Leader's Beacon

You’ve likely heard the expression, “What gets measured, gets managed.” And companies have improved their capability to measure dozens, or sometimes hundreds of data points that reflect how the business is performing. Unfortunately, managers are falling into the trap of “teaching to the test” which means that they harp on the metrics without coaching the [...]

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Historically, trainers and coaches rely on the trickle down method of impacting an organization: train or coach the boss and then everyone who reports to that person will change their behavior and the organization will benefit. Or sometimes the opposite approach is taken – put the staff/employees through training, thinking that will change things, only [...]

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Front Line Leadership Tips for Supervisors, Team Leaders and Managers Sports coaching vs the Voodoo approach Historically, trainers and coaches rely on the trickle down method of impacting an organization: train or coach the boss and then everyone who reports to that person will change their behavior and the organization will benefit. Or sometimes the [...]

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The culture of your organization will either ensure your long term success or potentially leave your organization vulnerable to external threats. An effective culture leads to innovation, agility, great customer service, higher profit margins and high employee engagement. A weak culture creates and reinforces resistance to change, erratic financial performance, high employee absenteeism and turnover, [...]

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When you hear the word conflict, it has negative associations with words like argument, war, battle, and disagreement. In reality, conflict should be embraced as being essential to a healthy organization. The majority of employees (and many supervisors and managers) avoid conflict because of the assumption that conflict is destructive. Conflict is expected and desired [...]

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Whenever a leader is within the sightline of his or her employees, communication is occuring. What message is your face and body language communicating without you even having to open your mouth? Communication continues to be a problem for virtually every organization. You would think that after recognizing the problem for this long we would [...]

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Reading about Steve Jobs’ management style is like reading about exactly how you are not supposed to manage people. He openly and viciously criticized the work of employees and then would take some of those ideas and present them as his own. When he couldn’t persuade or seduce someone into doing what he wanted he [...]

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Some of the organizations I work with are facing an interesting paradox: On the one hand the culture/satisfaction survey results aren’t where management would like to see them. On the other hand, the feedback I’m receiving says that employees care deeply about the organization and its success. How can these two seemingly opposite data points [...]

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Experience is the best teacher. Learning from your mistakes is powerful. Innovation requires taking risks. But how much tolerance should leaders have for repeated mistakes? What is the difference between someone on the learning curve versus an employee who is incompetent? This subject came up when I was chatting with the senior leader at one [...]

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Your greatest success might be disguised. That was the case for William Wrigley, Jr. You recognize the name from Wrigley chewing gum. What you might not have known is that Wrigley started out as a soap company,  using chewing gum as a promotional giveaway inside the box of soap. Perhaps your greatest success is lurking [...]

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Front line supervisors and managers can place employees in a prison of performance by affixing a label. Once the label is attached to the person it can prevent the leader from seeing the potential for the individual. If the label is troublemaker, then the supervisor or manager might be reinforcing the very behaviour they would [...]

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As you might imagine, as a paid expert on communication and leadership, I get some well earned ribbing at home from my wife Robin because of my poor listening skills as a husband and father. Once I made the comment that she just didn’t pay me as well as my client’s did for me to [...]

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I’m sure I used to drive my mom and dad a little crazy as a child because I used to ask “Why?” so often. It turns out that kids aren’t the only ones who want to know why. Employees are more likely to be engaged when they are informed and understand the reason you ask [...]

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When front line supervisors and managers are asked to share some of the characteristics of the best manager or supervisor they had ever worked for,  they will include “supportive” on that list. One participant was even more emphatic – his best boss was focused on “helping” not “harping”. A boss who is constantly critical and [...]

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Some organizations, especially ones that are more bureaucratic can begin to develop a culture where the punishment for mistakes exceeds the praise for success. Organizations can get bogged down because employees are focused on playing it safe, fearing career-limiting consequences for making mistakes. In sporting terms, they play defense more than offence. This hiding tendency [...]

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When we head to the amusement park, a favorite game is Whack-a-mole where the little critters stick their heads up and you try to whack them with a mallet. The person with the highest score wins a prize. Management and supervision can be like playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole except there usually is no [...]

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