Aubrey Daniels, Ph.D.

Managers learn the budget game quickly or they don't survive.  Ask for more than you need in the hope that you will get just what you need.  Learn why this wastes time and money and what to…

I was asked the following question on the blog: “People talk about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership behaviours. Is this something you could blog about, the…

A recently published book on the topic of annual performance reviews was brought to my attention this week.  It’s getting quite a bit of press and while I haven’t read it, from one of the…

This Pink thing keeps resurfacing.  He has a new video on YouTube that uses some real neat white board technology that is attracting attention.  Unfortunately, the message on the white…

For more than two decades, I have been leading a two-day seminar for the Center for Management Research in Cambridge, MA.  The session has always been a popular one, particularly for executives…

Many companies waste a lot of time and money trying to find and hire smart, talented people. The knowledge and technology exists today to create a high performing workplace with the people you have…

Someone just sent me a YouTube video of Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, speaking to 1200 business leaders in London in 2007.  The YouTube video is titled, “Why Incentives Don’t Work."…

Recent events in mining, oil production, and even drug manufacturing uncover costly and more importantly deadly mistakes. Understanding the laws of behavior and applying them to environments where…

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a safety leadership book with my colleague, Judy Agnew and it really got me thinking about the evolution of behavior-based safety. I began writing about…

Apparently the executives at Spirit Airlines are not familiar with the research of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They demonstrated years ago that they way you frame choices impacts people’s…

The sandwich method of correcting performance is probably the most common way that managers are taught to deal with poor performance.  It is called the sandwich method because criticism is…

Guess what? After many months of hard work by many people, we have given birth to a brand new website. The website was done in cooperation with What’s Up Interactive. They were great to work with and…

Q: I was recently promoted to a supervisory position at a federal agency where it is against the Collective Bargaining Agreement to discuss "performance standards" or "numbers" with employees.…

Watching the new season of NBC's reality show Celebrity Apprentice got me thinking "What does The Donald know about leadership?" Read my latest Washington Post column on the subject.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man and then qualifies it with a "But," --Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

When I read The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande three things occurred to me.  The first was a joke someone sent me in e-mail last week. “ A man is recovering…

I watched a lot of the Olympics over the past two weeks and the skill levels were amazing.  There were not just a few skilled performers, there were many.  Often the difference between Gold…

Last week at the insistence of Tyler, our Assessments & Surveys Guru, I watched an episode of the TV series, LOST, and boy was I lost!  I quickly concluded this is not the kind of…