The gift-giving season is in full swing here in the United States, so I wrote a post for Smartblog on Leadership offering unique ideas for “gifts” that leaders can give their employees this year. Hint: there’s not a gift card or food basket on this list. Read more in 7 leadership gift-giving ideas for the…
Workplace Dynamics
Three Resources for Improving Employee Engagement
It’s December. As the year wraps up many companies close their books and put finishing touches on next year’s annual plans. Something that I bet few executives are focusing on: their retention strategies. They might want to rethink that. According to a Right Management poll of American and Canadian workers, 83% say they plan to actively…
Office Musical Chairs – The Pros and Cons of Rearranging Who Sits Where
Back in the day, I worked for an office furniture manufacturer. At the time, the open office plan developed by Robert Propst was in full swing. The benefits were many: more collaboration between different departments, increase innovation and a lower cost of capital expenditure. In many aspects, the tweaking of “who sits where” is a…
Employee Engagement Killers
How do leaders crush employee engagement? Oh, let us count the ways. . . Over at SmartBlog on Leadership, I describe a newly hired vice president whose intense move to action panicked people, rather than inspiring them. Within a week of starting his new job, he had completely shut down employee engagement. I was…
Deflecting Compliments is Not an Olympic Sport
Have you noticed that some women seem loathe to receive a compliment? It’s almost like one-upping in reverse: who can denigrate themselves the fastest in a conversation? If deflecting compliments was a sport, some women would be Olympic gold medal contenders. Case in point: in a comedy sketch shown on Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer,…