If we’re going to lead with a clear purpose, providing the oh-so-necessary clarity for the team members who are counting on us, having a firm grasp on a purpose of our own that truly is rewarding can be the difference maker when we need to push through the tough times - and there will most...

Any time I’m talking with a business owner, an executive, or really anyone with responsibility for attracting and retaining great team members, I share a critical lesson I learned early on during my time working in behavior based safety: people rarely shy away from tasks due difficulty,...

If you really think about the challenge my friend shared with me in running one of his businesses, I’m betting you can relate! To that end, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all felt that way at some point regardless of the role we’re in. In chapter eight of What’s...

During a phone call with a lifelong friend, I heard one of the most unique combinations of passion and despair that I can remember. He shared how he felt like he was just going through the motions in one aspect of his professional life, grinding his teeth through each project he completed, but...

If we think back to how we started this look at Leadership Misunderstood, the biggest myths we’ve taken aim at here were few but extremely common:

• People automatically follow a business owner, executive, manager (or whatever other title you want to insert here) because their paycheck...

More than ever, the topic of core values and specifically how to better ingrain core values into an organization's culture comes up in our leadership conversations. Anytime we talk about core values and how to keep them relevant, we have to talk about company culture. 

No matter what...

If we’re serious about giving our best team members a solid reason to stay by providing them with purpose and we’ve invested the energy into understanding the reasons that drive their behavior, we should certainly have a solid foundation. But when we can connect all of that to how...

As we’re working to provide our best team members with a reason to stay by fulfilling their need for purpose through the work they do, I’ve never seen this be accomplished more effectively than applying the same idea I referenced to address the high cost of turnover; by breaking the...

Now that we’ve identified some of the causes of turnover, specifically the reasons great team members leave an organization voluntarily and the high costs associated with that voluntary turnover, and we’ve looked at the extended reach of those costs, let’s get to work at...

Periodically, a parade of managers would gather around those nifty bulletin boards I mentioned last time and they’d expect the area lead person to give them a run down of everything that was plotted on all the charts they were supposed to be updating each hour. In the cases where the lead...

We’ll soon start working through the tangible benefits an organization can expect from an effective employee orientation program but before we go too far into the HOW, we have to nail down the WHO and the WHY! Otherwise, any steps we take won’t likely make the impact we’re...

If you’re still on the fence as to whether or not employee engagement has a real financial impact on your business, or even your department within a business, take one more look at just the low numbers I shared recently… Now it’s time to dig into some things we can each do to...