I’m happy to announce that my company, E Pluribus Partners, is now on LinkedIn! LinkedIn is another wonderful platform for sharing and discussing ideas about employee engagement and leadership, and we look forward to sharing helpful advice through this practical channel.
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When your team accomplishes a major goal, celebrate as a group with a party, meal, or outing. Ask people for suggestions about how to celebrate. If you can afford it, invite them to bring a significant other to join in the celebration. If your team includes remote employees, include them by scheduling the celebration the next time they visit the office or providing them with a gift card to a nice restaurant in their area.
This is the forty-first post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
As seen on Fox Business and SmartBlog on Leadership.
What separates the best leaders from the rest when it comes to employee engagement?
Our research shows the best leaders communicate an inspiring vision and live it, value people and give them a voice. Here are seven of the 100+ best practices that leaders can use to engage people.
When you want someone to do something, ask him/her, don’t order him/her to do it. Asking creates partnership while ordering reinforces hierarchy. Partnerships connect people to the process whereas emphasizing hierarchy by ordering them is disconnecting. By taking this approach, people are far more likely to trust you when you do need to issue orders in emergency situations.
This is the fortieth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
As seen on Fox Business and SmartBlog on Leadership.
Is your boss or a co-worker increasingly irritable, angry, withdrawn or acting in a predatory manner? Or are you noticing that behavior in yourself? With rising demands in today’s workplace, emotional and behavioral disorders have soared. In Untangling the Mind: Why We Behave the Way We Do, Ted George, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington School of Medicine and neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health, helps us understand America’s surge in emotional and behavioral disorders, including those we see in the workplace. Grasping “why” we instinctively react in certain ways is the first step in affecting change.
Make sure your direct reports know what you are counting on them to do and when it needs to be completed. The lack of clarity, especially on critical actions, undermines connection. When it comes to critical actions, it’s best to put them in writing.
This is the thirty-ninth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
#38 Make Lunch and Break Connections – In many workplace cultures today, taking lunch away from your desk may brand you as a slacker. It’s too bad this is the case since taking time to connect with someone who energizes you is a great way to boost your personal productivity by refreshing and re-energizing your brain. Try it this week.
This is the thirty-eighth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
Don’t nuke people who disagree with you. If you disagree with someone, say so but do it in a respectful manner. You might even begin your response with “I may be wrong but is it possible that…?” or “It’s just one person’s opinion, and I may be wrong, but I wonder if it could be that….”
If you offended or hurt someone’s feelings, apologize. If someone apologizes to you, give him/her the benefit of the doubt and forgive him/her.
This is the thirty-seventh post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
Hold “skip level” meetings where you meet with the people who report to one of your direct reports. In the skip level meeting, the leader should encourage attendees to share their ideas and opinions about how to improve the business.
To preserve connection with your direct reports, make sure you communicate that you will be hosting these meetings with their teams on a regular basis so they don’t feel that they are being audited. Keep the focus of the meetings on giving people a voice to share ideas for how to improve the business, and debrief with your direct reports so they are in the loop on the feedback shared.
This is the thirty-sixth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.
Pixar’s leadership team has discovered the secret to consistently creating great films, and it has nothing to do with merely hiring great talent (although they do that too). The secret can be summed up in one word: connection.
An article I wrote on the topic has been featured in the Economic Times, India’s premier daily business publication. Be sure to read Animated Leadership: How Catmull & Co. Created a Culture that Consistently Makes Great Films and share your thoughts in the comments.
What lessons from Pixar’s culture will you apply to your own organization?