Making Your Workplace Great(er)

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers – Stephen Covey In Reader’ Digest a story is told of a factory worker who refused to sign up for group insurance. The problem was no policy could be issued until all employees signed up. Yet he held out stubbornly. The…

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Look Beyond the Money for their True Motivators

In PwC Saratoga’s latest Global CEO Survey, 65% of CEO’s report that they intend to use more non-financial rewards to motivate their staff. This is an admission that the a motivation strategy full of mostly financial reward “carrots” is not enough, especially for their highly skilled and high potential employees.

Lighten Up: Leading is Half the Fun

Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?  -Walt Whitman A story is told of a boy who asks his father to explain the difference among irritation, aggravation, and frustration. The dad picked up the phone and dialed a number at…

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Leverage Your Strength, Stress Less

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…

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Let’s Tackle the Skills Gap at 3 Levels

We are hearing so often these days that there are tons of well-paying jobs for which companies simply can’t find qualified people. Of course, skilling up alone won’t solve the unemployment and underemployment problems we face. But we do need to skill up as an adult population. I think we all have a part to…

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Leading with Talent Development

Using talent management software packages to administer employee performance has suddenly become hugely popular. Within this new-found appreciation of the need to better address the management of human capital is the need to develop the actual talent within that resource pool. According to a recent report titled Human Capital Management: The CFO’s Perspective, sponsored by…

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Leadership And The Troubles That Develop You

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,…

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Leadership and the Art of Thinking

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. – General George S. Patton A story is told of a man who bought a new gadget- unassembled, of course, and after reading and rereading the instructions he couldn’t figure out how it went together. Finally, he sought the help of an old handyman who was…

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Leadership and the Art of Change

Life is a long process of getting used to things you started out to change. – Frank A. Clark As the story goes, it was on June 4, 1783 at the market square of a French village of Annonay, not far from Paris, that a smoky bonfire on a raised platform was fed by wet…

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Latest Findings around Performance Goals and Competencies

Hewitt Associates have come out with another informative study, called The Current State of Performance Management and Career Development 2010. They surveyed HR professionals from 193 employers. On the performance side, it looks at how companies are using performance goals (the “what”) and behavioral competencies (the “how”) in their year end performance assessment process. Here…

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Know When To Let Go

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him go. – Abraham Lincoln A well-known story in some sectors of coastal communities such as where I live is that of the crab mentality. It is used to describe selfish or short-sighted people…

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Keep (Career) Development on the Table

In the hurly burly of meeting deadlines, doing more with less, and achieving performance goals, it is easy to forget to keep up the dialogue with each of your staff about: How they are doing vis-à-vis their performance How they are doing vis-à-vis their well-being Their continuing development and growth

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