Archive for Management Tips – Page 2

Happy Employees, Happy Workplace

Critical Factors for Keeping Top Talent

Posted by Chris Cook on
 August 20, 2017
  ·  2 Comments

Pssst … it’s all about happiness!

Last week, I got to present “Critical Factors for Keeping Top Talent” at a SOREDI event. It was fun to share one of my favorite topics—the importance of happiness at work. With Oregon’s unemployment rate at 3.8% and the country’s at 4.3%, SOREDI was smart to focus on such a relevant topic!

The 2017 PwC CEO Survey found the top three CEO challenges in the United States are talent, technology and innovation. About talent, the report states, “Talent will help an organization distinguish itself from the competition. Organizations need people who can surmount big challenges and tackle complex issues. CEOs are looking for employees who are agile, curious, and can collaborate with others to achieve the greatest results. These skill sets are among the hardest to recruit.”

I believe in two simple truths:

  1. Your people are the #1 resource that will determine your success.
  2. Happy people perform better.

There are many factors that influence success, but it’s your people who give you an absolute advantage.

Happiness is the single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy.Shawn Achor

Happiness is a worthwhile investment. Decades of compelling evidence shows that improving happiness in the workplace delivers significant increases in profit, productivity and innovation—not to mention substantial cost savings. Happier workers are healthier and more effective team members, and they provide superior customer service. Happier businesses attract top talent and are more likely to retain their best workers.

Why worry about happiness at work? You can count on:
  • 30% Higher productivity1
  • 54% Better staff retention2
  • 3x Higher creativity3

Social economist and researcher (and all-around good guy) Nic Marks uses a dynamic model to explain which factors create a happy workplace. The model takes into account people’s “experience of work” (how they feel), which is influenced by how they are “functioning at work” (what they do). This depends on the “organizational system” (where they work) and their “personal resources” (who they are). Using an assessment developed by Nic and his company Happiness Works, you can generate your own dynamic model for your workplace.

Dynamic Model

This dynamic model is from a Portland tech company Capiche worked with. Notice the colors ranging from orange to dark green. Like a stoplight, red to orange is a non-starter, and green is a go.

Measured within each of the four components of the dynamic model are:

  • Experience of work: Positive and negative feelings, engaging work, worthwhile work
  • Functioning at work: Self-expression, sense of control, sense of progress, work relationships
  • Organizational system: Job design, management system, work environment, social value
  • Personal resources: Vitality, happiness, confidence, work-life integration

People’s happiness at work is not fixed or static; instead, it is fluid and moving, interconnected and dynamic. I like the illustration of shared responsibility between the employee and employer.

People’s happiness at work is not fixed or static; instead, it is fluid and moving. Click To Tweet

Finders, Keepers?

The factors you need to keep top talent directly correlate with the factors needed to recruit talent.

Happiness at work isn’t something that’s reserved for companies like Zappos and Google. There are plenty of smaller or lesser-known companies like these Southern Oregon ones that have it right: Coding Zeal, Darex, Bio Skin, and Dutch Bros.

If you are ready to step up to happiness, give me a holler via email or phone at 541.601.0114. Let’s see where you are now and make plans to increase your organization’s happiness—and recruitment, retention, innovation, customer service and profits!

References

  1. “Insight to impact leadership that gets results.” Hay Group.
  2. “Engaging hearts and minds: preparing for a changing world.” Hay Group.
  3. “Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving.” Isen, A.M., Daubman, K.A., and Nowicki, G.P. (1987). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1122.
Blog Business Research Happiness at Work Management Tips Organizational Development Positive Psychology Science of Happiness
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Boss Giving Feedback to Employee

Is Radical Candor the Key to Transforming Your Company?

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 May 19, 2017
  ·  No Comments

You know that employee who means well but is so ill-suited to her responsibilities that her coworkers have to pick up the slack? Or the knowledgeable guy who looked great on paper before you hired him but who is now disrupting the workplace with his logorrhea?

Let’s face it—sometimes we make mistakes. We get one impression of a candidate during the hiring process and later discover he or she is a poor fit for our organization’s culture. Maybe we inherit a bad apple from a predecessor. Whatever the reason, as managers we occasionally encounter a problem employee whose behavior compromises the effectiveness of the team or even the larger organization.

