Tag Archives: Team Building

Leadership Gratitude: Say “Thank You” Like You Mean It

If you’ve spent much time around young children, you’ve probably seen some version of this interaction play out when you hand a snack to a toddler:

Leadership Gratitude: Say “Thank You” Like You Mean It

Parent: “What do you say?”

Child (mouth full, all attention on remaining food): “Mmankoo”

You may or may not find this charming behavior in a three-year-old, but for adults—and especially for adults in leadership—gratitude is something worth taking very seriously. Few things motivate people better than feeling appreciated, and few things are more demoralizing than feeling unappreciated.

The Leadership Scrooge – 3 Ways to Frustrate Your Team

As the holidays approach, we’re always reminded of what may be the worst boss of all time: Ebenezer Scrooge of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. So tightfisted that his name has come to be a synonym for a miser, Scrooge pays the lowest wages, provides the worst working conditions, requires the longest hours—even at Christmas!—refuses to give to charity, and is deeply unpleasant. Pre-redemption, Scrooge must have been a lot for even the saintly Bob Cratchit to bear.

The Leadership Scrooge - 3 Ways to Frustrate Your Team

8 Ways Good Leaders Keep Great People

If you’re like most good leaders, you work hard to put together the best possible team. Finding not just the right skills but the right person—someone who’s productive, knowledgeable, and a good fit with your other team members and organizational culture—is a gratifying experience.

8 Ways Good Leaders Keep Great People

But whether your dream team is fully in place or still a work in progress, it’s important to remember that retaining great staffers is at least as important as recruiting them. Not only is turnover hard on employee morale and short-term capacity, but searches, hires, and onboarding are time-consuming and expensive processes. And there’s always an element of risk when you bring in someone new.

Leadership Tips to Keep in Mind During Seasons of Change

For many of us — especially those who had lost count of the polar vortexes by mid-January — winter can’t end soon enough this year. But the transition is rarely an orderly one.

Keep these Leadership Tips in Mind During Seasons of Change

It often starts with a deceptively sunny day in February. Everybody breaks out their light jackets and starts talking about taking walks at lunch, and then a couple of days later comes a blast of freezing temperatures and new snow, which in turn gives way to chilly rain and slush. People trot out the old joke about “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.”

That’s the nature of most transition. Even when you know you’re moving steadily toward the new, progress can feel halting and unpredictable in the short term.