Soft Skills are Hard. We need to stop calling them soft. #Workhuman
I’m just back from spending four epic days in Nashville at my favorite conference event of the year, Workhuman. As is always the case after this event, I’ve got a lot of ideas swirling in my head from...
View ArticleEngaging Employees from Inside Bad HR Processes
When I speak to people about treating work as a relationship with employees rather than a contract, there’s a question I am commonly asked. It typically sounds something like this: “How do you make...
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What is Employee Engagement? It’s time to demand better answers.
One of the things that makes me crazy about the work of employee engagement is the sloppiness we allow around how we define and approach about it. As I talk to leaders within organizations who are...
View ArticleA Hard Truth about Employee Engagement
There was a point in my career, probably 18 or 20 years or so ago, that I would have argued vehemently that creating a workplace culture that engages employees was vital to sustaining a profitable...
View ArticleWhy Leadership Buy-in for Employee Engagement and Inclusion is Elusive
Reader Note: For those of you who subscribe to my blog, we have transitioned to a new tool for email delivery. Please let me know if you experience any issues. For those who may want to subscribe to...
View ArticleWant To Improve Performance Or Engagement At Work? Check Your Assumptions.
Everybody has probably heard the old saying that goes something like this: You know what happens when you assume? You make an ASS out of U and ME. Despite first hearing this when I was a kid, I didn’t...
View ArticleMoving From Feedback To Feedforward
I can still remember when I first heard about “feedforward.” It was in a presentation by Marshall Goldsmith at one of the first HCI Summits many years ago. The concept sounded weird and a little...
View ArticleWhy Work Still Sucks (And Organizational Change Is SLOW)
We’ve been working on making work suck less for quite a while now. Gallup has been measuring employee engagement for nearly 30 years and the results have always been terrible. Most employees are not...
View ArticleWhat Really Matters?
Last week, our community experienced something that you hope no community anywhere ever must. A car crash took the lives of four high school girls and left a fifth in the hospital in serious condition...
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Getting Smart About Employee Experience (Resources)
Employee experience isn’t a trend or a fad or a buzzword. It is, and will continue to be, a shift in how we do the work of unlocking human potential at work. If you haven’t already embraced this shift,...
View ArticleAre Employees Responsible for their Own Engagement?
There’s an interesting “chicken or the egg” debate going on regarding employee engagement. Maybe you’ve had some version of this discussion within your own organization. Who is responsible for employee...
View Article“Thank you for firing me” (A Reminder That Employee Engagement Is Hard Work)
This weekend, while at a beer garden with my wife during our community’s summer festival, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in years. When I first saw him, we chatted for a few minutes, and I learned...
View ArticleOne-on-One Meetings: 3 Ways to Stop Screwing Them Up With Your Employees
How important are one-on-one meetings between managers and their employees? This question comes up somewhat regularly because these meetings are time-consuming, and most managers are so overwhelmed...
View ArticleHow Did Your Parents Impact the Way You Experience Work?
When I was 14 years old, my dad quit his job. It was a job he’d had since I was born. He didn’t quit because he’d accepted another job. He quit because his boss asked him to compromise his integrity....
View Article5 Podcast Episodes to Change How You Think About Work
I am a podcast junkie. I struggle to find as much time to read as I’d like. But podcasts have helped me feed (or distract) my brain in times when I can’t read but I can listen (walking the dog,...
View ArticleAssumptions, Projection, and Other Ways to Kill Engagement at Work
A wise friend is fond of saying, “If only people would conform to our expectations of them.” It’s her way of reminding us (and probably herself) that much of the drama that exists in our lives with...
View ArticleThe Two Biggest Barriers for Managers Faced with Employee Engagement
The longer I am immersed in the work of employee engagement, the clearer it is to me that getting it right as a manager is simple and hard. That may sound contradictory, but it’s not. Engaging...
View ArticleWe Need to Stop Saying That 66% of Employees Are Not Engaged
When we talk about employee engagement, one of the most commonly cited statistics comes from Gallup. I’m sure you’ve seen it: Only 1/3 of employees in the U.S. are engaged according to Gallup’s Q12...
View ArticleWhat Does It Mean to Be “Human” at Work?
Over the past few years, it is becoming more common and popular to talk about being human at work. We talk about designing work to work for humans. We invite people to bring their “whole selves” to...
View ArticleShould Employee Feedback Be Banned?
For most of my adult life, I have bought into the conventional wisdom that feedback is critical to performance and growth. As individuals, we are taught to embrace feedback and treat it as a learning...
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