As a leader, how effective are the one-to-one career conversations you have with your employees? If you’re thinking “what career conversations?” you might be setting the HR department up for its next round of exit interviews. Don’t feed the exit interview beast; use “stay interviews” instead. You can learn more about the concept of stay…
Trust
Employee Engagement is for Everyone
This is a multi-part series on employee engagement based on my interview with New York Times best-selling author Kevin Kruse. As a former business owner and winner of a “Best Place to Work” award, Kevin has a wealth of real-life experience. I found him to be funny, down-to-earth and very reasonable in his approach to…
5 Ways Leaders Build a Culture of Trust
Is your organization built on a culture of trust? Look around you; there are plenty of clues as to whether trust abounds. How quickly are decisions made? How many people do you copy (or worse, bcc) on e-mails? Do executives check in on the “troops” even when on vacation? Given that 82% of workers don’t…
Building Leadership Trust Requires a Leap of Faith
When I was 17 years old, my family moved across the state to a new life. It was the first (and only) time my parents ever moved us. It was a huge deal. Because of all the unknowns – new school, new friends, unfamiliar town, my parents could have decided to tighten the reins on…
Auditing Your Workplace Relationships
First published in 1989, Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was life-changing for me in many ways. I especially appreciated the concept of the Emotional Bank Account, even though it technically isn’t one of the “habits”. Throughout my life, this simple idea of relationship “deposits” and “withdrawals” has helped me monitor…