Category: Organizational Health

Instilling and Inspiring Confidence In Your Team Members

Instilling and Inspiring Confidence In Your Team Members For the past few months I have had the absolute pleasure of working with an organization that is incredibly open, forward-thinking, and amenable to culture improvements, career path planning, job leveling, and leadership development – it has been a super fun project AND because the entire company from the C-level to the most junior level team members are behind – and eager for – change initiatives and programs to elevate culture, customer experience, employee experience, productivity – it has been an exceedingly poignant and rewarding working experience. One of the greatest opportunities I identified within the first 10-14 days [framework assessment period] was the opportunity to inspire confidence in the junior and mid-level leadership ofRead More

Dealing With Selfish People In The Workplace

Dealing With Selfish People In The Workplace It is a part of our hard-wired human instinct to be selfish – to some extent. To want to satisfy your need for things and circumstances to be in your favor is pretty normal…until it’s taken to the extreme. Selfishness in the workplace  – when kept in check and displayed responsibly and intelligently – can absolutely mean you are hungry, ambitious, and you have the drive to achieve excellence  and you simply want the credit for it and you want to earn the rewards and opportunity that come with accomplishment. Then there are the greedy, miserable, and horrible “me monsters” – as my friend, Steven, calls them. They believe that they are all about survival ofRead More

Leadership Lessons From My Personal Trainer

Leadership Lessons From My Personal Trainer Before returning home to the NYC area in mid-August this year, from a 12 month project in Southern California, I worked with a fabulous personal trainer in Carlsbad [Shout out to Denise at FitMonkeys]. To be completely honest, I was not really excited about the training process but I knew that to be the best I could be – and how beneficial it is for mental clarity – I needed to make the financial investment and the time investment and commit to focusing on me three times a week for 55 minutes. Great leaders are frequently pretty easy to spot. You encounter them in the office, they seem to stand out even in large groups. Sometimes –Read More

The Dangers Of Ignoring Performance Issues

The Dangers Of Ignoring Performance Issues There are A LOT of theories out there about how much a bad hire costs an organization. They range anywhere from $240,000 according to well-known recruiter Jörgen Sundberg to , at least 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Either way, that is incredibly damaging to an organization. While the financial impact is definitely quantifiable, CFOs actually rank a bad hire’s morale and productivity impacts ahead of monetary losses and permitting poor performance not only adds to the financial implications of poor performance and a poor fit but it inflames the morale and productivity issues of the organization. Disruptive employees lower the bar for other employees, and their bad habits areRead More

7 Ways To Encourage A Culture Of Innovation

7 Ways To Encourage A Culture Of Innovation Effective and smart leaders know they have to maintain a competitive edge within their industries in order to capture their piece of the proverbial pie. Therefore, it is essential that a business continually improves upon what it offers – in product, service, and|or experience – and how it operates to ensure that they are maximizing all opportunities that exist and building a sustainable and agile business. One of the qualities that separates bland and forgettable businesses [even if at one point they were novelty and popular] from outstanding ones is innovation. Organizations that construct a culture that encourages innovation – at every level of the business – allows them to remain adaptable and forward-thinking. ThoseRead More

8 Skills That Are Difficult To Learn [But SO Important To]

8 Skills That Are Difficult To Learn [But So Important To] Some of the most important things to  possess in life aren’t tangible but they do take a tremendous amount of patience, perseverance, and perspiration to acquire, let alone – master. Understanding the benefits of these qualities makes a difference in every aspect of life and – especially – in the workplace. TIME MANAGEMENT: Effective time management is one of the most highly valued skills by employers. While there is no singularly correct way, it’s important to find a system that works for you and be consistent with it. Why is time management important? Time Is Limited: No matter how you slice it, there are only 24 hours in a day. You CanRead More

Saccharin Leadership: Enough Already With The Sugar-Coating

Saccharin Leadership: Enough Already With The Sugar-Coating One of the principles of great leadership and a way the most successful leaders distinguish themselves – in any industry – is by building great relationships with their colleagues. They have unwavering reputations for being authentic, empathetic, and reliably honest. Global research from Edelman’s Trust Barometer reveals that despite integrity being the most desired leadership quality, only about 25% of people think their bosses actually have it. According to Merriam-Webster the definition of integrity is: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values and the quality and state of being complete or undivided. If integrity is the most desired leadership quality and if we commit to being authentic, truth-telling business partners and true leadersRead More

