Sat.Aug 10, 2024 - Fri.Aug 16, 2024

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How to Set Transformation Targets That Actually Drive Change

Harvard Business Review

Eleven out of 12 top-down target transformations fail to achieve their goals, with only a fraction of theoretically “executed” or “realized” improvements translating to the corporate ledger. In this article, Bain & Co partner Michael Mankins summarizes Bain research findings that show what actions make the difference between success and failure in setting and achieving transformation targets.

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Say No: The Key to Freedom

Leadership Freak

You're trapped if you can't say no. Someone else runs your life when you're a people pleaser. Saying yes creates obligations. Say no to find freedom to do what matters. But remember a "don't-want" life is running with sand in your shorts. Discover strategies to say no.

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8 Elements that Differentiate Your Business and Make it Stand Out

Thought Leaders LLC

Differentiating your business and making it stand out isn’t about cosmetic external attributes. It’s about sharing the internal elements that make your business different. Today’s post is from Winnie Brignac Hart, co-author of Stand Out. Today, we’re bombarded with marketing messages from every side – the New York Times estimates over 5,000 messages every day.

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Are your high maintenance clients high value clients?

Peter Winick

Transcript Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s the idea that I’d like to share with you today, and that’s this: We all have clients that are high maintenance, and we have clients that are low maintenance. One of the observations I make in my work—working with authors, thought leaders, academics, consultants, etc.

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Thought Diversity: Coming to an Organization Near You!

Speaker: Jeremy York

Typically, when people think of diversity, they think of physical traits such as the color of one’s skin or physical abilities/incapabilities, etc. But diversity is much more than this. It is about appreciating our differences and including others that may have a different perspective or point of view. Our experiences, upbringings, education, and so many other things shape how we think, act, and feel—all of which make us diverse.

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Research: How IT Can Solve Common Problems in DEI Initiatives

Harvard Business Review

The authors’ research found that three persistent problems plague DEI initiatives: They do not connect to operational or strategic goals and objectives; they do not include the rank-and-file; and they are often implemented through periodic efforts like annual diversity training that aren’t integrated into day-to-day work processes. Organizations can overcome these problems by using IT in three ways.

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the secret goat, the geese vs the CEO, and other stories of animals at work

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Last week we talked about animals at work and here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The unauthorized dog I’ve worked my entire career at tech start-ups, which are invariably filled with multiple office dogs. Beyond stories of those dogs peeing under desks, pooping in conference rooms, and even one lone kitten who crawled through a hole into the wall and had to be lured out with some turkey, the wildest story was th

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How to Effectively Shift Your Company Culture Away from Overworking Employees

Lolly Daskal

In today’s fast-paced business world, the pressure to succeed often translates into a culture of overworking. A recent study revealed that a staggering 95% of employees feel external pressure to overwork, with almost three-quarters of people working overtime at least once a week. As an executive leadership coach, I’ve witnessed countless companies struggle with the detrimental effects of this trend.

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What Leaders Can Learn from Training Like an Olympic Archer

Harvard Business Review

The discipline of archery, with training that emphasizes purposeful practice, mindful focus, mental toughness, and adaptability, offers useful lessons for business leaders. Just as archers break the skill of using a bow and arrow to hit a target from distance into component parts, such as stance or aim, executives can break the task of “becoming a better leader” into specific, actionable, and manageable steps.

Energy 122
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my company secretly gives parents thousands of extra dollars in benefits

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I work for an organization that prides itself on being generous and flexible to parents. I fully support that, despite the usual gripes among the childless employees you might imagine (e.g., we are asked to work more weekends and nights). A colleague of mine, a parent, is leaving the org and invited me to coffee.

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5 Gratitude Strategies to Energize Your Team Today

Leadership Freak

Gratitude energizes. Unspoken appreciation drains vitality. Would positive energy improve your life? Your team? Think of gratitude as pouring energy into others. Discover five simple strategies to bring vitality to your team and yourself.

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Recognition Powers High-Performance — If You Do it Right

Speaker: Debra Squyres and Todd Wuestenberg

Employee recognition has often been deemed a "feel-good" initiative, tied closely to rewards. While we understand its importance, we tend to associate recognition with intangible outcomes like engagement and sentiment, rather than direct impacts on retention and high performance. In today’s workplace, the true ROI of recognition lies in its ability to regenerate tangible, business-driven results.

