One of the worst management techniques ever created is the Compliment Sandwich. The Compliment Sandwich was created as a way of giving somebody constructive criticism:
"Bob, you're just so talented. You're so smart. You might be the smartest person in the department. Your behavior...
We discovered that people who work from home (i.e., telecommuting) are almost twice as likely to love their jobs than employees who work in traditional co-located work-sites (like office buildings). And mobile workers (i.e., using multiple workspaces, in and out of the office) were about 58% more likely to love their job than their office-based peers.
First we asked people where they usually work (in an office, mobile or telecommute). And then we asked people to rate how they felt about their job (love, like, tolerate, dislike or hate). Here’s what we found.
The gig economy is here! While the 20th century was typified by a corporate model of work (long term salaried jobs, benefits, maybe a gold watch), the last decade has seen the strong emergence of gigs, freelancers, solopreneurs, the self-employed and the coffee shop-qua-office. It’s increasingly difficult to describe our work in a single word (e.g. lawyer, engineer, nurse). 
Deep and meaningful conversations are a hallmark of successful managers of remote employees. But while a lot of managers are talking to their remote employees, they’re not learning anything important during those conversations. A good litmus test of how productive your conversations with remote employees are is to ask yourself if your remote people are sharing with you their problems, bad news, struggles, challenges and all the other things you need to know to keep your people accountable and aligned.
Ever since I wrote the book HARD Goals, which is about goal setting, I've gotten a bit of a reputation as a guy who hates SMART goals. I think it's maybe a touch unfair, but let me tell you where it comes from. We did a study to look at goal setting involving over 4,000 people. . .
If your organization conducts employee engagement surveys, there’s something you really need to know: Never ask a question you don’t know how to fix. Sounds simple, right? Well, some of the most common engagement survey questions violate this simple rule (and one of your survey questions might be on this list).
It’s cliché to say that "this is year is different." But I think most of us would agree that, yeah, this year is actually kind of different. And it’s not just all the political and societal changes we face; businesses are going to see changes, especially when it comes to their employees.
Dan is a senior financial analyst and, in his mind, he’s the best one on the team. But according to his boss, while it’s true that Dan’s financial skills are very good, his emotional intelligence is virtually nonexistent. And Dan’s coworkers would describe him as smart but also narcissistic, abrasive and tone-deaf.
High performers need positive feedback; they do a great job and they should have that acknowledged. However, phrases like “great job” or “nice work” are so vague as to be virtually useless. And in some cases, they may even do harm.
Manager For A Day Program Teaches Leadership Skills Succession planning is kind of a weird topic for a lot of leaders. Succession planning, theoretically, is super easy to do. Okay, we just have to find the next group of leaders who are going to replace the current group of leaders as they succeed and get them the right leadership skills, et cetera, et cetera.
