Category Archive

How to Be a Better Team Member Most everyone is part of a team. And most of us try to be fair, accepting, helpful, and supportive of our teammates. And yet we frequently encounter problems interacting with others, in spite of shared values and common goals. Why is that? “We have a strong and natural tendency to look out for … Read More

The Changing Face of Employee Engagement: 7 Trends With so many organizations focusing on engaging their employees, why aren’t engagement levels across the world increasing? According to Gallup’s January 2016 article, The Worldwide Employee Engagement Crisis, with low engagement in the workforce, there are serious and potentially lasting repercussions for the global economy. According to Gallup’s latest poll, employee engagement … Read More

Three Ways to Be a Better Team Member It may seem unlikely that there could be anything new to learn about what makes teams effective, but there is. More than ever before, work today gets done in teams, and your ability to contribute as a member is vital to your career success. Every team is a unique social unit. The … Read More

How Great Leaders Ignite Passion and Performance Look at today’s top-performing companies, and you’ll inevitably find a high degree of employee engagement. From frontline workers to CEOs, people are passionate about their companies’ purpose, values, and mission. Most workers are motivated to give their best and often go beyond what’s required. Some are lucky enough to work for companies that … Read More

The Tricky Art of the Apology Who hasn’t said something in the heat of the moment that they regret? Everyone makes mistakes. We make insensitive statements, we speak before we think, and we let our emotions get the best of us. No workplace is perfect. Managers berate subordinates in meetings. Colleagues make snide remarks about each other. Even worse, people … Read More

Inside the Mind at Work: Manage for Progress “So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to do work.” ~ Peter Drucker As any fan of The Office can attest, negative managerial behavior severely affects employees’ work lives. Managers’ day-to-day and moment-to-moment actions also create a ripple effect, directly facilitating or impeding the organization’s … Read More

Feeling Good: Creating Emotionally Intelligent Teams When Daniel Goleman wrote his landmark books on emotional intelligence in the 90’s (Emotional Intelligence, 1995, Working with Emotional Intelligence, 1998), managers in organizations everywhere nodded heads in agreement. Finally, what they knew to be true about dealing with people had a name and was clearly articulated. For the past 15 years, research in … Read More

The Quest for Better Teams “Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.” ~ Patrick Lencioni, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass, 2005) Corporations increasingly organize workforces into teams, a practice that gained popularity in the ’90s. By 2000, roughly half of all U.S. organizations used the team approach; today, virtually all do. A … Read More