As I approached the one-year mark in my new role with that small, family-owned business, I received my first annual performance review. My immediate manager and the owners of the company were keenly aware of all I had taken on in that position as well as in my time away from work. They saw tremendou...
The grind of rebuilding required many things; I had to earn the respect of my coworkers while learning as much as I possibly could (as fast as I could) about the operations of that new company, and I needed to intentionally invest some of the off-time this role provided into my relationship with Cin...
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...
The “demotion promotion” stung for sure, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the challenges we dealt with over the four or five years leading up to that. We had nurtured the seeds from each and were on much more stable ground, financially and emotionally. Truth be told, fending off foreclosure, reeling ...
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...
Regardless of the challenge or adversity, the one seed I’ve nurtured consistently since my early teens has been a strong work ethic. That, coupled with so many other leadership attributes I’ve slowly in the years since, helped me navigate the near-foreclosure experience, the crazy lowball offer that...
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....
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...
Just so it’s fresh in our minds, let’s revisit how Hill defined his third leadership attribute, a keen sense of justice. He shared that “Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of followers.” I’ve emphasized this in each of my books and with every group,...
My direct responsibility with anything truly related to human resources came slowly, very slowly. Since the behavior-based safety role I had held for so long was being filled internally, the process took a few months. Most of my time during that ordeal was dedicated to keeping those plates spinning ...
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 ...
