Why your supervisors don’t lead (and what to do about it)
A common complaint managers have about their supervisors is that they “don’t lead”. Usually, that means that they don’t take initiative, solve problems, provide direction, or set clear expectations with follow-up. Before looking at the supervisory responsibilities for...
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Is your supervisory leadership training effective? Let’s check.
(Snippet: To know if your workplace training is effective start by clarifying your desired outcomes and then make sure the training program you choose reflects a good understanding of how adults learn at work. Once this is in place, ensure you know what to...
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How to diversify your network!
“A stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet” Anonymous Most people find networking events stressful. The idea of spending an afternoon after work or evening with a bunch of strangers trying to make awkward conversation doesn’t seem like most people’s idea of a good...
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What is managers’ #1 complaint? Hint: Same as employees’ #1 complaint!
"The reason people blame things on the previous generation is that there's only one other choice." -- Doug Larson If you guessed, “getting people to do their jobs without being nagged”, you would be right. The number one complaint of managers is that their team...
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Why people don’t follow procedures and what to do about it
You have been through this before. An employee seems to know what to do. You have communicated the procedure, and probably explained the steps. And…it isn’t done. Or it isn’t done right. You could tear your hair out! Ranting and raving, getting mad and frustrated or...
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“I love my company!” Group pride, inclusion and employee engagement
“I love my company!” Group pride, inclusion and employee engagement How an inclusion opportunity came up at Fenceline and what happened when they took it on. Marie Gervais, Shift Management Inc. “Never underestimate your ability to make someone else’s life...
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Want to elevate employee engagement? Try this simple idea (consistently!)
Does employee engagement have to be tricky? Developing a collaborative workspace with commitment to purpose and goals can be helped along with one, simple, consistent check in. The side benefits? Increased engagement and stronger sense of belonging. The other day I...
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“I love working here!” Real examples of inclusive workplaces
Belonging: The antidote to toxicity and the elixir of engagement! Recently I ran a web training session about successfully addressing toxic workplaces. I asked, as I usually do, for any workplace experiences, attendees might like to send me in advance so I could...
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Supervisory survival basics: Giving direction
Being good at your job has its downside. People usually come into their first managerial positions because they are good at what they are already doing. Decision makers identify them as responsible, committed and technically competent. With those company-friendly...
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4 ways to motivate others using your experience
What motivates people? The first response of almost everyone you ask this question is “money”. Yet in study after study, money has only proven to be a motivator when someone is in grinding poverty or in a situation of narcissistic hoarding. Even then, as soon as the...
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Increase your leadership attraction: Your backstory
Did you know that leadership attraction and marketing are related? You couldn’t control how your story started, but you can write a few good pages in there ― Mustafa Saifuddin As I was reading Russell’s most recent book called Dotcom Secrets, something really jumped...
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Channeling your inner “scary leader”
Lots of people come to me with their workplace issues and management dilemmas. I listen patiently and help them come to a few conclusions about their next steps. Upon reflection, I would say that 99% of the managers seeking my advice have problems because they have an...
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Keeping your diverse employees
It is tough to find quality workers these days. You probably have invested quite a bit in recruiting, hiring and setting up for skilled employees from diverse backgrounds for your company. But how do you keep them? Many skilled workers from other countries will take...
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Pre-influencing your team for great attitude
I have been reading Robert Cialdini’s most recent book Pre-Suasion. It's about how people are triggered to behave in certain ways under certain conditions. The short version is that people are influenced by reciprocity, social proof, likeability, consistency,...
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What is the difference between culture, personality, wellness, and performance issues?
Let me tell you a story... An employment counsellor told me about a client - an immigrant who had come to Canada as a refugee - who quit and immediately walked away from a very good job on a Friday. The client said he was offended by the three month review he had just...
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How to be a better you: Changing your habits with “If/when…then”
Have you felt frustrated with yourself for not being able to change habits? Maybe you’ve heard yourself saying, “Just this one chocolate bar,” or, “Tomorrow I’ll get serious about this,” when you are trying to make a lifestyle or workplace change. When struggling to...
