That's because the concepts that underlie project management are essentially a playbook for success. Today's article will discuss the benefits of having someone on your team who is trained in project management.

Dealing with different personality types in the workplace can be tough. Having to shift gears from one conversation to the next and trying to get all your work done can be an onerous task.

What helps is when we define the different personality types that exist, and more importantly consider difficult workplace personalities. What are the signs of difficult personality types in the workplace and what can you do to handle them so that your work isn’t affected?

Being a manager is a tough job, we all know that. It’s a constant balancing act, and you’re always looking for ways to make things easier. Many of your days are filled with training employees, dealing with customers and making sure upper management is satisfied with the performance of your team.

That’s why CLIMB Professional Development and Training has put together the following resources and blog posts for managers. From networking, to training and skill development, there are tons of things you can do to boost the performance of both yourself and your team.

Social media can be a confusing topic these days, especially for small business marketers. With so many websites, platforms and avenues for social media it’s hard to know where to focus your efforts.

Aside from your regular marketing efforts, you’re trying to manage multiple accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc... as best you can. And how do you determine what’s working and what’s not?

In previous posts, we've discussed the benefits and advantages that quality certifications can offer your career or your business. However, we cannot understate the benefits of becoming a quality professional or hiring one for your company. Selecting the correct certification for you or your business is important. In today's post, we're going to discuss five of the most useful certifications and how they can impact your career and business.