Values based leadership positively impacts the triple bottom line- people, planet, profits

The impact the manager has on engagement is one of the most fundamentally important insights Gallup’s research has uncovered.

Research shows that diverse teams are more innovative than groups that are more similar. Diverse teams are more effective in the key areas of problem-solving, conflict resolution, and creativity.

Values based leadership can be an essential tool to grow you culture. When we use values to make decisions, our decisions align with the future we want to experience.

We cannot force cooperation or teamwork. A high performance team is a group of people who are able to achieve extraordinary results by working together towards a common goal.

Toxic top performer employees damage your culture and performance. Their behaviour will have far reaching impact if not addressed.

There is a big difference between spoke language and written language. Aim to have it sound natural as it is spoken. The speech should be memorable and easy to follow. Most importantly, when writing a presentation script for some else it needs to reflect the speaker’s style, not yours.

Scrap bell curve reviews as they tend to increase disengagement, cripple innovation and collaboration

Similar to teamwork in sports, at work if any team member is not aligned with the strategic goals or pulling their weight, the rest of the team may suffer for it. It is important to watch for members of the team who don’t seem to pay attention when others are speaking, or always give vague updates about what they’re working on. It may mean they …

Picking the right management is not about picking the best role talent (salesperson, accountant or engineer, etc.), it is about finding those with people management talent.

Life after you scrap annual rated performance reviews Will you follow Deloitte, Adobe, Microsoft and Accenture and scrap annual rated performance reviews? If so the question is what to do next?  Organisations are nervous to scrap annual reviews as: They want a fair and validated way to distribute compensation increases They need a record of low performance when dismissal is required They need performance data in an employee’s file for succession …

A dynamic performance management process impacts all key business metrics (including return on equity and revenue growth) so it’s surprising that so few organisations get it right.

Significant research over that last 15 years has demonstrated that each of us is a frighteningly unreliable at rating other people’s performance.

What happens before their work hours may be just as important as what happens during it. Having a sick child at home, marital issues, money problems or a death in the family directly impact our ability to Engage at work.

Don’t wait for your manager or organisation to engage you – take ownership and start to improve your personal Employee Engagement levels now.  Many things can influence whether or not we are fully engaged – changes in the organisation (particularly a change in/by a direct supervisor), our situation at home, the behaviour of our colleagues, challenging project changes and even world events. We can’t stay fully engaged without putting in a little …

The Power of TED Talks are that they are engaging, have a clear message we can relate to and hardly ever have any "Death by PowerPoint" to put us to sleep. TED Talks make learning fun and entertaining.

In customer service we need to recognise the customer is a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, this does not mean they are always right. The idea of the customer is “always right” originated with Harry Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London, in 1909. The concept is often used by businesses to convince customers that they will …

Learn how this performance management x-factor will help your managers keep valuable talent, build an innovative high performance team and put the spark back in your organisation.

Becoming the architects of our culture is essential as it impacts and influences all or relationships. As work is where we tend to spend most of our waking life it makes sense to ensure it has a positive impact on us rather than a negative one.

How do we share what we learn (both good and bad) with our teams so they repeat the good, and learn how to overcome the bad? How do we give our employees a voice and engage them in the process of building a high performance team?

Engagement surveys repeatedly show that the key factor in employee engagement is the employee’s relationship with their direct manager or supervisor. How are you building engagement in your organisation?

The study of Psychology in business is not about telling business what to do but a reciprocal relationship which draws insights from those with experience of what works at work and shares new finding which can shape new behaviours and practices.

Building a great place to work is not the about providing the best extravagant perks, it is about satisfying our human emotional needs and developing working conditions that help us produce our best work.

We can’t just toss out performance management entirely as we still need to measure performance and have a method to fairly allocate compensation increases. We can, however, make it a more effective tool.

Ways to develop effective peer-to-peer coaching meetings. Training alone can improve individual and team performance by over 20%, but training and coaching together can improve performance by over 80%.

Podcast on Emotional Intelligence and Employee Engagement

Compensation can impact employees both positively and negatively. Fairness and consistency are essential elements of a pay for performance compensation strategy.

To create an innovation culture employees need to have a clear sense of what is expected of them, your long-term goals, and values. Your values should not only be promoted through your annual reports and beautiful artwork, but be manifest in how members of the organisation behave and spend their time.

It is when we utilise the results of the Employee Engagement survey we improve our culture and our engagement scores.

Business storytelling helps our audience recall more than a list of statistics or facts, but we still need to be sure our audience leaves with our key points. A simple story that is relatable and memorable is far more powerful than something foreign to your audience.

Motivational posters, beautiful videos set to popular songs and lapel pins can be a small part of a multi-layered change strategy, but on their own they are more likely to increase disengagement.

Effective and Emotionally Intelligent performance management drives behaviours that increase engagement, embed these behaviours in the organisation's culture all in alignment with the organisation's strategic goals.

The right organisational change model can make all the difference when implementing Employee Engagement or culture change within an organisation.

Unfortunately the success rate of major change initiatives is only just over 50%. The biggest obstacles to change management are poor communication and a lack of stakeholder buy-in.

Follow up and follow through are essential to successful engagement and culture change. Many employees are tired of hearing that they are important, they want action!

