People in the business community love their clichés. “There’s no ‘I’ in team,” “work smarter, not harder,” and my personal favorite, “think outside the box”. Ugh. When it comes to describing a workplace culture, clichés are abundant here as well. With our open-door policies and expectations of giving 150% (how is this even possible?). These general statements…
I would like to be remembered as a player who was there for others –Mariano Rivera In announcing his forthcoming retirement from Major League Baseball at the conclusion of the 2013 season, Mariano Rivera will certainly be bound for Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. By the numbers Rivera has no equal. His stats…
Nothing last forever – not even our troubles. – Arnold H. Glasow In Bits & Pieces, a story is shared about Somerset Maugham, the English writer who once wrote a story about a janitor at St. Peter’s Church in London. One day a young vicar discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. Jobless,…
Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners – Laurence Sterne In surveys conducted by Weber Shandwick (http://bit.ly/ieo5oz) in 2011 it revealed what many already know or experience – incivility in the workplace is on the rise and the many place the blame at the feet of workplace leadership. The online…
Based on the book, “Get Along with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere” by Arnold Sanow and Sandra Strauss, standing firm on the hallowed grounds of “rightness” is a dead-wrong approach for connecting with others. It smacks of arrogance and alienates. The need to “be right” gets in the way of winning the acceptance, appreciation, and respect of…
A recent HBR blog podcast interviewed the CEO of Amazon who, in a major study reported in the Harvard Business Review’s Jan/Feb issue, was ranked #2 of global CEO’s. The late Steve Jobs was #1. Jeff Bezos is an intriguing guy. He permits interviews sparingly and is somewhat of a contrarian around some commonly held…
Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention. – Jim Rohn Dale Carnegie Training recently released new findings on employee engagement (http://bit.ly/12GBqXI) and the results proved to be quite intriguing. The first and most dramatic finding shows that if an employee is dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor, there…
I recently heard an interesting presentation by Holly Kortright, Senior VP, HR of Deltek. She was talking about where her company has decided to direct their available resources for employee capacity development. They target four areas: High Potentials for leadership positions High Performers People possessing critical, hard to replace, skills People in key positions (e.g.…
Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one. – Hans Selye Are you stressed at work? If you answered in the affirmative then according to a recent Gallup poll (http://bit.ly/Z1RqTr) you are among 33% of workers who said they were totally dissatisfied with the amount of stress they experienced at…
Adam Bryant writes a column in the New York Times called The Corner Office. He has selected 70 of the over 200 interviews he has done with CEO’s for his column and put some core insights from these into a book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEO’s and How to Lead and…
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. – Proverbs 18:21 A story is told about Casey Stengel, a longtime major league baseball manager who had such a unique way with words that it became known as “Stengelese.” He once said, “I’ve always heard…
Remember when we would ponder our direction? Nowadays we have to do it all (and then some). There are products to learn, people to hire, alliances to form, markets to penetrate….and a whole lot of technology that is supposed to make things less complicated. Some times the path of least resistance beats the information highway. Does…
Leaders are celebrated, while managers are often criticized, but a combination of the two could be just what the economy needs. There’s been an ongoing debate for the past five decades and I’m not talking about Medicare or why the Chicago Cubs haven’t won a title since 1908. This debate has to do with leaders…
When presenting the Evaluate to Win™ system, I always get a positive response from executives with the idea of aligning every employee’s efforts with corporate strategies and priorities. It’s called “embedding” your strategy. It makes perfect sense. It ensures that the contributions of your staff are optimized toward the success of the organization…that is, assuming…
Your attitude, not your aptitude, determine your altitude – Zig Ziglar An observation was made of how both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat because that is what they are looking for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead…
To build rapport, relationships and to connect with customers, co-workers family and friends it’s important to watch what you say and how you say it. Poor conversation skills can derail teams, cause leaders to lose respect, destroy customer relationships, lose sales, and demolish friendships. Here are 12 things to avoid in your conversations. Gossiping –…
Living in the Washington DC area, you can’t escape the excitement of Washington Redskins fans as their team–finally, after four losing seasons–contends for a playoff spot. At the center of their big turnaround from 3 wins & 6 loses to ending up at the top of their division is their rookie quarterback, Robert Griffin, aka…
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it – Charles R. Swindoll A story is told of two men who lived in a small village who got into a terrible dispute that they could not resolve. So they went to the town sage. The first man went to the…
Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better – Bill Bradley In a column for the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, (http://bit.ly/UDGyUE) Jack Zenger unveiled a startling and troubling fact; we wait too long to train leaders. Citing research from his consulting agency he revealed that in their database of some 17,000 worldwide leaders participating…
The US and Canadian armies (among others, I’m sure) are famous for its post-event after action review (AAR). Whether it’s a mission, a tactical maneuver, or just a patrol, the individuals involved meet immediately afterward to debrief on how it went and what they can learn for the next time. This goal is to quickly…