Even Top Talent Needs Their Manager – 3 Things You Need to Do as a Team Leader
“First, I stopped canceling meetings 10 minutes before the start time because I felt too “busy.” I previously had thought my employees would understand because I am the CEO and had a lot on my plate. Now, instead of hiding behind that excuse, they are my priority.” Excerpt from The Fast Forward Mindset* by David […]
Houston We Have A Problem…with Employee Engagement
In 2013, Gallup undertook a massive effort to study the current state of employee engagement around the world. After surveying 73,752 employees in 141 countries, Gallup found that 24% of employees are actively disengaged, 63% are not engaged, and 13% are engaged. You will find that when an employee is disengaged with their work environment, […]
Giving Feedback That Works
My supervisor and I were walking across campus after a meeting discussing an issue I was managing in the office. He didn’t agree with the manner in which I was handling the situation. He stopped walking and turned to me right in the middle of the campus quad. In a loud voice, he began to […]
Stop Talking About It: 4 Clear Ways to Actually Create a Motivating Workplace Culture
Marie was in her first professional job. One of her first projects was to create a new program offering from the ground up that she was to oversee and maintain. Excited about the project, she jumped right into the research and planning. She expected to be reporting back to her boss with results and progress […]
The Danger of Keeping Negative Nellies on Your Team
Devin ran a real-estate management firm and his team was very close. They celebrated everything from birthdays to anniversaries together. From the outside, you’d assume they were the perfect team, but danger was just under the surface. Devin was actually running a team that was about to rot from the inside out, all because of […]
The Importance of Creating Your Secondary Family
When I was 11, Mom got the call that Gram was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In that moment, Mom promised that she would never put Gram in a nursing home. Two weeks later, Gram moved in. For the next seven years until she died, we spent our days dressing her, feeding her and chasing after her […]
Your ABC(D) Guide To Being An Agent Of Change
Change is an interesting word. Depending on who you ask in your industry of choice, change can either be welcomed with open arms or send people fleeing. In a dramatically entitled Forbes article from 2017, writer Sam Page leads off with “Adapt Or Die”. While incredibly blunt, those words ring incredibly true. In the higher […]
Using Spring Fever to Make Your Team More, Not Less Engaged
A few years ago, I saw a funny post on Facebook that said if you leave the office in the middle of the day to go outside, and someone asks where you are, you can say you are “Out-Standing.” Ha ha – get it? OUT? STANDING? So maybe this isn’t hilarious to you, but to […]
Hosting a “Topsy Turvy” Retreat
For our last quarterly retreat, we decided to have the event on April 1, 2019. April 1 is obviously April Fool’s Day! As Mark Twain once said, “Today is a day that upon which we are reminded of what we are the other three hundred and sixty-four.” But not everyone enjoys being tricked, so we […]
The Four Big Myths of Dance Floor Theory
Dance Floor Theory is an engagement system that can be used by any team or organization to better engage their employees or members. We use dance floors as a visual representation of engagement within an organization. In the middle of the dance are the most engaged dancers. We call them 5s. The least engaged dancers […]