The Yes Blog

Trust-Based Leadership Hack: Our Obsession With Loss is Costing Us!

Trust-based leadership is trickier, more important, and simpler than people acknowledge. My fear of loss sabotages my dreams for me and my company. And so does yours. Maybe you’ve read Stephen M.R. Covey‘s book, The Speed of Trust. Its thesis is that as trust goes up, the speed of business goes up and the cost […]

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What’s Better for Your Company… Optimists or Pessimists?

Optimists or pessimists? Wrong question. We all want to fill our teams with optimists, folks who look on the bright side, positive people. Or do we. Optimists are often more fun to be around. They look on the bright side. They see opportunity. Pessimists on the other hand usually consider themselves to be realists. It’s […]

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How to Make Zoom Fatigue Optional

Zoom meetings (or Teams, or Google meet, yada-yada — pick your video meeting platform) are still a thing, and therefore so is Zoom fatigue. Our calendars are still laden with meetings — one-on-ones and group meetings both — in which we’re going to have to stare into a camera, tell Jody that she’s on mute. […]

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The Stay Interview – A Retention Tool That’s Both Brilliant and Dumb

Exit interviews are notoriously poor at providing useful information. The information you do get comes too late to keep this valuable employee on-board, and it’s hard to separate the valuable input from the bias of the interviewee. Therefore, someone brilliant came up with the idea of the stay interview to provide better information that’s more […]

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7 Keys to the Least Worst Way to Fire Someone

Have you decided that it is (or that it may be) time to fire someone? There’s no best way. Firing people sucks. Dark topic… I hope to shed some light. And to mix a metaphor, this article will give you the key — heck, 7 keys — to the least worst way to go about […]

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A Common Notetaking Practice Makes For Poor Meeting Outcomes

Come on… Surely technology has taken us beyond the point where we need to use a quill and ink to take meeting notes. Wait a sec, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We all have heard a bajillion times just how expensive meetings are, that there are too many of them, that people hate them, and […]

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5 Ways "Nice" at Work Can Slowly Destroy Your Company

“You’re nice,” is a compliment. Many of us would like to be seen as nice. Truth is… Nice isn’t necessarily good. Nice at work — and in so many other areas of our lives — can be destructive. And now you’re probably as tired of the word “nice” as I am. Good. Maybe you’ll stop […]

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8 Ways You Need to Upgrade Your Thinking About Recruiting

Recruiting effectiveness is a competitive advantage. Maybe it’ll be your competitive advantage over your competitors. Maybe it’ll be their competitive advantage over you. Up to you. And in a tight labor market like this, the field of competitors is spread — the best are further ahead than even the next best. In this season of The […]

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3 Powerful and Unexpected Truths About Your Team's Burnout

Unemployment… 3.5%. Burnout percentage, unknown. Open seats you may be having trouble filling. When it comes to their teams, one of the top concerns we’re hearing from business leaders is burnout. “My team’s burning out. I’m burning out. I can’t afford for the people I have to burn out.” The conventional wisdom is that to […]

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9 Surprising Blind Spots That Scuttle Company Culture

Leaders — even the best among us — are only human. And as such, we’ve all got blind spots that harm company culture. Blind spots lead our best laid plans to backfire. We intend well. We don’t see clearly. We stumble and blunder into obstacles we cannot perceive, and wonder how we got all these […]

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7 Things You May Be Getting Wrong About Change Management

What do your company and diapers have in common? They’ve got to be changed regularly. It’s not your fault. You’re not doing anything wrong. Your company (unlike diapers) isn’t full of crap. Rather, we live in a changing world and you’ve got changing goals, and so what got you to the present you’re in won’t […]

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