As you move up the leadership ranks, you must learn to give up what you worked so hard to get: control, Terry Starbucker writes. If you don't learn to trust your team and give up some of your control, you'll doom yourself to mediocrity, he writes.
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The One Thing Every Leader Has To Give Up | TerryStarbucker.com
Instead of just firing a difficult employee or putting up with the bad behavior, managers should have a frank conversation with the worker, stating clearly that improvements need to be made and his or her attitude needs to change, Pat Lencioni writes. Then, if the employee refuses to change and decides to leave -- or is eventually fired -- the manager "will be able to act with relatively little guilt, knowing that he did everything possible to achieve a better outcome," Lencioni writes.
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As women climb the career ladder, executives of both genders will need to stop worrying so much about work-life balance, says Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld. Rather than agonizing over missing your child's birthday or soccer game, decide what you can afford to skip and what you absolutely must attend, make the necessary arrangements -- then stop moaning and get on with your job. "Don't come to regret having missed some of these hallmark events," Rosenfeld says. "You can't do all of them, and I think making some of those choices is important."
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The need to understand the impact of employee engagement on customer satisfaction is more important than ever. So what needs to be considered?
It’s almost trite to quote statistics on employee churn within contact centers. However, high agent churn is a well established if not completely well understood fact of contact centre operation. Employee engagement has been shown to be a key driver in reduction of attrition.
But how do you get staff to be more involved in the business? What do you need to do to increase job satisfaction and encourage employees to deliver consistently high performance levels and reduce absenteeism and defection?
The obvious answer is to find out what motivates each employee. Forward thinking companies are now moving beyond that, also asking how they can link employee engagement and customer satisfaction. The obvious linkage is from increased satisfaction to increased customer retention to increased revenue.
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When I was a very young journalist, full of bravado and barely concealed insecurity, Ed Kosner, editor of Newsweek, hired me to do a job I wasn't sure I was capable of doing. Thrown into deep water, I had no choice but to swim. But I also knew he wouldn't let me drown. His confidence buoyed me.
Some years later, I was hired away by Arthur Gelb, the managing editor of The New York Times. This time, I was seduced by Gelb's contagious exuberance about being part of a noble fraternity committed to putting out the world's greatest newspaper.
Over the last dozen years, I've worked with scores of CEOs and senior executives to help them build more engaged, high performance cultures by energizing their employees. Along the way, I've landed on four key capacities that show up, to one degree or another, in the most inspiring leaders I've met.
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The Four Capacities Every Great Leader Needs (and Very Few Have) | Fast Company
The most recent jobs report showed that employers added just 64,000 workers in September, local governments cut 95,000 jobs (mostly temporary census employees) and unemployment held steady at 9.6%. Clearly, employers aren’t looking to expand their ranks.
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Employers looking to boost workers’ proficiency in the 4 Cs - Articles - Employee Benefit News
Dealing with mental health issues
Employers need to become more familiar with some of the behaviors that signal a worker might have a mental health problem, Trish McFarlane writes. "And, for those employees who may just demonstrate a characteristic or two, find ways to engage them in their work so that you can mitigate many of the negative impacts of their behavior," McFarlane writes.
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Do you know what your employees really think of you?
Many bosses are less beloved than they believe, according to one recent employee survey of both employees and managers. A third of workers think they're smarter than their bosses, the survey found, and respondents consistently said their leaders were far less visionary and nurturing than they appeared to think. "Bosses may not recognize how bossy they actually are," Adecco's report observes.
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Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Ask someone for the qualities of a good manager or leader and you're likely to get a laundry list of attributes -- all of them positive character traits.
Good communicator, inspirational, problem solver and cool under pressure are likely to be on anyone's short list.
But what about those other qualities? Let's call them the less attractive ones that often are a part of the package that makes up a successful manager.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Business Administration studied the development of leaders over a three-year period and found that negative, or "dark side" personality traits have their place too.
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There can be only one boss, says U.S. defense chief
If the U.S. military knows anything, it's the value of strong leadership, says Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. To get anything done right requires a tough chief capable of pushing back against the crowds and standing up for what he or she believes to be right, Gates argues. "Look in all the parks in the whole world, and you'll never find a statue built for a committee," Gates says. "Whether it's in business or anyplace else, it requires one person who has a vision and then has the ability to execute that vision."
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As the workplace and the global economy evolve, leaders will need new skills and new management styles, writes Alan Murray. The best leaders will be those who stay flexible, plan ahead and proactively seek out new strategies and new ways of thinking about the world around them. "Managers will not be able to assume they know the answer -- because more often than not, they won't," Murray writes. "You'll need to be willing to hear hard truths from your employees, your customers, your suppliers and anyone else closer to a changing marketplace than you are.”
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Companies across the world are struggling to fill their senior leadership positions and plan their workforce needs for the future, according to new research.
A global report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) finds that 56% of corporate executives cite a critical talent gap for senior managers’ successors.
The report suggests that while it is generally easier and more effective for homegrown talent to step into leadership roles, firms fill more than half of their executive positions from outside. BCG suggests that internal leadership-development programmes need to be improved.
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Are some people more likely to be engaged at work than others?
Yes, according to recent research. An important new study with the best evidence yet that employee engagement might indeed facilitate performance also suggests that value congruence, perceived organizational support, and core self-evaluation (CSE) might be engagement enhancers.
Read more: http://www.bretlsimmons.com/2010-07/personality-and-employee-engagement/#ixzz117v4sfWT
Personality And Employee Engagement | Bret L. Simmons - Positive Organizational Behavior
