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Let’s face it, today’s workforce looks very different than those of the past—especially if you're a manager. It is now very common for employee groups to extend across many generations, making it the norm for managers to also have to manage employees whose ages span half a century within a single department. Individual roles are also shifting in a way that can introduce new tension into the workplace...

How do you encourage employees to think like owners, to take initiative, to participate, to follow through, and contribute to the growth and success of your organization each and every day? This is the key to world-class performance; building a culture in which team members not only feel empowered but are motivated to act in the best interest of the organization. If leaders are to encourage engagement, they must be able to notice when it begins to emerge, nurture it, strengthen it, and embed it in the fabric of the culture...

Several years ago it was reported that an air traffic controller deliberately made his bed and slept in it while on duty at a Tennessee airport. I am sure many people think that was an isolated incident, but unfortunately it is more common than any of us would like to believe. As automation becomes more prevalent, more and more jobs become monitoring jobs. Unfortunately, these jobs are often so bereft of reinforcement, they fail to keep people’s attention at best, and put people to sleep, at worst...

Most of us have had the opportunity to work under great, and unfortunately not so great, leaders. More than likely when you worked with great leaders you delivered high levels of discretionary effort and enjoyed the work you did. Under poor leaders, you might have found yourself increasingly unmotivated and burdened by the work. ..

About 11 years ago, my father underwent successful open-heart surgery at age 74. The surgeons completed a triple by-pass and valve replacement...

Leadership requires confidence in one’s ability to make good decisions. Yet that confidence does not guarantee quality in the decision making. Sometimes confidence isn’t well founded. The dark side of confidence is arrogance, and arrogance can lead to quick decisions based on narrow thinking and deeply rooted perceptions...

When I was in college, I worked in a food distribution warehouse loading trucks. It was backbreaking work. We would load five trailers per day—each load weighing about 25,000 pounds!..

Every business goal is driven by human behavior. It follows then that your employees’ performance—their behavior and results—is the most important output of your role as a leader. Considering that your coaching time and energy are limited, it’s especially important to identify the behaviors that will bring the most benefit to them and the business. When you identify the most impactful work behaviors while prioritizing an important concept derived from behavioral science, the behavioral cusp, the outcome is that much greater...

In one of my recent blogs, Leaders Can Make or Break Engagement, I provided concrete steps leaders can take to move from managing to coaching.  This topic proves to be a very important one so it seems only fitting to dig deeper into the science of behavior to explain how poor management practices can destroy employee engagement...