Warning Signs of a Control Freak Employee

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under Corporate Team Building | Leave a Comment

This is a great column from the Atlanta Business Chronicle column The Human Element giving some warning signs employers need to look for to avoid allowing controlling, insubordinate employees to gain too much influence and discourage inter office team building and collaboration:

“We all know micromanagers who need to back off. But just as often, I see employees who refuse to accept accountability and supervision. They want absolute control of their turf and will resist, sabotage and badmouth any supervisor who wants to integrate them into an effective team.”


Read the full article “Don’t let turf controllers work behind the scenes.”

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What Motivates our Employees?

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under employee motivation | Leave a Comment

As employers, it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the rush and chaos of each day - running our businesses, problem solving and staying in the black. We know the key to long term success for any business depends heavily on employee enthusiasm, dedication and motivation, but we can often lose sight of what motivates us and ourselves as people, and let the demands of our businesses take the place of what is truly important in life. As leaders in our businesses, we have to always be conscious of the fact that, at the end of the day, we are all human. The best way to motivate our employees and win their loyalty is to also remind them that we respect who they are as people, and appreciate the values and priorities that motivate them. This video gives a great example of some of the things we can’t lose sight of in either our personal lives or in our business practices:

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Customer Focused Approach in Strategic Planning

Posted on September 11, 2008
Filed Under Customer Focus | Leave a Comment

Are your products and processes customer/client focused? Or are you trying to sell products and services blindly? This video by Robin Lawton of International Management Consultants, Inc. gives a clear picture of why this strategy doesn’t work, and why designing your strategies around your customers is incredibly more effective than expecting your target market to adapt to you. (Hey, just ask Google!)

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SpeedReading People® Workshop

Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Speed Reading | Leave a Comment

It’s easy to communicate with people who think like you. It’s those who don’t that represent the challenge.

Learn to communicate effectively with all kinds of people, even those very different from you. SpeedReading People® is a communication system that enables people to quickly size up others and learn to “speak” their language.

Learn more at our SpeedReading People® workshop September 24! Click here for more information!

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A Different Approach to Employee Feedback

Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Giving Employee Feedback, Leadership Training | Leave a Comment

As business leaders, we all know the importance of giving regular, valuable feedback to our employees to help them identify areas of strength and weakness and to encourage their professional growth.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of today’s leading management thinkers, has developed a new approach to employee feedback called FeedForward. This exceptional tool, instead of focusing on past performance, focuses on suggestions for the future. By looking ahead, this method works to help employees work towards and achieve positive change in their future:

“Providing feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is in line with what their leaders expect. They need to learn what they have done well and what they need to change.

“There is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred - not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.”

Learn more about the FeedForward tool here.

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Coaching According to Google

Posted on August 26, 2008
Filed Under Effective Coaching | Leave a Comment

What does it take to build an incredibly successful business like Google? Or a strong company culture of innovation like exists at Google? Ask a Google coach.

This video - called Coaching: Leading from Strength - by Google coach Carolyn Foster talks about the power inherent in working from and leading from your strengths:

By identifying and further developing our unique talents and character strengths, we contribute more effectively and enjoy the process. This talk will draw on findings from positive psychology, brain science, and resilience research to describe practical strategies for articulating passions and reaching goals.

Hey, if it works for Google, right?

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The Benefits of HR Outsourcing

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under HR Outsourcing | Leave a Comment

Human resources outsourcing is a smart strategy for any business, small or large, because it gives businesses the ability to delegate time consuming, complex tasks and instead focus their time on their core competencies and client relationship development. In today’s economy, maintaining strong client relationships and efficient, profitable operations are key to long-term growth and sustainability.

This video explains how outsourced human resources works:

Increasing your available time to focus on business development and core competencies will give you the ability to focus on the things that will keep your business strong and increase your value proposition. In addition, outsourcing internal processes to an external specialist gives you access to compliance expertise, the latest technologies and proven strategies, because these outsource service providers make it their businesses to be experts in these business operations practices. It’s a win win, when you find the right provider. Click here for more information about HR consulting and outsourcing.

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Human Resources Insight: Hiring in a Recession

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under HR Effectiveness | Leave a Comment

What are the pros and cons of hiring in a recession? Forbes focuses this week on finding the right fit for the increasing pool of displaced talent resulting from the current economy. Small business expert and author Jane Applegate discusses identifying talent and finding the right fit within your organization:

“The good news about hiring in a recession: There’s an awful lot of talent looking for a home. Between April 2007 and April 2008, an estimated 755,000 jobs were shed, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Thanks to the housing crisis, a good chunk of those folks were in the construction business. But other areas are bleeding talent, too, such as financial services (93,000 jobs), manufacturing (47,000), information services (66,000) and leisure and hospitality (52,000).

“While having a bounty to choose from is a good thing, the hard part is finding the right fit.”

Read the full column “The Joys (And Perils) of Hiring in a Recession.”

Also check out Forbes.com’s “Tips for Hiring Outside the Box”:

Click here for more human resources management tools.

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How to Instigate Change

Posted on August 15, 2008
Filed Under Organizational Change | Leave a Comment

How do you instigate change in your organization? Are your employees passionate and motivated? This is a great video of a motivational speech by Patrick Dixon, a motivational speaker, author, and global business consultant, discussing why motivation is such a key success issue in business.

His point: You don’t need change management programs, because when people get it, they change. You have to convince them of the point. When you get passion, change happens. When you don’t have any passion, nothing happens.

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Effective Leadership Requires Relationship

Posted on August 15, 2008
Filed Under Executive Leadership | Leave a Comment

This is a great post from the Wall Street Journal’s Column “IN THE LEAD” by Carol Hymowitz. She points out that great managers have to be leaders, and that leadership only comes through relationship. She likens leadership to marriage:

“A wise friend of mine believes that the hardest part of marriage isn’t learning how to get along with your spouse, but rather coming to grips with what you learn about yourself as you relate to your wife or your husband. I think managers face the same challenge.”

She goes on to say:

“My experiences as a manager prompted me to launch this column almost a decade ago. I wanted to learn more about how leaders inspire those who follow them to take risks and to do more than they ever thought possible, and about how they convince employees that while failure is permissible, success is expected.”

Read the full article “Effective Management Remains an Art Steeped in Good Relationship.”

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