Employee motivation isn’t as mystifying as it should be. Ask these questions to get to the bottom of it. “What really motivates employees?” A CEO asked me this recently, quite skeptical of the deluge of books and articles on what influences employee engagement and performance. It’s managers! It’s career opportunities! It’s learning and development! It’s employee…
What we learned creating an anonymous online forum, “The Chatham House,” for leaders in The Watercooler Where do you go to talk about the really hard stuff? Sensitive, confidential leadership issues that you don’t really want to be getting out to the rest of your company, let alone the rest of the public? A few…
I share a few of my favorite latest leadership tips from CEOs, founders, and executives featured in our Heartbeat interviews. “What do you wish you’d learned earlier as a leader?” Every two weeks, I ask this question to a CEO, founder, or executive I admire in our interview series, The Heartbeat. The answers are sometimes…
Four best practices to help you work well with your boss when you don’t see them face-to-face all the time. “What does her Slack message *really* mean?” It’s easy to second-guess yourself when your boss pings you. You want to have a good relationship with your boss — but it’s not always the most natural of things. And…
A short 3-question quiz to give your team so you can avoid common leadership mistakes. Feel that? It’s your faint intuition that, as a leader, you’re not hearing the full truth. No one seems to tell you the complete story when someone decides to leaves. No one breathes a word about any leadership mistakes you…
When the boss speaks, people listen… too much. Here are two phrases to counteract this common leadership pitfall. Watch the ears perk up. The boss says something, and folks become extra attentive. It’s not a leadership mistake they’re making on purpose – it’s the unintentional by product of being the boss. All of sudden, someone…
You’ve just been promoted… Now what? Here’s what 1,000+ leaders across the world had to say about what a new manager should do during her first 2 weeks on the job. A friend of mine was recently promoted to being a manager for the first time. It’s a slightly terrifying thing, for those of you who…
From icebreakers to arguments, here are some of most frequently missed things we forget to do as leaders to encourage our team to be more engaged. Meaningful work, open communication, a sense of direction… In our heads, we seem to know a lot of what helps maintain employee engagement. However, in practice, keeping our team engaged…
Beer taps and foosball tables aren’t signs of a strong company culture — honest communication and rigorous + respectful debate are. Here’s how to build a culture of the latter. Culture, at its core, is not what we outwardly say or show. Culture is rooted in our basic underlying assumptions — what we truly believe, even when we choose not…
Being a first-time manager is daunting — so I asked our Watercooler members how they support their own newly promoted managers. When you hire or promote a new manager, you hope they’ll be great. After all, they were a wonderful, all-round employee. But being a wonderful, all-round employee unfortunately doesn’t guarantee that someone will be a great…