But you’re a nice person—how do you tell these folks they’re not measuring up to your expectations, or even more awkward, that some personal idiosyncrasy is irritating the rest of the staff?

Perhaps the offense isn’t egregious enough to merit termination, requiring tact given that you and your team will need to continue collaborating with this individual.

So what do you do? Candor, Inc. cofounder and CEO Kim Scott has two words for you: radical candor. Forget the spoonful of sugar—pour that medicine right down their gullet. Be brave enough to give employees candid feedback about their performance.

In Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity—currently the #1 Best Seller in Workplace Culture at Amazon—Scott presents a management philosophy based on two counterbalancing approaches: you need to care personally while simultaneously challenging directly.

Scott coins the term obnoxious aggression for the brutal honesty managers exhibit when they don’t care. Those are the one-in-five-psychopath CEOs we discussed in a previous article. That’s not the kind of candor we mean.

On the flip side, compassionate managers who don’t want to hurt their employee’s feelings are practicing what Scott calls ruinous empathy. That is equally destructive, not only undermining your leadership but compromising the integrity of the workplace by allowing poor workmanship to slide.

What may surprise you—when you do muster the courage to confront an employee about problematic behavior—is that withholding honest assessment of a person’s abilities and performance actually harms the employee, too. He may find himself continually fired from job after job without ever understanding why and being given the opportunity to correct his behavior.

While Scott’s advice may be old hat to veteran leaders, less-seasoned managers can benefit from her general rules of thumb: practice humility, offer immediate feedback and deliver criticism in private.

The last thing you want to do is shame an employee. That will only serve to trigger her defense mechanisms, and she won’t be able to absorb your instruction.

Instead, take more of a mentorship approach. Maybe you’ve made similar missteps in your past—share an example of where you went awry and how you appreciated when someone took you to task for your shortcomings. Let the employee know you’re on her side and you want to come up with a solution together, whether it involves reconfiguring the job description to focus on strengths and offset weaknesses or introducing some ground rules to help curb the problematic behavior.

However you choose to approach situations like this, remember to practice emotional intelligence along with radical candor, and you’ll be ahead of most bosses when it comes to giving honest but sensitive feedback.

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Self-Employed Woman Working at Home

Being Self-Employed: What’s Not to Love? Plus, This 1 Tip Will Boost Your Productivity—and Happiness

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 March 29, 2017
  ·  No Comments

It’s the life many of us daydream about while languishing in a stagnant job where our talents go untapped and unappreciated: starting our own business.

And many act on that dream—nearly a third (30%) of the American workforce comprises the self-employed and their employees (approximately 15 million in 2014) according to this Pew Research Center article.

Working at home, earning 50% more, doing what we love, using our gifts, finding a sense of purpose, calling our own shots—sounds sweet, doesn’t it?

The reality, however, may not be so rosy. That’s not to say striking out on your own doesn’t have its rewards—a lot of those perks we just mentioned are borne out by statistics.

Work-Life Imbalance

There’s a flip side many fail to realize until they’re ensconced in their new venture: that work-life balance Americans already have trouble achieving? For most self-employed, work trounces life beginning on Day One.

If you’re thinking about becoming your own boss, be prepared to say goodbye to evenings, weekends, eight-hour workdays, sick leave, vacation time.…

The Overwork Epidemic

This Gallup report reveals 49% of the US self-employed put in at least 44 hours a week—10% more than their employee counterparts at the time. Worse, 26% of the self-employed workers Gallup surveyed reported working more than 60 hours a week. A later Gallup article calculates the average employee work week at 47 hours, with 25% reporting working more than 60 hours—nearly catching up to the self-employed.

American freelancers aren’t the only ones suffering from overwork. This 2016 Quarterly National Household Survey reports that Irish employees averaged 34.6 hours a week during the first quarter of 2016 as compared with 44 hours for the self-employed.

And that earlier statistic about the self-employed (specifically incorporated business owners) earning up to 50% more than their employee counterparts—it turns out 29% of that increase is due to their working more hours. Entrepreneurs may earn more on average, but that comes at the cost of time.

The Secret to Productivity

It doesn’t have to be that way, though—in fact, it shouldn’t. According to this Fast Company article, the secret to accomplishing more isn’t working more hours—it’s working fewer.

Our brains need regular breaks to recharge. When we neglect this fundamental requirement, productivity dips.