Do you feel like people sometimes don’t listen to you at work? We’re all guilty of not listening at one point or another in our lives. We tune others out while we’re busy, concentrating on a task or when we are reading. Though we try hard to multi-task between tasks we are not always able to listen to someone who’s trying to talk to …

Gallup has identified a strong statistically significant link between levels of employee engagement, leadership effectiveness, and organisational success. The quality of the relationship with an employee’s immediate manager was found to still be the most powerful determining factor of employee engagement.

Effective Engaged leaders use every touchpoint, opportunity and a variety of communication channels to reinforce and recognise the organisation's commitment to employee engagement and building and engaged innovative people-centric culture. An Employee Engagement survey is a good start but requires action to be effective.

Engagement, similar to discretionary behaviour, is brought to the table by employees, not something done to them. A key driver of employee engagement is the employee's sense of feeling valued and involved.

Organisations can optimise their business results when their employees are fully engaged, have the opportunity to be more creative, and their interests are aligned with business outcomes. As employers we need to strive to build an environment in which employees feel they can exercise their voice and that their contributions matter.

Research suggests that workplaces with a solid organisational culture and positive work environment have a higher rate of employee satisfaction, Building Employee Engagement, productivity, employee retention as well as better financial results.

Learning to say no at work is an Emotional Intelligence essential We are often afraid of the consequences of saying “no” because we see compliance as part of our role, for example in family matters. Other times we may feel that non-compliance will come at too high a price, e.g. you may not get that promotion or worse, lose the account or even your job. …

The 5 core Emotional Intelligence Skills in business – The X-Factor for Employee Engagement and success Business is all about relationships. Emotional Intelligence skills help increase Engagement (internal relationships) and build better customer relationships (external relationships). Perceiving – This is our ability to be aware of and understand our emotional state, as well as the emotional states of others.  It is about being aware of emotional signals and being able to accurately identify …

A culture audit uncovers vital information about the health of your organisation.

A culture audit can be used to measure whether the habitual behaviour in the organisation matches its expressed values.

Not all Q&A sessions are created equal. We could use technology (Twitter or some other live question feed) to get quality questions, but these solutions can be time consuming, complex to manage or expensive (due to the technology required).

An effective communication strategy is all about buy-in: the reasons, the benefits, the way forward and the impact of that change. This means taking the employee emotions into account.

When we talk on the phone while checking email or talk on our cell phones while driving, we are unable to give either task sufficient energy or focus and we are more likely to make mistakes.

For any task that takes attention to accomplish (e.g. learning to drive) we can only really concentrate on one task at a time.

Discretionary effort is fuelled by our passion and is linked to our willingness to go the “extra mile” beyond the letter of our job description.

Strategy communication tips: How do you share a strategy effectively within your organisation? These Effective strategy communication tips can help persuade employees of the importance and relevance of their company’s purpose (why we exist), and strategic goals (what we are going to do). These communication strategies will help you more effectively reach your employees, and gain buy-in that advances your strategy and improves your results. …

In today’s highly competitive economy, building a Great place to work is one of the greatest competitive strengths we can have.

Are you acknowledging and rewarding the right attitudes and behaviours to build an Emotionally Intelligent attitude? What gets measured and acknowledged in your organisation gets repeated.

Our ability to utilise the time we have is more important than having time alone. Understanding why we procrastinate, the dangers of multitasking and managing our attention and energy are essential parts of Brain Smart time management.

The most effective managers and leaders strategically align their employee engagement efforts and communicate these ideas though their actions daily.

Many books talk about the “sandwich” feedback technique, starting and ending with a compliment. This is generally very poorly received as the compliments are often a last minute platitude.

Consider your facts, feelings and identity before approaching a difficult conversation.

Image selection in slide design is about more than just typing the word or concept into Google, it is about clarifying your message and making each slide count. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but using the wrong picture can be distracting and create confusion.

When preparing for difficult conversations about behaviour, attitude or performance keep these top tips in mind. Approach it as a conversation, not a lecture! Gain perspective and remember our attitude towards the process helps shape it.

Performance conversations are often not handled well in many organisations. Most of us don't like to be told what to do and we sometimes do the opposite of what we are told, even when the information would be helpful. Learning to hear and act on feedback is a skill we all need to learn in order to keep growing and developing skills.

Effective slides are designed to augment your message - not be your message (notes) or a distraction (clutter). When designing slides avoid to "death by Powerpoint" think billboard (a simple focus slide which augments your message and can be understood in 3 seconds).

Nobody wants their time wasted by attending an unproductive meeting. Meetings can eat up days of productive time if inefficiently planned and run. An effective meeting helps you achieve a desired outcome within a specific timeframe and follows up on what was decided.

Happiness benefits: Does your organisation pay lip service to the idea that “people are our greatest asset” or do they do something about it? Unfortunately in practice in many organisations short-term money decisions often trump people decisions, no matter how much they pay lip service to the idea that people are their most important asset. Luckily positive psychology research is changing the conversations around employee …

The conversations about building purposeful work is rapidly evolving with the emergence of new research focused on happiness and meaningful work (positive psychology). Similar to technology, purpose has become a business imperative to keep up with fast paced change.

To improve our mental health and our ability to combat stress, it is important to surround ourselves with at least a few good friends and confidants. Social support helps reduce stress and build Employee Engagement in your team.

Numerous studies have shown the positive effects of laughter on our physical and mental health. Happiness comes from being in the moment while constantly striving for perfection practically guarantees that we’ll be unhappy.

The Leadership lessons from legos are that doing meaningful work is rewarding in itself, and we are more willing to do more work for less pay when we feel our work has some sort of purpose (even if it is minuscule).