Planning for the New Year

Nov 26, 2013 | Strategic Planning

The new year is almost here and it’s time to think about what you hope to accomplish as a business owner or manager in the new year. Take advantage of the natural feelings of excitement and anticipation for the new year. At this time of year, many people look to the new year as a way to “start fresh”, particularly if the current year wasn't as happy or productive as they would have liked. So give your employees something to look forward to by planning for the new year. Develop Goals Work with...

Why Do You Attack Instead of Talk?

Nov 20, 2013 | Leadership Development

Why is it so hard for so many managers to simply talk with their employees about less-than-expected performance? Why do so many managers become mean when they simply need to make employees aware their behaviors are taking them down the path towards disciplinary actions or possibly -- termination? Why do so many managers default to "attack mode" instead of "talk mode" to tell employees they are performing in unacceptable ways? Typical Reasons People Attack Instead of Talk From my...

If Zoop^® is Valuable, Why Aren’t You?

Nov 12, 2013 | Strategic Planning

(I came across this article in my archives. I think the lesson it shares is still highly relevant. So I thought I'd share it again...) I attended a conference yesterday and had the opportunity to hear Mark Sanborn give the closing keynote. Mark is an internationally acclaimed business speaker on leadership. During his speech, Mark provided a number of techniques for dealing with this new, difficult economy. One story he shared, however, really struck a chord with me. He relayed the...

Performance Reviews – They’re Not Just A Once A Year Thing

Nov 5, 2013 | Leadership Development

A client was experiencing some employee performance issues and asked us to present training to their managers on their new employee performance evaluation form. Terrific. However, they weren't thrilled when I told them that the training should focus - at most - 10% of the time on the actual use and mechanics of the form. The remaining 90% of the training needed to focus on managing performance and preparing for the reviews all year long. They couldn't expect a form to solve the performance...