A recent Draugieum Group experiment showed those workers with the greatest productivity rates took a surprising number of breaks—for every 52 minutes of work, they took about 17 minutes off.

And we’re not talking about playing computer Solitaire or checking Facebook. The kind of breaks our brains need do not involve electronic devices—instead, try taking a brisk walk, reading a chapter in your latest book or enjoying a non–work-related chat with a colleague.

To many of us, that sounds like a lot of downtime, but our brains reward us by performing more efficiently during the time actually worked.

That magic trick applies whether you’re an employee, independent contractor, business owner, freelancer or entrepreneur.

Working fewer hours and getting more accomplished—now that sounds pretty sweet.

Need Help Taking More Breaks?

Here are some additional tips from Fast Company on how and why to take more breaks as well as what you may be doing wrong.

The workaholics among you probably need more hands-on assistance with reforming your work habits, and that’s where Chris Cook comes in. As a self-employed co-active coach, Chris can help you achieve your professional goals while maintaining a healthy life balance. Call her at 541.601.0114 or email chris@capiche.us to get started today.

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Rusty Shipwreck on Beach

Trickle-up Theory: 10 Ways Organizations Can Create Stronger Leaders

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 January 31, 2017
  ·  2 Comments

When a ship founders, blame rarely lies at the feet of the crew. True, a seaman may fail to properly secure a mooring line or spot a collision risk on the horizon, but ultimately it is the captain who is liable for keeping the vessel afloat and on course.

Just as managers are responsible for the poor performance of their team, a company is culpable for any weaknesses present in its leadership. Responsibility flows upward, and senior administrators need to employ smart strategies to keep their organizations from capsizing.

Here are 10 ways organizations can create stronger leaders:

  1. Avoid just-because promotions to management. Before transplanting employees from positions they are flourishing in, make sure they have the appropriate skills—and desire—to succeed in a leadership role. You can still reward employees for good work with a pay raise or more challenging job description—just make sure it’s well-suited to their strengths.
  2. Encourage managers to seek advice. Don’t cultivate a culture of fear, shame and ego but rather nurturing, humility and collegiality. Make sure managers feel comfortable approaching senior leaders about questions or problems.
  3. Invite a fresh perspective. Sometimes a pair of unfamiliar eyes combined with professional expertise can reshape a flabby company into a high-performance athlete. Consider bringing in an organizational consultant to gain clarity on your culture; develop your leadership; and assess and address barriers to performance. You can boost employee happiness, engagement and productivity by creating a positive organization.
  4. Provide training opportunities. Companies should offer ongoing training and professional development opportunities for leaders and staff alike. Creating an atmosphere of learning is a key way to enhance engagement while honing and deepening your team’s competencies.
  5. Strive for professional and personal growth. Senior administrators should not only be seeking to become their best selves through leadership coaching, but they should be encouraging their managers to do the same.
  6. Challenge folks. When people feel stuck in a routine, they quickly grow bored. Our brains thrive on stimulation, and that means constantly pushing at the edges of our existing skill sets and forging new neural pathways. Even those who fear change need a sense of challenge to propel them forward.
  7. Understand the difference between managing and leading. In the post Managing Stuff, Leading People, Senior Manager of Sales and Leadership Development Steve Keating articulates the difference between managing and leading: “When you’re talking to a manager you get the feeling that they are important; when you’re talking to a leader you get the feeling that you are important.” Leaders are acutely aware of their team members’ abilities, they care for them as individuals and they possess a grander vision, which they can communicate to others in ways that stir enthusiastic engagement.
  8. Mentor each other. Instead of assuming an autocratic demeanor, handing down performance targets like kingly decrees, senior leaders should take new managers under their wings, offering wisdom from the trenches as they rear up the next generation of trailblazers.
  9. Seek out strengths. Don’t focus on people’s weaknesses but rather their strengths. If some employees are faltering, figure out why and redefine their roles to capitalize on their talents. Take advantage of Strengths Finder and other resources such as an organizational development consultant to pinpoint and polish the gifts in each team member.
  10. Lead by inspiration. Great leaders model the leadership skills they would like their managers to exhibit. There is nothing less motivating than a hypocritical boss or more inspiring than a leader who authentically embodies the best that leaders can be.

