This post was triggered by a great post in the HBR Blog Network by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman. This essence of their article is that most of the behaviors of so called “bad bosses” are, in their words, sins of omission, not commission. In other words, it’s more what the boss fails to do…
“To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. That’s all there is to it.” – Adam Vinatieri As a writer I expound on certain events to bring metaphorical significance to different walks of life. Such is the extended purpose of the media. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with a lot of…
In my workshops and coaching focusing on improving customer and workplace relationships I find that one of the major issues of concern in companies and organizations is workplace bullying. To build a more positive, productive and profitable organization this issue must not be overlooked. Companies and organizations that dismiss or avoid confronting workplace bullying usually…
Any person who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved, has already defined his own limitations. – Cavett Robert In his book, Winning Every Day, legendary football coach Lou Holtz shares a story about a man whose car tumbled into a ditch. He called a farmer for some help, but the farmer…
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…
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…
Today we look at the one or two bottom performing employees you might have on your team or in your company. It could be job performance related or it could be negativity or behavior problems. Can they be ‘fixed’ or should you let them go and move forward with hiring a replacement? An HR Manager…
When asked, the majority of executives, managers and supervisors agree that they frequently make decisions, answer questions and solve problems that should be handled at one or two levels below them. By handling these problems, decisions and questions at the wrong level, the organization is experiencing a kind of waste. Wasted talent, reduced quality and…
In a previous post we examined a manager who was too easy on his team. In many cases an assignment will come in to work with a manager who has the opposite challenge – he or she is too tough on employees. Often these hard-nosed managers tend to work long hours, do the work his…
Have you ever had confidential information leak that reflected on you or your department? One of the worst surprises for a supervisor is having confidential information repeated back from an inappropriate source. How could this have leaked? Who leaked it?
In the fast paced environment in which we live, we find that many of the relationships we have tend to suffer due to the way we deal with various situations. How you handle each interaction determines whether you create bigger problems or reduce or even eliminate them entirely.
An article in the Harvard Business Review pointed out that 43% of hiring decisions are made within the first 4.8 minutes of the interview. Talk about the importance of a candidate creating a good first impression! If this is the case, why bother interviewing people for more than 5 minutes? The answer is because hasty…
I recently read an article by Ezra Klein that made a strong case for not raising the age of eligibility for social security. In the U.S. it is going from 65 to 67. I have always assumed–without a lot of thought, I might add–that raising the retirement age was a no brainer way to reduce…