From all the news reports, it sounds like many companies are experiencing a mass exodus of workers. People are even referring to this as The Great Resignation of 2021. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a record-high 4.3 million U.S. employees quit their jobs in August. Why? Maybe the pandemic was a real wake-up call. (“Life [...]
In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, I’d like to share some of my insights about the natural characteristics among Hispanic professionals that tend to make them influential and charismatic leaders. What qualifies me to weigh in on this topic? My father is a second-generation Hispanic from Mexico. I also grew up in the border [...]
I’ve been intrigued in recent years by the number of experienced leaders — many of them strong communicators — who have told me the same thing: The hardest part of having tough conversations is getting started. Maybe you need to address a serious performance problem. Deliver bad news. Find a compromise during a heated argument. What’s [...]
June 24 is National Work-From-Home Day—a celebration of the cultural and technological advancements that allow us to be productive working from anywhere outside the office. After 2020, I’m guessing there will be millions more people metaphorically toasting to that capability! While remote workers weren’t uncommon before, the pandemic accelerated the proliferation of tools and services [...]
If you want to play a bigger role in the evolution of your company’s growth and success, there’s a mandatory step in the process: shake up your own thinking! Steve Miller, former CEO of Shell Oil Co., was well known for shaking things up. As Shell was rebranding in Europe, he invited a group of employees [...]
How to influence and impact others virtually. In the past year, I’ve shared plenty of content about how to lead remote teams. It was an important topic before 2020, but the pandemic made it mandatory. What I haven’t talked much about is how remote team members can stand out from their counterparts and become more [...]
Please join me in welcoming two guest bloggers, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel. Kevin is a leading authority on leadership and has twice been named by Inc.com as one of the top 100 Leadership/Management Experts in the World. Wayne is the co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute and author of several books that demystify communicating [...]
I recently listened to a Harvard Business Review podcast called “The Anxious Achievers.” (Wow, there’s a phrase I can relate to!) Besides loving the title of that program, I have been drawn to the idea that we need to change the way we think about managing our stress and anxiety. Steve Cuss, author of “Managing [...]
While speed and efficiency are necessary leadership traits in our always-on, do-more world, there’s also a point of diminishing returns. If we let agendas and clocks dictate all of our meetings, we could be undermining our own efforts to encourage meaningful collaboration and innovative thinking. Consider the unfortunate impact. Many people are reluctant to speak [...]
We leaders are, by definition, doers. We finish. We deliver. We get results. And we love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with crossing things off our “to-do” lists. The tougher the task, the better we like it. We revel in being the person others come to with impossible tasks, and we somehow make them [...]