In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill shared that “Unwavering courage is based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.” When Cindy left...
Cindy accepted a position with a company that was in the process of building their facility and brand new to our area around the same time I stepped into the HR/Safety manager role. As their very first employee, her responsibility was creating visibility, and thereby enlisting clients for that new b...
2015 likely held as many life changes as we had ever experienced in a single year. Shortly after taking a week-long vacation to celebrate our fifteen anniversary, which may have been the first full week we were away from our jobs at the same time since our honeymoon, I completed the SHRM prep course...
Accepting a position with a new organization after spending nearly my entire adult life with one company was a tremendous shift. The tasks I was responsible for on a daily basis were indeed similar to what I had been doing for years, but the industry and the team members I was serving were wildly di...
I had been with the same organization since I was 19 years old and was at a spot where I earned four weeks paid time off each year when I received the demotion promotion in late July of 2014. And if I’d max out at five weeks in March 2016 when I hit the 20 year mark, the most a salaried employee was...
Years ago, I heard a story of a traveler stopping at a farmhouse along a country road to ask for directors. As the traveler spoke with the old man sitting on the front porch, he noticed that the dog laying beside him was constantly moaning, albeit quietly. The traveler asked the old man if there was...
In late July 2014, I received the best performance review in my career. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I deserved it. I had hired nearly 200 external candidates and filled at least a third as many internal positions, secured over $150 thousand dollars in grants to offset some of the training cost...
Here’s a quick reminder: I’m not sharing any of this for sympathy. Hell, I don’t want it! I’m also not reliving any of this to shine a negative light on anyone. If that were the case, I’d be listing their names and tagging them on social media - and some of them absolutely deserve that and far more....
The cost of ostracism was real, financially and emotionally. In addition to all the private conversations painting us as the bad guys for taking a moral stand, the individual who actually told those ladies that he wouldn’t help them unless they slept with him got down right nasty about us in front o...
From the time Cindy shared the issue those ladies brought to her, I was absolutely done with the individual they mentioned. There had been a plethora of other issues leading up to that, but this was indeed the final straw. The fellow I presented to for resolution blew it off completely and did every...
About a year after declining the global behavior-based safety position, the guy who accepted it visited our facility. I still don’t know if he had any idea that I was offered the role first but I distinctly remember him providing “constructive criticism” around several things we had been doing succe...
In our initial conversation about the position, the one with global responsibility for our corporate-wide behavior-based safety initiative supporting around 80 facilities, Tim shared that the salary range was initially listed as $63K to $75k. He followed that statement by immediately saying he felt ...
