Building Conversational Capacity to Address Conflict in Today’s Work Teams
Team leaders can facilitate constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects by balancing candour and curiosity. Click this link to learn how?
New Managers: Are You Having Trouble Letting Go of Old Habits
How have you dealt with moving from a high functioning individual contributor into a management role? The move requires a significant change of focus from the tactical to the strategic. Have you made the shift? Here are some suggestions to help make the move.
Stop Taking on Other People’s Problems—3 Tips from an Executive Coach
Do you take on “monkeys” that aren’t yours? Click this link for a couple of tips that managers can use to help their direct reports deal with their own “monkeys” and solve their own problems and tasks.
Not Feeling Confident on That New Task at Work? 5 Ways Your Manager Can Help
Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed. It comes from within and must be nurtured. To build a direct report’s confidence on a specific task, a manager should follow some simple steps. What steps are these? Click this link to find out.
Suffering from Burnout? 3 Ways to Get Yourself—and Your Team—Back on Track
If much of your work consists of tasks you don’t enjoy doing, you may find yourself getting frustrated and beginning to dislike other things around you. Here are for three things you can do to help move past it.
Leading Effectively from Start-up Growth to Maturity: Identifying the Four Stages of Development
Ken Blanchard believes that senior leaders need to diagnose the development level of their organisation before they consider how to best manage performance. The leader’s role is to diagnose where the organisation is at any given stage. How does this work?
Reduce Turnover with One Simple Management Technique
Any organisation can begin to improve employee engagement by implementing a simple and practical strategy. This one technique will immediately increase the frequency and quality of conversations taking place between managers and direct reports. Make this relation critical.
Don’t Underestimate Your Points of Power at Work—5 Places to Look
An essential mindset for achieving your goals and contributing to the goals of others is recognising and appreciating your power at work. This transformation begins by recognising an important truth about power: not realising our own points of power may be one of our greatest assumed constraints. Identify your strengths.
Resilience at Work—Focus on Thriving, Not Just Surviving
"Resilience at work is about thriving—not just surviving", says David Witt. We need to provide conditions that let people and organisations thrive and flourish with meaningfulness and purpose. Bring out the best in your people.
Leading by Serving—5 Essential Ingredients to Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow
Regardless of their formal title or position, people who want to be great leaders must embrace an attitude of service to others. There are at least five critical ways leaders must serve if they want to be as effective as possible. Click this link to discover what they are.
Don’t Confuse Collaboration with Being Nice: 7 Ways to Promote Healthy Team Debate
For leaders interested in taking some first steps toward improving collaboration in their organisations, here are seven suggestions—for promoting healthy debate in your organisation.
4 Basic Human Needs Leaders Must Meet to Have Engaged Employees
Everyday the spirits of millions of people die at the front door of their workplace. Only 20% of people say they are truly passionate about their work, and the rest are still being paid to under perform and ultimately undermine the effectiveness of your business. What can you do? Here are four basic “needs” that can keep your people passionate and engaged.
Do You Focus on What’s Wrong-or What’s Right?
Managers sometimes have difficulty focusing on both people and results. You don’t have to chose between one or the other. Here are some points to help any leader focus on helping people develop and move forward with planned actions.
4 Questions to Help You Clarify Your Core Values
Have you lost focus? Do you need to get back on track? Are your values being compromised? Perhaps a values identification process can help you with your choices. It’s time to ask yourself a few questions.
4 Key Conversations to Help Your Customer Feel Welcome
Do you fail to make your customers feel welcome? Here are 4 key conversations to have with customers to make them feel welcome and want to come back.
9 Things I Learned from My First Difficult Conversation
Effective leaders must know how to conduct difficult conversations with employees. Because of the common perception that conflict at work is bad, it’s no surprise that so many leaders shy away from having these discussions. Here are 9 ways to help prepare for the experience.
Stop Driving Yourself Crazy Trying to Hold People Accountable
When you drive for results and declare you are holding people accountable for those results, you are also sending the message that you don’t trust people to perform or achieve their goals. What should we be doing instead? Read on and find out. Click this link.
The Power of Clear Expectations–Identifying What and Who
When leaders set clear expectations, outcomes are much more likely to hit the mark. Stating clear expectations, however, is just the start. What else should you be doing? Click this link to find out.
The Curse of Unspoken Expectations – 3 Ways to Improve Teamwork and Collaboration
Unspoken expectations are a curse upon relationships. It’s a surefire way to guarantee you will have conflict and discord that leads to poor teamwork and collaboration in the workplace. Here are 3 ways to improve teamwork and collaboration.
Focus on Competence and Commitment to Improve Productivity
Most people will tell you they are working as hard as they can, says bestselling business author Vicki Halsey. “The problem is, they still aren’t able to keep up with the workload. Today, people need to work smarter, not harder,” says Halsey. To read more click here.
Ethical Behaviour in Leadership
Examples of non-ethical behaviour in business and leadership are all around us; and recent well-publicised ethical breaches in organisations have brought a great deal of attention to the issue of ethical behaviour. How can we work to become ethical leaders? Click this link for some suggestions.
