Guest blog written by: Steve Graham The Commitment: Leaders set the tone for an organization. They must be agile in their responses to the ever-changing marketplace and business climate. Leaders are charged with growing organizations, and learning is a part of the growth process. Learning can take various shapes within an organization. It can be organic, formalized, personalized, or on-demand. Whatever the shape, learning needs to be part of a leader’s commitment to improve both personally and professionally. One big lesson of learning is how to use failure. The old saying, “Failure is not an option”, is not realistic. Even
I recently received an email from a company (hoping to sell me their services) that included an article on “resignation violence” and told the story of an employee who went in to HR to resign her position and ended up attacking the HR representative. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that while workplace violence by co-workers is relatively low, it is on the rise. During my career, there are a few situations that come to mind when I was concerned about going in to a meeting or became concerned during a meeting due to an employee’s response.
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Max DePree Feedback is a critical to any successful performance management and development process. With trends in feedback moving leaders towards less formal mechanisms of feedback and away from a formal performance appraisal, we still need to be thinking about how to define the current state of someone’s behavior and performance in order to direct what we want to see. And sometimes we can formalize things and still make them feel “casual”. A way to do this is to have a 1. Start 2. Stop 3. Stay session. To do this:
“Expect the unexpected.” -Zig Zigler During a recent hike on Rainbow Mountain with my three boys and two dogs, I was gently reminded that even when you expect the unexpected, you can be caught off guard. Multiple times during our hike when my oldest was leading the way, I reminded him to go slow and watch out for snakes. Then about half way through the hike we stopped to take a break. The boys sat down on a large rock and I sat down about ten feet ahead of them. Almost as soon as I sat down, I heard the
My first professional mentor was a man. In college, I helped him with his research and he helped me grow as a human being in too many ways to count. It was no big deal for us to have one-on-one discussions in his office with the door closed. I never thought anything of it. I suspect he didn’t either. Nor were my parents concerned. They are as grateful to him for the positive influence he had on me as I am. This mentor often spoke truth with directness to the situations I was dealing with that I found myself getting