Archive for 'Leadership'

To what degree does the way you behave with another person influence how they subsequently behave towards you? Parental research would suggest that kids very often demonstrate many of the same characteristics of their parents. But even beyond this there is also an innate human behavior that will “fight fire with fire”. Another way of putting this is that perhaps you get what you deserve.

So what happens when you translate this to leadership and more specifically the behaviors of leaders? In the Read more »

How do you get the most from your people? Billions of dollars are spent annually on an infinite variety of training programs in pursuit of answering this question. It is still one of the elusive components to running a business that owners and leaders struggle with.

Clearly when a new person is hired some fundamentals need to be put in place to attain an acceptable standard quickly. Let’s call this standard “functional” and once this is achieved the following basics are typically in place:

Skills, experience and Read more »

When an individual is first hired there is typically some form of orientation to familiarize them with the company, its values and mission, polices and what is generally expected. They might also get to meet other staff and members of management and from this they slowly get a sense for what is the culture of the organization.

However the bulk of their training is more skills based. What are the tasks associated with the work they have been assigned to? What are the expectations associated with that? Whether this is classroom based or on the job they become Read more »

As human beings we have a basic need for being part of a system. In the context of Maslow’s hierarchy, given that the physiological and safety needs are being met, love and belonging provides the basis of the next level need. From the moment of our birth we are part of a family and then this evolves into neighborhoods, friends, school mates, church affiliations, sports teams, etc. All of these directly or indirectly provide a feeling that others care and that we are part of something Read more »

Lawyers and Journalist pride themselves on the ability to be able to ask the right questions; whether it is the testimony of somebody in the courtroom or the next breaking story. However within both of these situations it’s not always about the truth or doing what’s right for the person being questioned. In fact the person “in the firing line” is often but a mere pawn in a bigger game in the primary pursuit of somebody else’s agenda. So who is supposed to be the real beneficiary of questioning?

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Each year corporations spend millions of dollars on various forms of professional development and the seemingly never ending debate ensues in terms of, what is the return on investment? For a long time this has always been difficult to determine because the benefits are not obviously tangible and most often cannot be expressed in financial terms. I suppose it’s akin to putting people “our most important asset” on the balance sheet. Alas that hasn’t happened yet either.

So in the absence of any financial accounting mechanisms employee engagement surveys have emerged as an objective basis to assessing the Read more »

Employee Engagement is the collective level of intellectual and emotional commitment employees have toward their work and organization. It is a strategic approach supported by plans and actions for driving improvement and organizational change.

Organizations are for ever wondering what the magic pill to optimum people performance might be. There are so many factors that relate to this such as knowledge, attitude, personality, communications, behaviors, etc that makes “achieving optimum” quite illusive and rather complex. Needs analysis and assessments are conducted to help disseminate what is most critical and development plans are created accordingly. These go a long way but not the full journey.

Why do people donate time and money to help charities? Every year people give millions of hours to organizations like Habitat for Humanity for free and whatever needs to get done whether construction, painting, cleaning up, etc. gets done without any complaints. People almost forget about who they are, where they come from or what their vocational status might be and are simply happy to do a good deed. Then when you ask them why they do it you inevitably hear them say it was Read more »

According to a study conducted by Blessing White, 45% of workers in the US are either “likely” or “definitely planning” on leaving their jobs in the next 12 months.  Another study conducted by MetLife suggests something similar in that one in three hopes to find a new job in the next 12 months.  What is quite ironic with both of these studies, is that it comes at a time when unemployment is at an all time high.  However, according to another study conducted by career website Read more »