culture

Humans: Are You Getting More Respect Than You Need?

September 13, 2011
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Many years ago a colleague leading a training class asked us this as we started, “Who here can say they are getting more respect than they need?”  Can you imagine a world where that was the case – getting more respect than you need?  Is that possible?
And in my singularly focused way, can you imagine [...]

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Managers: To Increase Performance and Productivity, Create a “3C” Environment

May 24, 2011
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I’m just finishing reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers.
I was really taken with Chapter 4 where he talks about “concerted cultivation.”  It’s a term coined by sociologist Annette Lareau to describe the specific way some parents teach their children to navigate the world successfully.
As I was taking in the behaviors Gladwell was describing, they seemed so [...]

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Managers: Do You Have Your Own *Charlie Sheen* employee?

March 7, 2011
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“Oh, that’s just Charlie.”
This is what I heard recently when I gave a leader some feedback on how one of his highly visible and influential cohorts was coming across to a large audience.  (Actually, the Sheen pun was not completely intentional.  Names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent.)
In this case, a [...]

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At Work: We Are Family?

October 27, 2010
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I was reminded again today about me being a stick-in-the-mud about describing the model work environment as “like family.”   I already went over my aversion to this last year, so to be fair, I would like to focus on what’s good about this notion.
Let’s get underneath this.  When managers say that want their workgroup to [...]

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Why “Posing” at Leadership is Sort of Like Being an IRS Automated Menu

October 20, 2010
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I called the IRS today to ask about the status of a refund I’m due, for an amended return for 2008. Do you know that there is not a selection in their automated menu for that? Duh.
I heard SO many permutations of options, but alas, my concern was not one of them. [...]

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Tomato? Tomahto? What Do We Call Those People Who Work Here?

October 2, 2010
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Words matter.  I saw a video about preventing sexual harassment once about a woman who was starting a new job. She was talking with a female coworker about how the men on the crew called them “girls.” The coworker responded with, “It’s only a word…” The snarky part of me wanted the [...]

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Yes to Unvarnished Truth, No to “Unvarnished”

April 13, 2010
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I’m going to play my 2-year-old self today.  “No-no-no-no-NO.”  What brought that on?  Hearing the proposal for a new website called “Unvarnished.”  It allows for employees to be reviewed anonymously, for the world to see, with no way of removing a negative review.
Like the sites RateMyProfessors or RateMDs, the intention is to reflect a [...]

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Small is the New Big at Work

March 29, 2010
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My new Facebook buddy, Anthony McCann recently shared an article from TimesOnline.com, titled, “Small is Beautiful in the New Capitalism.“  Now, granted the article is about small business and entrepreneurs, but I think larger corporations can learn something from it too.
“If I’m going to produce something, it should do something really good,” says fashion mogul, [...]

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What The World Needs Now: Leadership 2.0

October 6, 2009
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Joe Gerstandt and I have been tossing some questions back and forth, and this time we  decided to both answer the same question, which is this:  We both focus largely on the intangible assets in an organization or community…the things that cannot be easily counted or weighed…things like difference, trust, relationships, culture, etc.  [...]

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Prevent ‘EE Exodus: Make It Make Sense to Them

September 30, 2009
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I saw a intriguing phrase recently in regard to employees’ state of mind: “turnover intention”  A Deloitte report describes this as, “an employee’s “conscious and deliberate willfulness to leave the organization” within a certain time interval, e.g., the next six months” (Tett and Meyer, 1993).
You know that I think it is important to never take for [...]

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Employee Engagement – For the Win!

September 10, 2009
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I find it interesting when I am asked to back up my claim that employee engagement actually supports productivity and profitability. There has been plenty of evidence available on this for at least 30 years, and darned it if Gallup didn’t produce some more recently. (Thank you Gallup!)  Their study parses apart the differences between [...]

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The Most, Bestest Book (on Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace)

August 11, 2009
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Joe Gerstandt and I have an ongoing Q&A exchange that we are posting on both of our blogs.  This week I have this question for Joe.

Q: For an organization leader who sincerely wants to better understand what it is going to take to make her/his organization more innovative, by way of diversity and inclusion, what [...]

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