Some of my clients are already in leadership roles, they are tenured or new leaders who want to become better leaders or to improve their team environment. Some are not yet leaders, but they want to develop leadership skills in preparation for advancement. One of my more memorable encounters was with a person in the latter category. This person had recently had a bad … [Read more...]
The Million Dollar Question: How Do You Really Determine “Culture Fit”
This is a guest post by Krisha Buehler, HR Manager and Culture Cultivator at eaHELP. How important is culture fit when hiring new employees? Very. That is, if you want new employees to stay onboard and produce at a high level. Culture fit will look slightly different for each organization depending on your mission, vision and core values. So your first, most critical, … [Read more...]
How Business Leaders Can Inspire Purpose in Their Employees
This is a guest post by Paul Ratoff, author and Certified Management Consultant. In a tight game's closing seconds, a coach will huddle his players and draw up a play designed to result in a winning play and victory. But, if just one teammate is disengaged, the play can go awry and the team will fall short of accomplishing its purpose. Businesses have something in common … [Read more...]
Creative Disruption Enhances Leadership Performance
Creative Disruption has long been used in the marketing world to break existing patterns of behavior of a target audience, and smart CEO’s are now using this technique to change the pattern of behavior in their leaders. National business consultant Lorraine Grubbs along with CEO Frank Granara of Boston-based General Insulation recently used creative disruption to address a … [Read more...]
What Should you Optimize? Define Good Work
This is a guest post by Tom Cox, leadership consultant, author and speaker. One of the most common, and tragic, causes of poor work performance is that everybody assumes the definition of "good work" is obvious, so nobody ever seeks explicit agreement on what it is. When the boss (that's you) doesn’t define "good work," things can get bad. For example, I live in Oregon, … [Read more...]
Leading Millennials? Give Them More Purpose In The Workplace
This is a guest post from Jackie Dryden, co-author with Bethany Andell of Get Your Head Out of Your Bottom Line. Millennials – those people born in the early 1980s to the late 1990s – have something of a mixed reputation when it comes to work. Studies show that they aren’t loyal to employers so much as to the job itself. They also want to find a purpose to their careers … [Read more...]
Question What You Know (err … Think) Is True
When you know that something is true and someone contradicts that knowledge, you likely reject, perhaps forcefully, what the person said without giving the statement much consideration. After all, you already know that the person is wrong, so why should you listen? In fact, you should actually set the person straight, right? As a new leader, who is trying to build your … [Read more...]
Credibility: Do You Have It?
This guest post is from the General Leadership Blog, a blog that offers leadership perspective and conversation on character and integrity from senior military leaders. Credibility is arguably one of the more important soft skills a leader must possess. It encompasses so many of the harder skills that if you make your credibility a priority as a leader – both up and down – … [Read more...]
Breaking Through the Comfort Zone: Extreme Tactics That Produce Outrageous Results
This is a guest post by Frank Granara and Lorraine Grubbs, co-authors of Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance. Wake them up … shake them up … make them a team. As a new leader, bring a fresh perspective to your people by applying outrageous tactics to employee development. Step outside the “training as usual” box and bypass … [Read more...]
Turn to Employees’ Hobbies to Understand What Motivates Them
As a new leader, it can be tough to figure out how to motivate your employees to perform at a higher level at work. Surprisingly, a good place to start doesn't have much to do with work at all. You can actually look at employees' hobbies and interests to find clues about what motivates them and apply that insight as you assign and delegate tasks. A bit of background first: … [Read more...]