Blog Topics
Looking for something specific? The following topics address a wide range of business needs and challenges.
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…
4 Steps to Increasing Employee Engagement: Linking Contribution to Impact and Meaning
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…
Eliminating Rare Errors: Sleeping Air Traffic Controllers Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg
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…
Are You a Reinforcement Creator or Killer?
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…
Behavior For The Heart
About 11 years ago, my father underwent successful open-heart surgery at age 74. The surgeons completed a triple by-pass and valve replacement.
My family and I learned that among the many profound…
Hear No Evil: Yes-Men Leadership
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…
The Art of Teaching People to Recognize Their Best
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!
We loaded the…
Tapping into Employee Behaviors with Exponential Impact
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…
At Risk Behavior: When Unsafe Conditions Stare You in the Face
No, the image above is not an iStock photo nor one taken from a safety magazine. This is a live action shot I took from the window of a hotel where I was conducting a Safety Leadership workshop for a…
The Poisoned Cue: How Management Practices Could Be Affecting Your Employees
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…
The Truth About Building Habits: No You Don't Have to Do This Forever
Many times in the course of working with clients, they hit a point of realization about using a scientific approach to behavior on the job, and it sometimes sounds like this: “You mean I have to…
Technology and Behavior Around the Office Coffee Machine
An office familiar to me has for many years generously provided coffee packets to its employees as a benefit. One selects their particular type from a large assortment, inserts it into the machine…
Economics is Not a Science
And neither is most so-called behavioral economics
Despite being the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Paul Samuelson famously stated, “Economics has never been a…
Leaders Can Make or Break Engagement: Moving from Managing to Coaching
In Gallup’s most recent State of American Workplace Report, they indicate that only one-third of the American workforce is actively engaged in the organization that employs them. An even more…
Resolution Solutions for the New Year
“My New Year’s resolution is to quit procrastinating . . . I’ll start tomorrow.” Unfortunately, that’s the dead-end road that a majority of our resolutions take. Most of us are familiar with Albert…
Does your job add meaning to your life?
While preparing for a talk to a safety audience, I ran across several videos by Paul O’Neil, former President of Alcoa, about why safety was his number one priority in managing the company.
He…
Does Recognition Make You “Over-Confident”?
We have just signed a new lease for our offices and as such, I am moving spaces. As I started going through my “stuff” I ran across many articles that I previously put aside that I thought…
Reinforcement Schedules and Everyday Life
A reinforcement schedule is a prescription for arranging reinforcers in time and in relation to behavior. “So what,” you may ask? “Why should I care about something so esoteric and seemingly removed…