When I consider what is needed from leaders in organizations, an old Bonnie Tyler song about holding out for a hero comes to mind: somebody strong, and sure, and larger than life. Managers at all levels these days have a really tough assignment trying to create an environment that both achieves challenging goals and allows [...]
“But,” they say, “what if my employees just aren’t motivated?” I hear that quite a lot when I talk with leaders at all levels about cultivating learning culture or supporting self-directed learning. They think employees don’t want to learn. Their evidence is that despite offering accessible resources, employees seem to take the easiest route to [...]
It’s counterintuitive, I know, but when we think about developing people, we should consider working on those areas in which they are already strong rather than their purported weaknesses. That’s a hard concept to reconcile when we are staring at the results of a competency assessment that has several clearly low-rated items. But unless those [...]
Imagine any scenario in which one of your employees needs to learn something, and you might guess that their first instinct will be to search the internet for relevant material. They put keywords into the search bar, hit enter, and instantly receive thousands of hits that might be useful. Yikes! They may start skimming over [...]
There is no doubt that interpersonal connections are critical to growth and innovation. Part of the origin story for Silicon Valley is a belief that many of the groundbreaking innovations born there were made possible by the close proximity of all those tech companies, which enabled employees in separate companies to interact with one another. [...]
As more employees work fully or partially remote on a permanent basis, leaders will need to step up in the ways that they connect people so that learning can thrive. As they say, that’s it – that’s the tweet. But since this is a blog, I’ll expand… One story of many I’m sure you can [...]
In the wake of all the disruptions and workplace changes precipitated by the pandemic, employees are looking for more from their employers. They want flexibility, of course, but they are also expecting a more humanistic management style. Employees want to contribute in a meaningful way, and they want to grow their knowledge and skill. While [...]