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Are You a People Pleaser? Discover How it Hinders Great Leadership

Lolly Daskal

People-pleasing behaviors significantly impact individuals in leadership roles. A study from the University of Zurich links people-pleasing tendencies to increased stress levels and decreased well-being. As an executive leadership coach, I’ve witnessed people-pleasing tendencies holding leaders back from reaching their full potential. The desire for others to like and accept them leads to problematic behaviors, such as avoiding conflict, compromising values, and taking on excessive work.

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3 Common Archetypes of Employees Who Commit Fraud

Harvard Business Review

Fraud is estimated to be a multi-trillion-dollar problem — and this doesn’t even include undetected and unreported fraud. So how can senior leadership teams fortify their organizations against massive fraud schemes? By recognizing three archetypes of employees who commit fraud — intentional perpetrators, accidental perpetrators, and righteous perpetrators — leaders can spot red flags quickly in order to prevent future losses and reputational damage.

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15 Employee Engagement Examples To Inspire You in 2024

AIHR

Learning from various employee engagement examples and implementing some of the ideas can help you improve your organization’s relationship with its employees. Plus, engaged employees are more productive employees. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study (sponsored by Quantum Workplace) revealed that 81% of business leaders strongly agree that highly engaged employees performed better and were more productive.

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Ugly Efficiency: Discover the Secret Power of Beauty

Leadership Freak

The benefit of beauty is joy. Utility—by itself—is ugly. When you add beauty to efficiency, you build human organizations. Ugly organizations are effective, efficient, and joyless. Let yourself be joyful. Here's how.

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HR Meets AI: ? The New Way of Keeping Large Workforces Connected and Engaged

Speaker: Miriam Connaughton and Donald Knight

As organizations scale, keeping employees connected, engaged, and productive can seem like a monumental task. But what if AI could help you do all of this and more? AI has the power to help, but the key is implementing it in a way that enhances, rather than replaces, human connection. Join us for an exploration into how industry trailblazers are using AI to transform employee experience at scale while addressing both the potential and the pitfalls.

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employee won’t do part of his job, interviewing when they know they want to hire someone else, and more

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Employee won’t do part of his job I work for a small gym franchise as a manager. Our model is 24-hour access for our members. The staff is not there 24 hours. Because of complaints we are receiving, I have asked all personal trainers to return towels to the laundry area if they see them overflowing.

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When a New Hire Feels Like They Weren’t Your First Choice

Harvard Business Review

Not everyone can be the first choice for a job. But recent research has found that when a new employee finds out or perceives they were not the top pick, it can have cascading negative impacts on their feelings of acceptance and belonging, as well as their willingness to seek important feedback from their team. In this article, the researchers share their findings and offer tips for managers and leaders looking to support alternate choice hires and help them to thrive.

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Journey Management’s People Movement Components

AlignOrg

Journey management plays a crucial role in organizational transformations. Last month, my colleague Adam Derk shared how journey management combines the practices of change management, project management and organization design to help you successfully navigate a large-scale transformation. Today, we’re sharing ways journey management can assist in managing the human aspect of change.

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How to Stop Overthinking

Nir Eyal

We all dwell on unresolved personal conflicts from time to time. Who hasn’t ruminated on a hurtful comment or unintentional harm we might have caused someone? Feeling bad about something you did, or something done to you, is human. But while it’s expected that the arguments we’ve had, the negative events we’ve experienced, and the major decisions we face haunt us, rumination can also pile on new problems.

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The Upskilling Advantage: Transforming Your Workforce For Future Growth

Speaker: Brian Richardson

With a staggering 92% of CEOs prioritizing skill development, and 84% struggling with transformation, mastering upskilling is now more critical than ever. Drawing on extensive research and collaboration with hundreds of leading organizations, discover key hurdles and innovative best practices in workforce upskilling. You'll walk away with a deep understanding of how to build a culture of continuous learning, expert insights into assessing the current skills of your employees, and a strategic too

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update: my office argued for 5 months about whether I could have an ergonomic chair

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose office argued for five months about whether they could have an ergonomic chair ? They finally received their chair after a five-month ordeal (over a chair ) (first update here ) but … well, here’s the latest. To recap, part of the arrangement I worked out with HR was that for this accommodation to work, I was also given a permanent desk (my employer otherwise hot desks).

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Ensure High-Quality Data Powers Your AI

Harvard Business Review

AI does not need to fail on a global scale to cause enormous damage — to individuals, companies, and societies. Models frequently get things wrong, hallucinate, drift, and can collapse. Good AI comes from good data, but data quality is an enormous organization-wide issue (and opportunity), yet most companies have neglected it. Companies need to understand the nuances of the problem they’re trying to solve, get the data right (both by having the right data for that problem and by ensuring that th

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Leading Thoughts for August 15, 2024

Michael McKinney

I DEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Brad Stulberg on the inescapability trigger: “A person can tell themselves that what they are doing is not good for them and that they need to stop, but until they mean it in every bone of their body, their mental and emotional energy goes toward finding a solution in the current state instead of imagining a new state altogether.