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10 Ways to survive the new supervisor nightmare
So your time has come and you're officially the new supervisor! Of course you are feeling both excited and perhaps a bit scared at the same time. You want to make a good impression and you want people to like you, but you recognize a need for discipline and want...
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Bringing out the talents of your team: Survey and you shall receive
I recently did a communication training for an organization whose leadership spent two hours beforehand explaining to me that their employees were "all under-performing, irresponsible and unresponsive." I didn’t believe them then, and I believed them even less when I...
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How to get strategic and START putting out fires in your business or team
Do you spend most of your time at work dealing with emergencies?... Does your business day revolve around putting out fire after fire, and are you constantly working to respond to client needs (or demands) because you are worried that you will lose your customer to a...
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3 Typical workplace communication problems you can actually do something about
Workplace communication is a two-way street. It involves people listening to each other and responding, where ideas are shared and then collaboratively built out over time. So, when workplace interactions evolve from poor communication, it is no surprise that a...
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Stop spending 80% of your time on one bad egg
Ever notice how there are those "bad eggs" on your team who, like vacuums, seem to suck not only your energy, but everyone's energy? Learning to deal with the "bad eggs" on our teams can feel like a trap. It's easy to think that with just a little more coaching or...
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Live your work life as if you could die tomorrow
Recently I have been reminded of the importance of death... When we think about our own death and what might be our legacy after we have left this world, it can have a big impact on how we live daily. It has a lot of weight on how we treat people at work, in our...
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The spirit of work: How courtesy, respect and thoughtfulness create the foundation for all other work success
Recipes for success at work are printed everywhere…articles, textbooks, templates, and checklists. Ready for a different approach? Find how Marie’s 3 key values can ignite your team and enable you to light the way for others.
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Courageous conversations you wish you’d had
Have you ever found yourself wishing you would have had a conversation that could have made a difference for you and for the other person? Maybe you wish you had told that wonderful colleague you appreciated her but were afraid it might be taken the wrong way or “go...
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To stop the talent drain, develop your own leadership
Your leadership actions are predictors of your organization’s success. If you are in any kind of a management position right now, sit down with a pen and paper and take five minutes to write down your answer to this question: Why would anyone want to follow me? If you...
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Is it true that some people can’t be motivated?
Unpacking Motivation Ever found yourself asking this question? It's one that I am often asked, usually by someone who is frustrated with an employee who seems to have a lot of motivation issues, and usually when the asker has already decided that the answer to the...
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3 critical supervisory leadership tools for this century and the next!
Supervisory leadership promotion: do you have the tools? To promote someone to a supervisory level, the most common approach is to choose someone who is good at the job and has been both responsible and loyal to the company. Very little thought goes into whether the...
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Build Powerful Engaged Teams
Outstanding teamwork doesn’t just happen. The core competency of management is to truly appreciate your staff and make the team more powerful than individual workers to produce business goals. Training is not enough. You can develop the individual until the cows come...
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Getting through to your boss
Have you experienced any of these issues with your boss? Your boss tells you to do something that is completely the opposite, or in contradiction to what he/she told you to do earlier Your boss forgets what he/she asks, and repeats things you already know, or doesn’t...
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The need to be right versus the need to know
In his book How to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie writes that one of the biggest obstacles to living a happy life is allowing the need to be right to take over the need to know. Most of us will defend our beliefs to the death, even when all evidence...
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“Give them support and cut them loose!” Practical strategies to unleash the power of your team
This week we partnered with our friends at TINYpulse to bring you a webinar that showed managers how to see the significance of diversity, how to better understand culture and how it shows up in the workplace, and we outlined some strategies to build inclusion in your...
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Building and recovering team trust: A basic framework for managers
Trust: difficult to build, easily broken, requires maintenance! Trust between people comes from three different dimensions: Ability – Both people need to believe that the other person can do the job or task Integrity – This is built from a history of past actions,...
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Workforce plagues: Understanding and dealing with social dominance and narcissistic personalities at work
Around the world we are seeing rises in two diametrically opposed attitudes: on the one hand collaboration and integration across difference, and on the other, entitlement, social dominance and narcissism. If your workplace has individuals exhibiting social dominance...
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Want more confidence? Try these steps!
