Piercings, Goatees, and Tats…Oh My!

It was Q&A time after a speech I’d just made to a large audience of small business owners, in a somewhat conservative retail field. As the speech featured some tips on how to be successful engaging younger workers (hint: “Complain that they aren’t like Baby Boomers” was not one of the tips), I wasn’t too surprised by […]

You Might be Struggling to Find and Keep Good Talent If…

Convention season is in full swing, and if the groups I’ve been invited to speak for are any indication, one of THE heaviest concerns weighing on the minds of employers almost everywhere is this: Where, and how, am I going to find enough qualified people to grow our business? (Or in some cases, just to […]

Got Self-Awareness?

“Wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us, It wad frae mony a blunder free us…” OK, so if you don’t speak Scots, you might need a little help with that. What Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose 259th birthday is being celebrated today by Scots and their descendants around […]

There’s No Hacking Leadership

One of my new least favorite words (along with “handcrafted” and “curated”, but that’s another post altogether) is the word “hack”. Not in the old sense of a taxi driver (remember taxis?), or even the newer sense of criminals who steal our online stuff. Or the even newer meaning, as in the Russians, and the, well, you […]

Huddles or Hurdles? It’s Your Choice

Let’s start with some locker room talk. No, not that kind… This morning, at the Y, I overheard a conversation between two guys who were, like most of the rest of us, getting dressed and groomed in preparation for a day at the office. Guy Number One observed aloud that Guy Number Two seemed to be […]

The Singular “They”, And Other Things That Evolve

Today’s blog post is a video blog. Here’s the video. And a transcript of the video is right underneath it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xu891wlFsvQ%3Frel%3D0%2520width%3D560%2520height%3D315%2520frameborder%3D0%2520allowfullscreen%3Dallowfullscreen The longer I live, the more acutely aware I become that we live in an ever evolving world. For instance, have you heard that the Chicago Manual of Style has just decreed that because […]

Speaking Each Other’s Language

Let’s face it. Communicating at work is tough enough when both the speaker and the listener speak the same native language. Add different tongues to the dynamic and, sacré bleu! You’ve just hit a wall, and not the kind that’s proposed for the US’s southern border. To be clear, language, as well as literacy (the […]

Guest Post: 6 Tips to Get your Employees Engaged

By Sydney Frazer, Partnerships Manager, Glassdoor Employee engagement is often the buzz among HR circles. You hear about it and you know you should take steps to engage with your employees. You probably even know only a minority of the American workforce is engaged (in fact, only 32 percent is considered engaged). But why should you care […]

Good Leaders Look Beneath the Surface

One of the most remarkable people I ever worked with was a bank teller named Donna, at a bank branch I managed early in my career. Donna was a customer magnet. Brilliant. Hard working. Always went the extra mile. She was a single mother, and she’d been a teller for 12 years. I recommended to […]

When it comes to Training, Visibility Matters

I was conducting leadership training for a large public utility, in a rural training facility about 100 miles from the company’s headquarters. The Vice President who had brought me in was a full participant in the first class I conducted, and believe me, his presence and participation in the training wasn’t lost on anyone. A […]