Unemployment… 3.5%. Burnout percentage, unknown. Open seats you may be having trouble filling. When it comes to their teams, one of the top concerns we’re hearing from business leaders is burnout. “My team’s burning out. I’m burning out. I can’t afford for the people I have to burn out.” The conventional wisdom is that to […]
A championship swimmer nearly drowned while professional lifeguards watched, and there are critical lessons for you as a business leader if you don’t want your company to drown while your people look on. What’s a near-drowning got to do with your company policy? Glad you asked… Story Time Here’s the story in brief. Immediately after […]
Leaders — even the best among us — are only human. And as such, we’ve all got blind spots that harm company culture. Blind spots lead our best laid plans to backfire. We intend well. We don’t see clearly. We stumble and blunder into obstacles we cannot perceive, and wonder how we got all these […]
What do your company and diapers have in common? They’ve got to be changed regularly. It’s not your fault. You’re not doing anything wrong. Your company (unlike diapers) isn’t full of crap. Rather, we live in a changing world and you’ve got changing goals, and so what got you to the present you’re in won’t […]
You’ve got something important to communicate to someone on your team — and maybe they don’t want to hear it. Before you even begin to deliver your message, you feel a pit in your stomach as you start to fear the dreaded defensiveness. As leaders, we’ve got the responsibility to have difficult conversations and challenge […]
Why Cultivate a “Change-Ready” Company Culture? We want to have fun at work. And there’s a paradox — though stasis is not fun, we resist change and fall into habit. The logistics of corporate change are often planned meticulously. No matter how complex a business, the mechanical variables of change execution can be identified, quantified, […]
A Riddle That’s Not Funny When is a job requirement not a job requirement? This may be a riddle, but it’s no joke. When there are no consequences for consistently missing a job requirement, then it is by definition NOT a job requirement. It’s an item on the employer’s wish list. When a leader says, […]
Every time someone leaves your company — whether by their choice or by yours — the space they leave in your organization is a company culture diagnostic opportunity. You can expect there’ll be some neglected details that emerge… Projects started and not completed, and the like. What you want to be on the lookout for […]
Let’s face it. There’s a lot of defensiveness at work. It’s part of the human condition. Despite how much of it we face (and exhibit) leaders around the world struggle to easily address defensiveness. And because continuous improvement is essential for reaching our goals, we need tools for addressing defensiveness at work. So… Let’s look […]
What’s this? This is episode 2 of our new show… It Ain’t Easy Being a Human. In this episode, we explore the importance of the tremendous impact leaders can have on the emotional experience, and the sense of wellbeing of the people in their care. Main Points… 1. When your people believe you may be […]
Improve accountability with Support vs. Challenge You want to improve accountability in your team. This is the third and final installment of our Leader’s Accountability Guide. Did you miss the first or the second installment in this series? You’ll get more out of this entry if you go back and read those first. In installment […]
The Accountability Culture Formula In the first installment of this series on improving accountability on your team, we talked about three surprises. We busted three myths. And now we’ll look at the “how to” of creating an environment of accountability. To be entirely too simplistic about it, there’s an Accountability Culture Formula. Leaders who implement […]