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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

A championship swimmer nearly drowned while professional lifeguards watched, and there are critical lessons for you as a business leader if you don’t want your company to drown while your people look on. What’s a near-drowning got to do with your company policy? Glad you asked… Story Time Here’s the story in brief. Immediately after […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

“How can I improve accountability in my team?” That’s the question we get again and again. Sometimes that question comes in different words. And when we dig in, we often find this is the question underneath. Looking for Accountability in Your Team A breakthrough in accountability on your team could become your company’s unfair advantage. […]