Blog

This can sometimes be difficult to remember when payroll time comes around, but your employees aren’t an expense—they’re an investment!   And yet, for some employers, it’s an investment that can seem dicey, at best. This is especially true of younger employees. How often have you heard these words spoken about millennial employees: We hireRead more

Employee engagement is something that gets talked about a lot in soft terms—but it’s also something that can and should be measured, considered more objectively and analytically.   There are different ways to do this, of course, including employee engagement surveys—but my focus today isn’t the how. It’s the why. If you’ve never taken aRead more

The most important investment leaders can make is the investment in their team members. Invest wisely and you’ll reap some major dividends, including a coherent, energized, and productive team. Invest poorly, however, and you could have some problems on your hands—including a retention problem.   And that’s a big deal! For one thing, it’s costly;Read more

I’m going to be frank with you: I meet a lot of leaders who talk a big game when it comes to workplace wellness. They say all the right things about wanting their employees to prioritize physical and mental health. They even talk about building a culture of wellness. But when it comes to actuallyRead more

We all have bad days. Your top performer may show up for work one morning feeling under the weather, or frazzled from a hectic morning at home. It may even show in their performance. These things happen, and as a leader, it’s important to show some understanding.   But what happens when that bad dayRead more

The science is clear: To function at an optimal level, we all need roughly seven hours of sleep each night—give or take an hour. You may think you can skate by on much less, but eventually the sleep deprivation will catch up with you—maybe through sloppy work, maybe through other mental health issues, or maybeRead more

As you climb the corporate ladder, sooner or later you have to take on some additional responsibilities. You’re not going to get a better title or a bigger office without proving that you can handle more projects, more direct reports, a larger chunk of the budget—so as you consider the next step in your career,Read more

Do you have a controlling boss or do you have a boss that cares? It’s good to have a boss who cares—a boss who seems invested not just in your day to day performance, but in your career development, too.   It’s not so great to have a boss who tries to control you, reshapingRead more

There’s a question I like to ask young leaders: What kind of person do you enjoy working for? In other words, who’s your ideal boss? You might be surprised at how often I get the same answer. “Someone who’s not a micromanager,” people tell me.   The truth is, none of us like working forRead more

There’s more than one way to build company culture. I’ve met some leaders who effectively try to dictate culture, imposing a set of values on their team members. And let me tell you, that almost never works. A culture has to emanate from your entire team; it has to be something that arises from theRead more