The Rising: Staying Focused and Hopeful

One of my favorite songs over the past several years is “The Rising” by Bruce Springsteen.  A song from the depths of despair that speaks of rebirth, resurrection, and forgiveness. During this…

5 Tips for Supporting Teens With Online Learning

We have all been hearing about the home-schooling struggles of parents of younger school-age kids. The fact that my kids are 17 and 19 is one of the things I feel grateful for during this time of…

Five Signs It's Time for a Culture Overhaul

Culture and its impact on employees and organizational success cannot be overstated. The behavioral definition of culture is, patterns of behavior that are reinforced or punished by people and…

Practical Solutions to Your Biggest Workplace Challenges

CEO’s are faced with many challenges, but what are the most common? The Predictive Index released a report outlining top CEO concerns. Fortunately, each of these challenges can be successfully…

Critical Leadership Actions for Change: Explaining the Why

Change is necessary in order for organizations to evolve successfully. Change can also bring with it a volcano of emotions from those who are affected. Surprise, confusion, and even fear are common…

Want to Build Discretionary Effort? Focus on Building Rapport

Think of discretionary effort as the more in the “I got more” GEICO commercials.  Discretionary Effort is defined as performance that is above and beyond the minimum requirements of a job. …

The Science of Ghosting

It has probably happened to you, but you just didn’t know it by name: Ghosting. Ghosting is the act of actively ignoring or dodging attempts to be contacted through various mediums—e.g., texts, phone…

Telling People What to Do Rarely Works!

“I told you to do it this way.” “Weren’t you in the training where we learned how to do this correctly?” “Why do you keep doing this?” “I thought I was clear about how I wanted this done.” Anyone…

Another Failed Change Initiative: 3 Roadblocks to Successful Change and How to Remove Them

A failed change initiative is costly—wasted time and money on failed implementation, lost ROI on the projected results of the change, and decreased trust from employees in leadership’s ability to…

Bad Rules Are Getting in the Way of Your Good Leadership

Language is truly a double-edged sword.  Language allows us to cooperate, plan, coordinate, describe the future, talk about the past, and it even allows us to describe interactions between the…

Shaping That Inner Voice

A topic that often comes up while discussing behavioral consequences with leaders is that of self-consequences. In other words, can a person provide consequences to themselves for their own behavior…

Culture Change is Continuous

Once upon a time, organizations treated culture change like any number of other corporate initiatives:  There were project plans, timelines, communication strategies, and roll-outs. …

Are You Developing Successful People?

We have all heard of the Peter Principle—“Observation that in an organizational hierarchy people tend to rise to "their level of incompetence." Thus, as people are promoted, they become progressively…

Stop The Meeting Madness

Who wouldn’t say that meetings suck up hours of potentially productive work time? Let’s face it, there are just too many meetings and most are just too long! For those who feel like their meetings…

You Own the Culture

Do people change culture, or does culture change people? When I meet with a group of leaders, I often begin with this question. It’s a fun question for groups to wrestle with, and inevitably, they…

Earning the Right to Coach

When it comes to developing employees and improving performance, coaching and delivering feedback are critical actions for achieving desired results. In fact today, most organizations expect their…

5 Leadership Tips for Managing Conflict

The ability to productively resolve conflict in the workplace is a necessary people management skill for leaders. Organizations require collaboration among employees to effectively meet their goals,…

The Secret to Managing Across Generations

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…