Good Job! But Based on What?

As I think back to the nearly two decades I worked in a manufacturing facility, it seems like we measured everything! If you’ve ever been through an ISO-9000 audit, or whatever the number is now (it was TS-16949 in the automotive manufacturing world as recently as eight years ago), you know...

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Why You Really Matter

How many times have you had a task on your to-do list that you just didn’t want to mess with? You know, one that was not only a pain in the butt to deal with but also something you didn’t really understand why it even needed to be done? Assuming you’re picturing at least half a...

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Everyoneā€™s Favorite Radio Station

So here’s the reality of it all… All the profit in the world, even when it’s a direct result of building a positive work environment, won’t be what motivates our team members - especially if we’re trying to hang onto every stinking penny of it - unless we can...

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The Benefits of a Positive Work Environment

Never mind the 15% overall revenue growth the AP News article I referenced in The Importance of Organizational Culture detailed… While we’re at it, let’s also disregard the turnover costs of up to 300% of an employee’s salary I share from Hireology in The Benefits of...

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What Signs are You Watching For?

Creating an atmosphere where our team members don’t throw up when they think about working for us involves more than just avoiding the urge to be an insufferable jerk by demoralizing everyone we manage and yelling louder when they don’t heed our every command. There might not be cause...

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Workā€¦ But How?

A few years back, I did a series of lessons in our Leading At The Next Level program combining some things that stuck out to me when I re-read John Maxwell’s book, The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, with several experiences I had lived through in my own career since reading it for the...

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Whatā€™s the Real Cost and Who Can Fix It?

Last time I mentioned the six areas, per a Culture.io article, that are impacted when team members aren’t held accountable. I won’t hash out all of those here but I will touch on some very specific costs I’ve seen related to just two of those…

A disengaged workforce,...

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Responsibility and Accountability in Leadership

So the lack of accountability that we’re seeing more and more frequently across what seems like all sectors of society isn’t all that new, but I absolutely believe it’s becoming more acceptable! But even with the examples we’ve looked at to this point, is it really a big...

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Consider the Numbers...

Now that we have a foundation for what employee engagement looks like - meaning a clear picture of the types of behaviors we should be seeing from our engaged employees - let’s work through why it even matters and how engagement really does impact our bottom line. Just in case we’re...

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Why is Employee Engagement Important?

Having made a case for why it may not serve us all that well to focus only on ensuring our employees’ happiness or satisfaction, and working to actually engage them ties more directly to the results we need to achieve, we should probably take the time to define employee engagement before...

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Establish a Meaningful Connection With...

I closed last time by sharing a definition but not the word it was tied to… If you’re to play along with Jeopardy, maybe you’ve already figured it out - but did you phrase it in the form of a question???

We started out by looking at two ideas that are suggested frequently as...

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More than a Snickers Can Deliver...

In the late 1980’s, the tagline in the Snickers candy bar commercials was “Snickers really satisfies you!” If that holds true today and we’re not getting the results we need from making our employees happy, maybe a Snickers bar will get the job done? If only,...

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