The Yes Blog

Author: aaron-schmookler

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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5 Ways to Effectively Diffuse Defensiveness

You’ve got something important to communicate to someone on your team — and maybe they don’t want to hear it. Before you even begin to deliver your message, you feel a pit in your stomach as you start to fear the dreaded defensiveness. As leaders, we’ve got the responsibility to have difficult conversations and challenge […]

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Discover a System for Nimble Company Culture Where People and Profits Thrive

Why Cultivate a “Change-Ready” Company Culture? We want to have fun at work. And there’s a paradox — though stasis is not fun, we resist change and fall into habit. The logistics of corporate change are often planned meticulously. No matter how complex a business, the mechanical variables of change execution can be identified, quantified, […]

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Fake Job Requirements?

A Riddle That’s Not Funny When is a job requirement not a job requirement? This may be a riddle, but it’s no joke. When there are no consequences for consistently missing a job requirement, then it is by definition NOT a job requirement. It’s an item on the employer’s wish list. When a leader says, […]

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Company Culture Diagnostic Opportunity

Every time someone leaves your company — whether by their choice or by yours — the space they leave in your organization is a company culture diagnostic opportunity. You can expect there’ll be some neglected details that emerge… Projects started and not completed, and the like. What you want to be on the lookout for […]

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5 Ways to Easily Address Defensiveness At Work

Let’s face it. There’s a lot of defensiveness at work. It’s part of the human condition. Despite how much of it we face (and exhibit) leaders around the world struggle to easily address defensiveness. And because continuous improvement is essential for reaching our goals, we need tools for addressing defensiveness at work. So… Let’s look […]

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Leaders, You Must Manage Your Outsized Emotional Impact on Others

What’s this? This is episode 2 of our new show… It Ain’t Easy Being a Human. In this episode, we explore the importance of the tremendous impact leaders can have on the emotional experience, and the sense of wellbeing of the people in their care. Main Points… 1. When your people believe you may be […]

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