Training and Development
What It Means To Put People-First (Case Study)
I’ve been speaking and writing a lot about a seemingly counter-intuitive concept: putting employees ahead of customers and profits is the surest path to exceptional customer service and financial success. It’s also the most fundamental (and most frequently missed) pre-requisite to building a pipeline of leadership and talent within an organization. But what does that look like……
Read MoreSurprise! You’re a Mentor.
Whether you know it or not, people are watching you. They’re learning from you and trying to infer the motives of your actions. Now, if you’re a leader, its safe to assume that others are watching you about five times more closely than they normally would—dissecting, analyzing, and categorizing everything you say and do, as…
Read More5 Essential Practices of Great Second-in-Commands
I served as the third-in-command in a large branch of a fairly dynamic service organization. When I recently told my leader that I was transferring to serve as the second-in-command at a different branch of the same service organisation, he told me “Go show them what it means to be a first follower.” I was…
Read MoreMicro-Promotions: The New Formula For Retaining Your Stars
Have you ever wondered how you can convince your best employees to stick around long enough to be able to include them in your company’s long-term plans? Do you ever feel like your younger employees have the attention span of a gnat, that they are constantly looking to chase the next shiny object (AKA “job…
Read MoreFound: The Lost Cypher For Revealing Leadership Potential!
I sometimes ask executives and HR leaders: “If I could give you a magic ‘something’ to make leadership development easier, what would that magic something be?” By far, the most common request is for an effective leadership assessment tool—one that can actually determine if someone will be an effective leader. There are literally thousands of…
Read MoreAre You a Decision-Making Bottleneck?
When I was the director of human resources for a mid-sized construction company I reported to the Executive Vice President. He was the type of manager who insisted on making nearly every single decision in the company. He didn’t come right out and say “I need to have the final say on everything.” What he’d…
Read MoreThe Difference Between Coaching and Mentoring (and why you should care)
When asked, most managers will at least vaguely acknowledge that they are responsible to “mentor and coach” their staff. But what does a mentor do and what is coaching? They often use those terms synonymously without much thought about the difference between coaching and mentoring. Managers who know how and when to use each approach…
Read MoreWhen You Neglect The Goose, It Stops Laying Golden Eggs
We’re all familiar with the old tale of the goose that lays the golden egg. We remember that the short-sighted farmer grew impatient and killed the goose to get all the golden eggs at once only to realize that subsequently, he’d get no more eggs. The moral of the story is that when you care…
Read MoreThe Missing Piece of the Succession Planning Puzzle
How did you learn to be a manager? Just about everyone I’ve asked that question to have said some variation of “I was thrown into the deep end and it was up to me to sink or swim.” How often does that method of leadership development work out? Answer: about 16% of the time. The…
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