August « 2010 « Small Fish Business Coaching

Creating healthy competition

I ran across an interesting HBR article today entitled “Is Your Culture Too Nice?“ It’s pretty thought-provoking, because I’ve become accustomed to polite work cultures, feeling uncomfortable with those which are more confrontational.

Why can’t we all just get along?

But the challenge here is to distinguish two ideas which tend to get muddled together:

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Leadership principle #7: Value

When it comes down to it, your employees want to spend their days doing useful things. People can only exist in a limbo of inaction for so long, and then they become restless.

Granted, there are many different kinds of “doing.”

Continue reading Leadership principle #7: Value

Engaging in your work and life

Engagement comes from the combination of investing one’s passion and energies plus the trust that those energies will not be in vain.
- Jeff Rogers

I just had to share this quote with you today, as it’s so appropriate for what we’ve been talking about with engaging your employees with their work.

What would cause an employee to trust that their work won’t be in vain?

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Will your upcoming leaders disappear?

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article yesterday, titled Leadership Training Gains Urgency Amid Stronger Economy. They remind us of some important dynamics in leadership development:

Existing leadership continues to age, many now getting dangerously close to retirement age.
Leadership ranks have been downsized as the workforce has experienced the same crunch.
Investments in leadership development have waned (or have been eliminated) due to the recent economic turmoil.

Continue reading Will your upcoming leaders disappear?