The “Why” Behind Being A Committed Leader

The “Why” Behind Being A Committed Leader Every so often – when my job or work “in general” becomes frustrating I have to stop and really think about how and why I chose to become a leader. I know when I started my retail career I moved up fairly quickly because I was REALLY good a few things. Visual Merchandising, organization, representing my brand, communication, and customer experience delivery. These were things that were recognized and rewarded by my Directors and CEO and for that, I am so appreciative – as without their encouragement I would be hard-pressed to find what industry my European History major translated into as a career. What I wasn’t very good at was “leadership”. I hadn’t coached orRead More

9 Telltale Signs You Have Built A Great Team

9 Telltale Signs You Have Built A Great Team As leaders we spend a significant amount of time and energy focusing on what we can do better; what we can adapt and evolve to be more effective; what do we have to do next to upskill our team members. We rarely stop and reflect on where we started and how far we’ve come because we are always looking to the future and what we need to do next; to have, and/or to be to be ready for the newest incarnation of business. However, it behooves us to take a moment and assess the team environment we’ve created. Great teams don’t just happen. To build a cohesive, collaborative, and unstoppable team requires a tremendousRead More

What Compels People To Stay At A Bad Job?

What Compels People To Stay At A Bad Job? I have been extremely lucky  in my career to work with some truly amazing organizations, and more importantly, truly fabulous leadership. I have also had the beneficial experience of working in environments that are not-so-amazing. I consider myself fortunate to have only encountered a toxic company and their toxic leadership twice in my career. Both times I recognized my value and decided to move on to a new opportunity that would excite me and would allow me to be…me.  One of those experiences concluded in early 2015 and inspired me to create a “No Jerks Policy” for my career that I firmly stand behind to this day. One of my favorite things about myRead More

Defining Culture Through People

Defining Culture Through People Typically, when I begin a dialog with an organization – one of the first things we discuss “culture”. From my perspective, organizational culture is defined by how people inside the organization interact with each other. How a company involves their team at all levels and includes them in building the culture. Culture is learned behavior; not an assigned one; it’s not a by-product of anything other than the people, starting with the CEO. Each company creates their own unique organizational culture by the individuals they invite onto their team and then by actions the people take once inside the organization; not the other way around. Behaviors Are Contagious Research by UCSD’s James Fowler and Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis, has shownRead More

Learning From Workplace Mistakes

Learning From Workplace Mistakes As I recollect my most excellent mistakes at work, one stands out as the clear winner…many years ago I worked for a company whose primary communication was voicemail. You would dial into a main number and hit a code/extension and you were able to leave a message for someone. So, if I needed to connect with my boss I would dial his extension and leave a message of things I needed to discuss or updates. If I needed to leave a voicemail for my team, the extension was different. Do you see where I am going with this? I accidentally dialed my team’s extension to leave a message for my boss. On that one message I left information aboutRead More

Outsmarting The Workplace Shark

Outsmarting The Workplace Shark Last week I wrote an article about ambition and what a great quality it is. I love socializing with ambitious people. Their enthusiasm is contagious, they want to be heard but they also are active listeners. They are driven, engaging, and have a ton of personality. They ask for help, they share their failures, they support others with the sharing of their best practices. It’s one of my favorite human qualities and along with sense of humor, it is a non-negotiable character trait in people I spend my time with. Ambition is often what separates the good from the mediocre and the exceptional from the great. What I didn’t include in my article in any detail was about theRead More

Ambition – Be The Game Changer

Ambition – Be The Game Changer The primary definition of ambition, according to Merriam-Webster, is “An ardent desire for rank, fame, or power. A strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work“ I recently worked with an organization where there was a palpable [and tangible] lack of ambition at most levels. It was an interesting and unique culture for me to be immersed in and study as it was the a truly fascinating example of lower skilled workers, coupled with a severely lower wage workforce than I have ever been exposed – en masse – to in my career and a company that, sadly, sought these types of employees so that there would be no challenge toRead More

Customer Experience In Retail

Customer Experience In Retail In September 2016, RIS News and Edgell Knowledge Network, sponsored by CodeBroker, surveyed senior-level retail executives in North America with significant responsibility over IT, marketing, and customer engagement. Here’s the shocking statistic from that survey, “only 10% of respondents felt that store associates drive consumer engagement.” Additionally, when these same executives were surveyed about the business functions that do drive customer engagement, nearly two-thirds of respondents said brand image or marketing did. Product assortment was another top answer; more than half of senior-level retail execs cited it. It is staggering to me that only 10% of respondents felt that the store associates drive consumer engagement. Authentic, lasting, vivid, and durable relationships aren’t all transactional but they are much moreRead More