Don’t Confuse Collaboration with Being Nice: 7 Ways to Promote Healthy Team Debate
Do you confuse collaboration with simply getting along or being polite? It’s a common mistake–and one of the most difficult to address. Here are seven ways to encourage healthy workplace debate.
Are You an Excessive Collaborator? 3 Warning Signs to Look for In Your Working Calendar
Wondering if you may be an excessive collaborator? Your calendar can offer some hints. Over the past four months, how many times have you: Click this link to read more.
What Do Workers Want? Better communication with their leader for starters
Employees want communication, a trusting relationship, and clear measurement standards from their immediate supervisor. Leaders can help create the type of environment people are looking for at work. Want some ideas? Click this link.
Leaders: Don’t Let a Little Motivation “Dip” Become a Big Performance Management “Fail”
It’s a common pattern anytime people take on new tasks that require time, persistence, and effort. Initial enthusiasm turns into disillusionment. Take these steps to make sure that this little dip doesn’t turn into a big fail with people quitting the task before accomplishing the goal.
Performance Coaching – If You Wait, it May Be Too Late
If an employee’s performance is poor enough that a coach is called in, it means the manager is in a last ditch effort to save them. If it’s done too late, it does not work. What can we do about this? Click this link for more.
3 Conversations All Managers Need to Master
Managers don’t have enough high quality conversations with their direct reports. This deficiency can have a negative effect on both productivity and morale. Managers can learn to be more effective in their work conversations. Here are three conversations to get started.
3 Ways to Help Managers and Direct Reports Collaborate to Achieve Goals
“Make sure managers and direct reports are taking a collaborative approach to performance,” says Susan Fowler. “It starts with agreed-upon goals.” What does this mean for you in your workplace? Click this link to find out.
Sharing Feedback: 3 Ways to Help Others Improve
As people move up in their career many find they receive less and less meaningful feedback of any kind. Though many say that corrective feedback has helped their career they also say they themselves are resistant to giving it? Is giving corrective feedback a skill worth having? Click this link to find out.
From Performance Management to Contribution Management: 3 Keys to Making it Work
Who wants to judge — or be judged? How can you turn performance management into a positive “How can I help you succeed?” approach? Click here to find out.
When It Comes to Performance Management, Employees Want More, Not Less!
Are your employees wanting more from their leaders than they’re getting? A survey found a gap between what employees desire from their leaders during performance management conversations and what they were receiving. What do they want? Click here to find out.
This TV Show Illustrates The 3 Fundamentals of Effective Performance Management
How can a kid’s cooking show illustrate the three fundamentals of effective performance management: goal setting, coaching, and evaluation? Click this link to find out.
3 Ways to Combat Perfectionism
Most people agree that striving to continually grow and develop and to achieve one’s goals is a desirable trait. Perfectionism, on the other hand, can be a different story. Are you a perfectionist? Want to learn more?
A Coaching Take on the Annual Review
As your year comes to its end there’s an opportunity for a “year in review” assessment. Mary Ellen Sailer suggests we think beyond our work achievements and consider our life achievements. What would we like to be remembered for?
Rethinking Performance Review: A Lesson for China's College Exam
Do performance evaluations overstate or underestimate an individual’s actual contribution with an organisation? Do we over look the subjective nature of measuring performance at work? Click this link to find out.
4 Tips for Mastering the Most Difficult Performance Management Conversations
Do you find feedback conversations challenging? “Redirection” conversations tend to be especially challenging. Here are 4 time-tested, key takeaways you can use to improve your feedback skills.
Performance Review: Feedback Has to Happen More than Once A Year—Here’s One Way to Get Started
Offering feedback only once a year makes it hard to provide people with meaningful or actionable information. Should there be a rethink of this process. Click this link to find out.
Quit Focusing on Accountability and Follow These 5 Steps Instead
Responsibility breeds accountability. How can leaders help their people develop an inherent sense of responsibility? Click this link and check out these 5 steps to get started.
Leaders, Use this Approach for Better Employee Accountability
The most effective leaders realise that leadership is not about them–they are only as good as the people they lead. What have you done to help your people succeed? Click this link for a better approach.
Are You a Serving Leader? A 5-point Checklist
Is the purpose of your leadership to serve—or is your expectation to be served. Would your direct reports identify you as a servant leader? Click this link and consider the checklist.
Innovators—3 ways to invite others to your next big idea
It takes a lot of energy to develop an idea and implement it successfully in an organisation. Innovation also requires collaboration. Here are three ways to innovate and collaborate more effectively.
Your Leadership Training Is Probably Missing These Two Components
It takes a lot of energy to develop an idea and implement it successfully in an organisation. Innovation also requires collaboration. Here are three ways to innovate and collaborate more effectively.
Six Tips for a Work-From-Home Policy That Works
Working from home can provide tremendous benefits to both the employer and the employee. One thing is certain — trust is at the heart of a successful work from home policy. Can a Work-From-Home Policy work for your organisation? Click this link to find out.
3 Activities to Build Virtual Team Spirit
How can you build team spirit when you can’t have a face to face for team building? Click the link for three enjoyable activities to build relationships and team spirit.