Ready to Make Your Leadership Shine?

Contact Chris Cook at chris@capiche.us or 541.601.0114 to discuss how she can cultivate the gems at your company through organizational development consulting and leadership coaching.

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Colorful Balloons

The Dangers of Disengagement—and Its Likely Cause

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 January 17, 2017
  ·  No Comments

Have you ever felt yourself slipping into an apathetic haze at work, too bored, uninspired or beaten down to bother?

According to Gallup, nearly a quarter of employees around the globe are actively disengaged. That translates to bottom-line losses in the trillions. Not only are companies paying for sagging productivity by disengaged employees, but they’re also missing out on the benefits of having highly engaged powerhouses on their team.

Further Reading

The Hazards of Bad Bosses
Keep Drama on the Stage—and out of the Workplace
5 Annoying Boss Habits That Will Tick off Your Team and Other Lessons from Office Space
Are You Seeing the Forest for the Trees? Where Senior Leaders Are Failing
10 Ways to Make Your Employees Hate You—and Your Company
Naughty or Nice: Which Makes for a More Effective Leader?
Why Engagement Matters
Blue Ocean Leadership: 4 Steps to Boosting Employee Engagement
Millennial Mindset: What Gen Y Wants out of Work and Life
Why Happiness at Work Trumps Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction
The Top 4 Employee Needs to Fulfill for Greater Happiness and Productivity
Speaking of Happiness: How to Have Your Cake—And Eat It, Too

What Causes Employee Disengagement?

What is one of the top causes of employee disengagement? You can probably guess. Whether you call them incompetent, narcissistic, psychopathic or straight-up evil, bad bosses shoulder much of the blame.

A recent Gallup article titled The Damage Inflicted by Poor Managers explores the consequences of lousy leadership—a subject we have examined in past articles (see sidebar).

Coauthors Marco Nink and Jennifer Robison note that in comparison with disengaged teams, engaged teams are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable; suffer 41% less absenteeism and 70% fewer accidents; and experience up to 59% less turnover, 28% less waste and 10% higher scores from customers.

At 24%, disengaged employees practically double the number of engaged employees (13%). That’s like having a bunch of anchors attached to a handful of balloons. It’s tough for an organization to achieve performance goals with that kind of ballast weighing it down.

The answer isn’t axing the disengaged employees, though. If the cause is bad leadership, the replacement hires will simply become the next crop of disengaged employees, creating a perpetual and costly cycle of turnover.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Bad Leaders?

When the problem starts at the top, that’s where we need to focus our attention. In another Gallup article, Nink and Robison ask, Can Bad Managers Be Saved?

Falling into a management role without proper preparation can transform decent folks into petty tyrants as they attempt to compensate for insecurity about their lack of leadership skills. Or they may be perfectly nice individuals engaging in poor management habits without realizing it. They might even have untapped leadership talents that simply haven’t been identified or developed.

As Steve Keating discusses in his piece Managing Stuff, Leading People, people often get promoted to management positions because they excelled in their previous roles—often having nothing to do with leadership. Just because a software engineer is brilliant at designing algorithms doesn’t mean she’s strong at leading a software development team—in fact, it’s frequently the opposite.

Not all bad bosses are beyond redemption. It takes astute judgment to determine which managers have the potential for growth and which ones will continue to flail. In our next article, we’ll examine some strategies companies can adopt to ensure their leaders are motivating engagement rather than provoking disengagement.

Need Some Advice?

Whether your organization is struggling with disengagement, ineffectual leadership or low performance, Chris Cook can help. Email her at chris@capiche.us or call 541.601.0114 to find out how.

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Business Woman Standing with Her Team

How Do You Retain and Grow Your Best Performers?

Posted by Chris Cook on
 October 13, 2016
  ·  No Comments

With the economy growing and the job market tightening, you have two choices as a manager: either bring high potentials along to succeed in higher-level positions or hire from outside. Many leaders like to bring tried and true employees into higher-level positions in the organization. They like to grow their own.

People are motivated when you let them know you want them to be successful. You can boost your stars and star-potential employees with a highly focused workshop coming up in December.

I’m slated to lead a workshop called Success Factors for Emerging Leaders through the Southern Oregon University Professional Development Series in December. (Yes, this is shameless self-promotion. Please forgive me.)

