For many of us, it’s hard to identify exactly what about us — if anything — is valuable or unique. Many of us are self-critical – we are very much aware of our weaknesses, but find it much harder to…
Executives say that they lose 40% of their strategy’s potential value to breakdowns in execution. However, this strategy-to-performance gap is rarely the result of shortcomings in implementation; it happens because the plans are flawed from the start. Too many companies…
For decades, we’ve often thought of leadership profiles in unique buckets. Two popular varieties are the ‘visionaries’ – who embrace strategy and think about amazing things to do, and the ‘operators’ – who get the stuff done. According to a…
Many people think of employee engagement as a relatively new idea, though scientists have been studying it for years. William Kahn first introduced the term in 1990, defining it as “the degree of psychological identification employees experience with their job…
Why are so many successful business leaders, all of a sudden, urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola Co., in May called upon rank-and-file managers to go beyond the…
How can leaders help employees find meaning at work? Organizations spend considerable amount of resources on corporate value and mission statement. But even the most inspiring of these — from Volvo’s commitment to Safety to Facebook’s desire to Connect People,…
Research shows that when employees are willing to go beyond their formal roles by helping out coworkers, volunteering to take on special assignments, introducing new ideas and work practices, attending non-mandatory meetings, putting in extra hours to complete important projects,…
Although organizations spend more than $24 billion annually on leadership development, many leaders who have attended leadership programs struggle to implement what they’ve learned – It’s not because the programs are bad but because leadership is best learned from experience.…
While sabbaticals are still rare in corporate America, their presence is increasing rapidly. Recent research and corporate experiments suggest that there might not be enough employees taking time off — and even if they are taking time off, they should be…
Executives and managers invest a lot of effort and time building trust in their teams: establishing trust within their employees and ensuring that their employees trust them in return. But many employees say they do not feel trusted by their managers, and…