Research suggests that if you listen and act on your employees’ ideas, then they will respond by taking more initiative and increasing productivity. It’s time to start inviting employees to offer their advice and share their knowledge. Here are five things worth asking them about.
It is my opinion that delivering consistently superior customer service is one of the ONLY competitive differentiators left for most businesses and should be a key area of strategic focus by the leader. In this video I will share with you several important ideas around how to build a culture of delivering great customer service to drive higher levels of success in your business.
As of this month- July 2014, log on to Amazon and you’ll find 116,796 titles under the heading “Leadership”. But if you’re in too big of a hurry to read a book, open up the American Heritage Dictionary. A careful examination of the various definitions of “leader” presents a fascinating and brief explanation of great leadership.
When we think about motivation we tend to imagine people bounding around, smiling and excited to make things happen. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not much of a recipe for long-term productivity in a work place. While I’m all for a healthy dose of inspiration, there are three things which are completely underestimated in their ability to motivate employees, and all available without delivering a stirring speech.
“He is totally out of control; always questioning why we do things, coming up with strange and silly ideas of how we could do things differently and showing little respect for authorities, and our well-established routines, rules and traditions. On a number of occasions he has even initiated new activities without asking for my permission. “Thank you, that is exactly what I suspected,” I answered, hung up and then called the candidate and told him that the job was his.
We are honored to serve alongside other thinkers and doers who are pioneering a new way in business and leadership. Here are a few we don’t want you to miss.
Enjoy!
Professor and author Zeynep Ton (coolest name ever!) is passionate about helping businesses understand how to create a good job strategy. These are jobs that help the business grow through investing in employees. It’s a people first approach.
With any pursuit in life, there is doing a thing – and then there is doing it well. There is activity – and then there is artistry.
This holds true where compliments are concerned. There is little debate as to the importance of having “an attitude of gratitude,” particularly as a leader.
Our personal growth is key to finding joy in our work, and a colleague of mine descriptively said this once: “If you’re green, you’re growing. If you’re ripe, you’re rotting.” I think that’s a pretty descriptive way of saying, “You know what? We’ve got to be in a constant state of growth and reflecting on where we are and where we want to go.” I think we owe it to ourselves to be in this growth loop throughout our career. I’ve heard managers say to me, “Well, I don’t need any more training,” or, “I don’t need any more coaching because I’m a manager now.” You’re never done growing.
Getting top talent into your workforce holds countless benefits for your company. From an increase in innovation to better overall workplace engagement, the best employees in your industry will bring out the best in everyone around them. So, wouldn’t it be nice if the best employees were working for you?
Very soon, a lot of people will be exiting the workforce.
Baby boomers, or people born between 1946 and 1964 are set to retire soon. A poll done by AARP showed that 48% of companies have no intention to do any strategic planning about how this huge amount of retirement will affect their business.
When I think about this, I see the potential to miss a huge opportunity. Imagine all of the knowledge, skills, and insight this generation has. As leaders, it would be a shame to let that go to waste and profoundly foolish not to tap into that.
I’m currently working my way through the series Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters with my daughters. The premise is this: take a long-held belief or story, and put it to the reality test. For instance, one of my favorites is their test of the common expression “like a bull in a china shop.” Mythbusters ran a series of bulls through a mock china shop. You guessed it – the china was fine (bulls are “daintily” nimble and agile).
Can we use this same concept as we think about accelerating our companies towards growth and improving employee engagement? I believe we can.
Do you want to know how to identify a truly successful person? It isn’t the car they drive, the title on their business cards, or the heft of their wallet. All of that stuff is fleeting, and all of that stuff is about them. It’s ego food.
No, the way a wise person measures her own success is more like this…
I suppose we can claim no harm/no foul on commitments to projects of our own choosing that we later go rogue on. Who really needs another cross stitch and if all tables were beautifully finished why would we need table cloths? The same can’t be said of commitments that we make to others, whether personally or professionally. Commitments we make to people are important – not only for they mean to them, but also for what they make of us.
As a species, humans love to complain, and we seem to really love to complain about the younger generations. However, it’s time to give the kid-bashing a rest and look at the ways that working with the Millennial generation (18-30 years old) helps us be better leaders and build better companies.
The time is ripe for a new kind of leadership that respects brains and beliefs of all humans. A lifetime of studying brains, valuing differences where I work globally, and leading from a center of belief in God, convinces me that brains and beliefs offer lynchpins for a balanced leadership that includes all.
You know those BS statements you see wherever you go? The stupid mission statements, lame values statements, and epically unimpressive purpose statements on posters all over your company walls? The really long ones with the convoluted sentences that were clearly written by a committee, each member of which had his own turf to defend? The ones that even your CEO can’t recite without reading off a teleprompter?
Are you a natural networker? Does making new connections come easily to you? Or have you taught yourself the behaviors you need to succeed and connect? How do great networkers learn the tough (but important) skills that make them good at connecting with people?