Scheduled on December 14 in Medford, OR, the half-day workshop is for new managers, emerging leaders and high-potential employees ready to move up in the organization.

We will cover topics such as:

  • How do you make a successful transition into management and avoid tripping over common first-time mistakes?
  • How do you develop as a new leader, making sure you have the right roadmap and directions for success?

This hands-on workshop will explain and demonstrate essential competencies for leading effectively with social and emotional intelligence. Attendees will acquire and put into practice the necessary tools to better understand how others perceive them while being increasingly attuned to the needs of their team, the management team and the organization. With this heightened understanding, participants will be equipped to develop the confidence, relationships and authority required to successfully transition into a new leadership role.

I’m curious—do you have any success (or horror) stories about transitioning to a new role within your organization? What and who helped you? Please share so I can use in the workshop and others can benefit from your experiences.

“Growing other leaders from the ranks isn’t just the duty of the leader, it’s an obligation.”
—Warren Bennis

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Sign Pointing to Stage

Keep Drama on the Stage—and out of the Workplace

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 September 27, 2016
  ·  4 Comments

In the requisite Stein on Writing, publisher, writer and master editor Sol Stein reveals this secret to successful plotting: create a crucible.

If you’ve ever seen Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, you know how compelling a crucible can be. When you pit two forces of nature like Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and George (Richard Burton) against one another, the results are explosive.

As Stein writes, “Characters caught in a crucible won’t declare a truce and quit.… the motivation of the characters to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away.”

While such a formula makes for gripping drama, that’s the last thing you want in the workplace.

Good leaders know how to navigate conflicts, dissipate tension and redirect negative energies into positive, productive outlets. Most importantly, they themselves are not the source of drama.

Unfortunately, those leaders are rare. A recent Australian study suggests there are more villains at the top than we realize—1 in 5 CEOs may be psychopaths (versus 1 in 100 in the general population).

“Typically psychopaths create a lot of chaos and generally tend to play people off against each other,” says Nathan Brooks, the forensic psychologist who conducted the study.

A profit-driven corporate culture often propels sociopaths—who unabashedly violate ethics in pursuit of the bottom line—to positions of power, even though such behavior collectively costs companies hundreds of billions annually due to employee turnover and disengagement.

Just as the recent Wells Fargo scandal teaches us, myopic thinking may yield short-term profits but reaps incalculable damage. Sure, there are the obvious costs like $185 million in fines, $5 million in customer refunds and the potential billions in class action lawsuits from customers and the 5,300 terminated employees.

At a deeper level, however, the damage done to the Wells Fargo brand is incalculable. A bank losing the trust of its customers is tantamount to drinking Jonestown Flavor Aid.

Let’s play a word game. What do you think of when you hear Enron, Exxon and Monsanto? It’s probably fraud, Valdez and mass farmer suicides. Even when they change their names and attempt to reinvent themselves, corporations can never escape the toxic taint of corruption.

This is why it is so crucial to carefully define, protect and live your brand. From the epic to the everyday, how companies and leaders behave has lasting ramifications.

While we may not be in a position to shape the epic dimensions of our organization, all of us play a role in the everyday, and reducing drama in the workplace has widespread benefits—including boosting happiness and health, which subsequently reduces turnover, increases engagement and heightens productivity.

In this SmartBrief article, Dr. Nate Regier offers three tips for quashing office drama:

  • Practice transparency. In times of conflict, honesty is indeed the best policy. Instead of passive-aggressively venting your frustration, explain why a certain behavior is bothering you. Sidestep blame in favor of expressing your feelings. This is a common tactic in couples counseling for a reason—it reframes the concern as an expression of feeling rather than an attack and helps each understand the other’s perspective.
  • Offer your expertise. This doesn’t mean going around handing out uninvited advice. Rather, it means genuinely assessing the problem and offering to share relevant knowledge if desired—the last part being key.
  • Set realistic limits. In a conflict, identify your non-negotiables in a non-threatening manner. Once both parties have a clear understanding of the stated goals and obstacles, it’s easier to chart a path to resolution.

This kind of “compassionate accountability is key to productive relationships and communication,” writes Regier.

What are your workplace drama stories? Do you have any tips on how to cope with psychopathic bosses and smooth out tensions in the workplace?

