(Re)Frame their Job as Something that Matters

Richard Florida is a provocative thinker around social and economic issues. He first became noticed from his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. In his latest book, The Great Reset, he shares data that the future growth of jobs will be in two areas: (1) knowledge, professional and creative jobs and (2) lower paying,…

Details

3 Rules of Employee Engagement

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…

Details

4 Steps to Building a Culture of Respect

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…

Details

5 Signs You Might Be a Bully

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town. –  George Carlin In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn’t. “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus. “These five…

Details

An Organization Devoutly to be Desired

We all fantasize but the object of our fantasy is seldom an organization, an ideal one, the one we would create for us to work in if we were king. Of course, if we were king–or queen–we wouldn’t be worrying about working, but I digress. Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones reported in the May 2013…

Details

Are You Building a Leadership Culture?

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.  – Jim Rohn Last week, for the seventh year, the Hay Group released their findings that identify which organizations have the best leadership practices and what we…

Details

Are You Running the Right Talent Race?

A Metaphor Imagine that you’re competing in a marathon. You’ve been diligently preparing for it for a long time. You’ve trained. You’ve recruited the people that you felt you needed to help you perform at the highest standard possible, and now you’re in that race. But like almost everyone else in this competition, you’re behind. There…

Details

Boost Employee Engagement – 3 Questions to Ask

3 Questions You Must Ask to Boost Employee Engagement to Build a More Positive, Productive and Profitable Organization One of the key ingredients necessary to build stronger customer and workplace relationships involves keeping your employees engaged, motivated and happy. If your employees aren’t happy; employee engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction will be diminished. In my…

Details

Build a Culture of Trust

By Derek Murphy If there is one thing movies about the workplace tells us is that Hollywood believes bosses come in all shapes and sizes, and they are all pretty terrible people. Why the bad rep for leaders? Well, it’s no secret most employees have been disappointed and let down at some point in their…

Details

Change Management Insights from a Fortune 500 Apparel Company’s Restructuring

Recently, consulting firm Emergent partnered with a Fortune 500 apparel company to undertake the biggest business transformation in the company’s history. Below is a mini case study that provides insights from that project. Building upon its solid performance in 2012, the company chose to implement a new global structure designed to fuel its long-term, international growth. The project…

Details

Criticism: Behind Closed Doors or in Plain Sight?

Nearly every company revolves around the central idea of team performance.  The synergy created by having multiple personalities and motivations can help any project be completed with efficiency and with quality results.  Naturally, there are some times when things may not go as smoothly as planned.  Indeed, if every effort always resulted in superior results,…

Details

Do We Stop Growing after Schooling?

I ran across a recent posting from the Gallup Management Journal that made a point have I never thought about before: “Raised through a childhood in which each new year brought novel opportunities, playing at ever more difficult levels of sports, growing physically, educated in a system of cleanly delineated grades — freshman, sophomore, junior,…

Details

Does Job Satisfaction Lead to Better Results?

This question has been studied for decades and no direct relationship has been established. Despite what would seem to be a slam-dunk connection, happier workers don’t necessarily result in a bumped up bottom line. A recent study by researchers at Cornell, however, has mapped a path between the two. It is not a direct route.…

Details

Don’t Forget the "Why" in Your Mission Statement

A colleague of mine, Gwen Kinsey, led a crisp, interactive presentation at a recent leadership breakfast event. The topic was about how mission statements engage (or not) your employees. Gwen’s session drove home a point for me and I’d like to share it here. She put us in small groups and handed out two mission…

Details