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7 Proven Ways to Improve Your Leadership Decision-Making Skills

Lolly Daskal

The quality and speed of leadership decision-making is a key concern, with research indicating that many leaders struggle to make high-quality decisions quickly. As an executive leadership coach, I’ve seen firsthand how indecisiveness can hinder progress and success. Here are seven proven strategies to sharpen your decision-making skills and become a more effective leader.

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Behind The Curtain: How Todays Climate Is Steering Workplace Culture In 2025

Speaker: Hanh Nguyen

In today’s ever-changing world, HR professionals often find themselves juggling conflicting priorities - especially when external factors seem out of their control. As we traverse the unpredictable waters of the current political and economic landscape, we find ourselves at a crossroads. For HR leaders, understanding how these external forces shape our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is crucial.

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how to respond to “jokes” about age and weight at work

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I’m a manager with several supervisors under me. A supervisor was “teased” by one team member for being overweight and by a different one for being “old.” Prior to these comments, the supervisor had told me that she’s watching what she eats and is trying to lose weight.

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Research: Highlighting Minority-Owned Businesses Can Boost Sales

Harvard Business Review

In the last few years, large companies like Wayfair, Amazon, Yelp, DoorDash, and Instacart have launched initiatives to try to address racial inequality in their business models. In a new study, researchers examined some of these strategies, including Yelp and Wayfair’s labels which identify minority-owned businesses. The authors offer insight into how supporting companies owned by underrepresented groups can benefit sponsor businesses while promoting the growth of minority entrepreneurship.

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Deep Work: What It Is & How To Incorporate It Into Your Life

BetterUp

Jump to section What is deep work? Deep work vs. shallow work How to practice deep work Habits that make deep work easier Is there a best time of day for deep work? Does deep work rewire your brain?

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How To Create Boundaries That Are Healthy Between You And Your Boss

Lolly Daskal

Boundaries are the invisible lines we draw around ourselves to protect our time, energy, and well-being. They define what we are and are not willing to accept in our relationships, both personal and professional. In the workplace, boundaries are particularly important for maintaining a healthy relationship with your boss. Without clear boundaries, we risk being taken advantage of, overworked, and undervalued.

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Engage, Empower, Excel: Transforming Performance in the New Era of Work

Speaker: Radhika Samant and Adri Glover

The world of work has fundamentally changed. The series of waves that the pandemic began have rippled through the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, the Great Regret, and other eloquent phrases that boil down to the same thing: people aren’t engaged at work or enabled to perform at their best. The truth is that engagement and enablement is more important than ever, but how we do it is the critical differentiator for many organizations.

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do you still need a mailing address on your resume?

Alison Green

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I teach a course for adult learners on how to prepare for a job search, and I’d like to get your take on including addresses on resumes. Personally, I think it is unnecessary, particularly in our modern world of remote and hybrid jobs, and just introduces a potential safety issue.

Manager 95
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Kickstart Your New Hire’s Success by Connecting them to the Right People

Harvard Business Review

As a manager, onboarding a new hire isn’t just about providing manuals and login information, it’s about setting the employee up to operate autonomously in their role and feel comfortable within the organization. To do this, leaders need to emphasize the importance of developing strategic relationships with colleagues across the company who can share critical knowledge, and help contextualize and speed up their learning.

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How often do you make significant investments in your own professional development?

Thought Leaders LLC

Our reader poll today asks: How often do you make significant investments in your own professional development? At least once a month 29.39% Once per quarter 16.12% A couple of times a year 27.96% Once a year 11.84% Almost never 14.69% Making time for yourself. Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

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How Businesses Can Help End the Skills Gap

Refresh

The conversation around the skills gap, particularly in Skilled Trades industries like manufacturing, energy, and construction, has been… The post How Businesses Can Help End the Skills Gap first appeared on The Express Blog.

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Mastering Remote Onboarding: Proven Strategies for Seamless New Hire Integration

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

Join this brand new webinar with Tim Buteyn to learn how you can master the art of remote onboarding! By the end of this session, you'll understand how to: Craft a Tailored Onboarding Checklist 📝 Develop a comprehensive, customized checklist that ensures every new hire has a smooth transition into your company, no matter where they are in the world.