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Employee Irritated by Annoying Boss

5 Annoying Boss Habits That Will Tick off Your Team and Other Lessons from Office Space

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 September 7, 2016
  ·  No Comments

Have you ever had a boss who had some irritating foibles that drove you up the wall? Those behaviors may have even become an inside joke among employees, a peculiar turn of phrase setting off a burst of laughter among coworkers or a physical quirk you mimic at the dinner table to make your kids giggle.

As funny as those traits might be, matters turn serious when you consider the high cost of employee turnover in the workplace. Make sure you’re not driving good talent away by practicing any of the following habits.

1) Did You Get the Memo?

Office Space is a comedic crash course on how not to behave as a boss, but the reason it resonates so deeply with audiences is its striking fidelity to corporate life. How many times has your organization adopted a new policy that yields little substance while only creating more busywork for employees? Whether it’s putting cover sheets on TPS reports or keeping a daily task log, it gets in the way of doing real work and drains you of motivation.

2) Eight Bosses

Also perfectly illustrated in Office Space are the hazards of management bloat. As Peter Gibbons notes in the above clip, “When I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”

3) We Need to Talk about Your Flair

Does your company make you wear or do silly things as a cheap way of promoting their branding? Instead of living a brand based on a blend of research, reality and aspiration, they might tell you to use certain catch phrases or wear a particular color on Fridays. These infantilizing habits make you feel more like you’re at a high school pep rally than in a serious workplace.

4) Ahh, I’m Also Gonna Need You to Go Ahead and Come in on Sunday, Too

Have you had managers who spring surprises on you at the last minute and just presume you’re okay with them? Like telling—not asking—you to work on Saturday … and Sunday, and then phrasing it in such a way that you don’t have a choice in the matter. Bosses who don’t respect their team members’ personal time have overstepped their boundaries, and those who decree royal edicts rather than making requests are likely to find themselves without minions one day.

5) The Ratio of People to Cake Is Too Big

Do you have any Milton Waddams at your company? Employees thrive in an atmosphere of quality, fairness and respect, and if one or more team members feel they’re being slighted, that is a recipe for a toxic workplace. Lack of fairness doesn’t have to come from mistreatment, exclusion or bullying—it may also take the form of favoritism. If some employees feel a manager favors one of their colleagues, they will not only come to resent the manager but also to detest that colleague. In other words, if you’re going to have cake, make sure there’s an equal portion for everyone. After all, you don’t want any Miltons setting the building on fire.

More Behaviors to Avoid

Read more great tips on annoying boss habits to avoid in Six Boss Behaviors That Drive Your Team Members Bonkers and Five Meetings Your Employees Will Thank You for Killing or Fixing at The Balance.

Want to Be a Better Leader?

You may not be guilty of the above vices, but you probably have some habits you’re unaware of that may be irking your team. If you’re ready to become not only the best possible boss but the best possible you, get started with leadership coaching by calling Chris Cook at 541.601.0114 or emailing her today.

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Workplace Organizational Meeting

New Agreements: 5 Ways to Transform Your Workplace

Posted by Chris Cook on
 July 27, 2016
  ·  4 Comments

Thanks to LinkedIn, I had a chance to talk with author David Dibble last week. He read a recent blog I posted and asked to connect with me. Funny thing is I’ve been using his book The New Agreements in the Workplace for the last five years as source material for the Working with Emotional Intelligence class I teach at Southern Oregon University. I’ve summarized his work below and added a few quotes to illustrate. Thanks, David!

1. Find Your Path

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
—Goethe

As individuals in the workplace and in the world, each of us must find our own path to personal freedom and transformation. If the release of the creative human spirit in the workplace is your passion, following a true path will accelerate the journey dramatically. A true path is a roadmap that includes proven practices, community support along the way and possibly a teacher. Most importantly, a true path will ignite your higher purpose for work based in love.

A true path will ignite your higher purpose for work based in love. Click To Tweet

2. Love, Grow and Serve Your People

“All work is empty, save when there is love.”
—Kahlil Gibran

The workplace can be thought of as a living being. Workplaces are alive because they are made of people. To love, grow and serve your people means loving, growing and serving the organization. In doing so, you love, grow and serve yourself. This is true leadership.