Have you ever found yourself watching someone else participate easily in a conversation with a stranger and wondered, “How did he/she do that?” Or perhaps you watched a presenter put forth a series of ideas with brilliant logic, a great sense of humour, or...
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7 Barriers to communication and a lesson from YouTube
Barriers to communication can be removed! Ask employees in any workplace what the company’s biggest internal problem is and the majority will say without hesitation, “communication,” (insert eye rolling and groans here). Why is it that although we are social beings...
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Why you can’t afford to have poor communication in your business or organization
We start with a story... There was a young man driving his car home on the expressway one evening, when he heard a loud bang and felt his left rear tire blow out. He pulled the car over on the shoulder of the expressway, got out, and saw that he had a flat tire. Even...
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“What? Are you trying to teach me something?” The link between organizational learning and polar bears
Let me tell you a tale of two species… I was at a conference recently and one of the participants shared this story with me. “So, I went to the CEO and I said, ‘We have to start learning to stay current in today’s economy.’ The CEO said, ‘Ya, why? I’m making money so...
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The power of a true vacation, and why you should harness it
“You can’t do a good job if a job is all you do.” - Artifact Uprising “A vacation is over when you begin to yearn for your work.” - Morris Fishbein I have a confession to make. Since I started my business 10 years ago I have only taken one vacation – ONE vacation, ONE...
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Overcoming talent blindness
The Webster dictionary defines talent as "a special ability that allows a person to do something well." We all have some special abilities that help us do things well and we are actually full of latent, undeveloped talents Why learn to see talent in others? Dave...
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Measuring for results: Three key principles
We all know it is important to measure for results, but often we don’t know what to measure or how to interpret the metrics. Another issue is knowing what to do – how to change our behaviour – based on the metrics. QUESTION 1: HOW CAN I UNDERSTAND METRICS SIMPLY?...
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8 Social assumptions and what to do about them
Have you noticed yourself or others making any of these kinds of statements? “Why do we need _________? I would never use it.” “Back in the day when we only had two TV channels…” “What barriers? I didn’t have any issues.” “It’s because people have no (insert virtue...
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Effective meetings strategy #1: Using meetings to mine for team talents
People categorize and use routines to deal with things quickly and efficiently throughout the day. This is a natural part of understanding the world and it saves us time. Unfortunately, in a workplace setting, classifying people in terms of what we already know about...
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Biology and business: genes and employee performance
Biology, employee performance, and business systems have more in common than you may think. According to the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins (first published in 1978 and widely accepted as the most significant communication about the basics of inheritance...
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Five Skills for effective workplace communication
Effective workplace communication can be learned! You may think you know how to communicate to your team or employees. But communication is not about what you think has happened when you speak with someone, it is about what actually happens between two people in...
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Why do people follow bad leaders and what can you do about it?
Most of us have either experienced or currently work with bosses who are incompetent, tyrannical or vindictive. You may have asked yourself how someone so incompetent ended up in a position of power. Or you may wonder why everyone seems to put up with the tyranny of a...
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Me biased? 3 strategies to find out
It is pretty easy to tell other people what they should do, how they should fix a work issue and how to fix their personality foibles. We can quickly see when someone else is so much in favour of a person or a project they can’t see the forest for the trees. We can...
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The Myth of “Old School” Management
It always irritates me when I hear people excuse a manager’s poor performance by saying “don’t worry about (insert name of bad manager here), he/she is ‘old school.'" What does that really mean when someone describes a decision maker as ‘old school?' My initial list...
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Linking Training, Organizational Climate and Business Outcomes
Statistics about training investments increasing company net worth, particularly in the area of high capital and skilled worker training, are widely known. However research on training and organizational effects is still relatively new. Tharenou, Saks and Moore...
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Supervisory Basics 2: Setting Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations is critical to team success When you are an employee, you expect your team leader to let you know what your job is and to teach you how to get that job done. Many supervisors make the mistake of assuming their team already knows what to do...
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Productivity challenge: Your employees are not your family
The news is not good. It appears the Alberta approach to improving productivity is to throw more people, money and material resources at the issue without considering - or measuring for - the consequences. Financial Post’s July 25th story by Yadullah Hussein about oil...
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