I once managed an employee who excelled in specific job areas but struggled in others. He was strong at finding and building efficiency, which made him sacrifice valuable customer-facing time. And in a customer-facing business, efficiency may be necessary, but customer engagement and involvement are equally important. This was a point where we disagreed….
I’ve found, and this will be controversial, that there are very few idiot leaders. Instead, I’ve seen employees who believe they deserve recognition, and the only logical reason they don’t receive that credit is that their leader has to be an idiot. I’ve seen this mentality many times, and I’ve even experienced this firsthand….
Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement scores. Gallup, 2014 Why Great Managers Are So Rare It’s daunting for a leader to think that most of their employees leave because of them. As a middle manager, it is too easy to attribute this rationale to reasons above or around you. However, in…
“The grass is always greener” is a common phrase leveraged to combat employees fleeing a company. Often, that phrase is used to help employees understand that they may have an inflated perception of their new job offer. Like, beer goggles, but for jobs. It turns out it’s an actional Syndrome. If your employee is…
You’ve just been promoted to management – Congratulations, you’ve made it. After that, you can sit back and let everyone else do the work. Right? Ummm. No. Aside from the fact that very few people actually want to be in middle management – it is now about the possibility of using your influence to…
No one marches into an implementation and aims to deliver only the bare minimum. Well, maybe Larry does. Screw Larry – he’s an idiot. Well, no one except Larry aims for the lowest common denominator. Even so, it’s deceptively easy to slip from aspirational change into ‘good-enough’ type implementations. Sometimes we even justify the…
As a remote leader for the last eight years, I haven’t had the learning curve that some leaders find themselves on. However, transitioning into a remote leader does require a re-tune. Organic moments in the office don’t happen unless you make them happen. And unless you have a sixth sense that crosses the space-time…
‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say. Sort of. It’s just a filler. Sort of. It doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, ‘Sort of’ means everything. Like after, ‘I love you’ or ‘You are going to live.’ — Demetri Martin The language you use can help you or harm you…
If you are alive right now, you are likely feeling a crazy amount of Stress. There is increasing pressure associated with the unknown, whether unemployed or fully employed. As you factor in that very few businesses are thriving (with some obvious exceptions) — it is clear that the pressure to survive is immense for…
As president and CEO of this little corner of the internet, we must acknowledge the world we share. The goal of Tech vs. Humans is to create and build and ideate and to do that in a world we would all want to live in. But we can’t do that unless we stop and…