3. Mind Your Mind in the Moment

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.”
—John Milton

Science has been looking at the human mind for thousands of years, and many questions remain. Your mind creates both your individual and organizational realities. To change yourself or your workplace, you must transform your mind. Awareness of the mind in the moment when life and work take place is a central practice to nearly every true path. With awareness, you can create heaven on earth in your workplace.

4. Shift Your Systems

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
—Henry David Thoreau

All organizations have structural components we call systems. Systems are the formal and informal policies, procedures, habits and agreements that tell you how to do things in the workplace. They control about 90 percent of the results you create in your organization. To unlock your creative human spirit, you must shift from the fear and control that drive most workplace systems to an atmosphere of love and support.

You must shift from fear and control to an atmosphere of love and support. Click To Tweet

5. Practice a Little Every Day

“The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection—even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano—is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith

Did you know the space shuttle is off course approximately 97 percent of the time? To make the New Agreements a reality, you must practice a little every day. As you practice, you will notice change. With regular practice, you embody the New Agreements. As you move from doing to being, you become the unbridled release of your creative human spirit. This is true mastery.

Living the New Agreements

How does this sit with you? How does it manifest in your workplace? If you want to work with the New Agreements, let’s talk about how coaching or consulting can help you create positive change.

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Path Through the Forest

Are You Seeing the Forest for the Trees? Where Senior Leaders Are Failing

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 June 28, 2016
  ·  No Comments

When you think of senior leaders at your organization, are they more likely to spend their time:

  1. zooming from meeting to meeting, generating reports and bashing through an endless task list or
  2. developing strategy, delegating to trusted staff and inspiring employees through strengths-based coaching?

Most likely, your answer is ‘a.’ You may even be one of those managers swept away by the tidal wave of meetings, busywork and deadlines. There are any number of reasons for this—from downsizing causing work to be divvied among fewer employees to a myopic focus on immediate targets blinding us to the bigger picture.
You want a captain who has enough foresight to steer the ship away from danger. Click To Tweet

The Grander Vision

Whatever the excuse, you have to admit senior leadership bears some responsibility for articulating the grander vision of the organization, seeing past the urgent projects and daily crises to achieve a broader, deeper perspective.

You want a captain who has enough foresight to steer the ship away from danger and toward smooth waters. If she’s stuck in the engine room, how can she scan the horizon for icebergs and storm clouds?

Two Tracks: Senior Leaders & Individual Contributors

At The Context of Things, Ted Bauer recently blogged about how senior leaders shouldn’t be individual contributors. Instead, he floats an idea that got shot down by a previous employer of his: rather than making senior management the only career advancement option, offer an alternative “individual contributor” track—of equal pay.

This accomplishes two things: 1) it prevents unqualified people from becoming one of the 82 percent of poor manager hires (who subsequently make life miserable for their underlings and sap productivity), and 2) it acknowledges the unique strengths of key individual players, allowing them to blossom in ways that may otherwise never occur in a traditional corporate structure.

Such an approach could harness untapped talents while enabling the truly gifted leaders to rise to their calling. Managers who entrust their staff with tasks they would typically undertake not only empower those contributors but also free them to concentrate on influential strategic decisions.

Imagine a leader who balances an eagle’s eye view with an empathetic approach. Click To Tweet

A Better Way

When only a third of senior leadership can identify company priorities, something is askew. When managers spend more time head-down at their desks than getting to know their staff, they are failing as leaders.

Imagine instead a leader who balances an eagle’s eye view of the organization—comprehending its innate culture, branding and marketing tactics—with an empathetic and astute appreciation of every employee. That manager would understand how to elicit the best from his employees in concert with the organization’s deeper mission, conducting a harmonious symphony in pursuit of long-term strategic goals.

The Path Forward

This may feel daunting to managers trapped in the corporate grind and facing a seemingly infinite to-do list. You don’t have to do it alone.

Through executive coaching, you can identify your own natural abilities, charting a path toward strategic leadership and becoming an inspiration for your employees as you model transformation.

In addition to igniting your personal and professional growth, Chris Cook can help your company discover its DNA. Her organizational consulting services will make the big picture crystal clear while outlining specific steps you and your staff can take to achieve your company’s aspirational vision.

Want to Explore the Possibilities?

Whether you want leadership coaching, organizational consulting, branding guidance or all of the above, Chris Cook can help. Call 541.601.0114 or email Chris today.

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