Last week a newly-hired manager sent me this note about how he was able to connect with his new employees, even though they were bitter and cynical because of their previous leaders (who were awful). I’m sharing this letter because it shows you how employee retention can sometimes be a simple task, if you’re willing to exert just a little bit of personal energy, attention and time.
Change is hard. Whether you’re facing a big change like reinventing a business model or something simple like the day paychecks come out, change is difficult. One study found that 70% of change efforts fail. Big or small, change efforts seem to run into the same brick walls over and over again. By understanding the basic phases of change and the psychological state of your employees, you can prepare your culture for change and avoid common pitfalls of failed change efforts.
The key to successful change management is getting people to let go of the status quo and reach for something bigger and better. If you ask top executives, this should be pretty easy because right now only 37% of them say that people generally like to remain in the status quo. 
When a candidate enters the room to interview, it signals a shift from recruiting: attracting them to the organization, to interviewing: conducting a diagnosis of skills and attitudes to see if they’re a fit for the organization. But one of the biggest mistakes hiring managers make is missing that signal and continuing to recruit when they should be interviewing.
No one likes getting tough feedback from the boss, but it’s often necessary to grow and develop on the job. Your company doesn’t want to hire folks who can’t constructively receive constructive criticism. You want people who can bounce back in a positive manner. 
Teamwork. It means something different in every organization, which means you need an interview question that effectively assesses whether or not a candidate is a fit for your unique definition of team.
Here are some examples of commonly asked interview questions that don’t work:
Here’s one of the most important lessons about employee engagement: Everybody has shoves and tugs. Shoves are those issues that demotivate you, drain your energy, stop you from giving maximum effort, and make you want to quit—they “shove” you out the door. Tugs are those issues that motivate and fulfill you, make you want to give maximum effort, and keep you coming back every day—they “tug” at you to stay.
Has your company ever gone through a change effort where some employees got anxious while others stayed calm? Have you ever seen some employees freak out over a mistake they made, while others got right back on the horse?
Whatever you call them, performance appraisals (or employee evaluations or annual reviews) are painful. But our high performers aren’t making these events strenuous; it’s our low performers that make us dread these conversations.
There are different types of work that leaders can do. There’s work for which we feel passion and that propels us towards our big goals. There’s work that we don’t love doing but that still needs to get done. And then there’s what I call Red Light work; activities that bring no value and that are a colossal waste of time. 
