Tag Archives: leadership speaker

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Your Corporation: Corpus or Corpse?

The root word of corporation is “corpus,” a Latin word meaning body. Does your corporation act like a healthy body where members support one another and recognize that harm to one is damaging to all. If not, perhaps your corporation is diseased with members harming one another through incivility or indifference. If so, your corporation is on its way to becoming a corpse (and its culture may be killing individual members, too).

Most corporations today are diseased. Corporate Executive Board research shows that 90 percent of employees today are either not engaged and giving their best efforts or they are not aligned with organizational goals. In this article that appeared this week in Hearst Newspapers entitled “Extinguising Employee Burnout” I spoke with reporter Scott Gargan about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and how to combat the growing problem of employee burnout that is literally draining the life out of individuals and organizations.

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Relationship Failure at Microsoft

An article appearing in The New York Times entitled “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction” makes it clear that the company has big problems stemming from internal rivalries. We teach that organizations that sustainable superior performance = task excellence + relationship experience.  So often organizations die because the failure to achieve relationship excellence sabotages task excellence. Keep that in mind when you read the article and it will become clear that Microsoft is heading down that path.

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Boost Productivity, Innovation: New Program with Linkage

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Jason Pankau and I recently teamed up with Linkage to offer a course on our book, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion. Creativity and Productivity.  The course includes video with supporting participant and facilitator guides.  Here is a backgrounder on the program entitled Fired Up Leadership to Boost Productivity and Innovation.

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Free Webinar: Re-energize Employees

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Employees have been through a difficult season at work.  Layoffs, fewer resources and financial stress have taken a toll on employee enthusiasm, energy, engagement and alignment with their organization’s goals.  What should managers do to help employees recover, refocus and re-energize for the season ahead.  Jason Pankau and I are delighted to partner with the Best Practice Institute where we will be presenting a free hour-long webinar on the topic of re-energizing employees following the “Great Recession.”  The webinar will occur on July 14 at Noon EST. To read the webinar description and sign up:

  1. Click on this link
  2. Enter the Promo Code STPABP2 in on the right side (under the member sign-in box)
  3. You will be redirected to a page where you will need to enter information about yourself (i.e. your name, email and job position). After this page is filled out, you will be registered to watch the webinar for free!

This is a timely topic and we hope you will join us.

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    Leadership Wisdom: Howard Behar


    One of my favorite business books is Howard Behar’s It’s Not About the Coffee. Behar is the former president of Starbucks International and Starbucks North America. On March 24-25 I’ll be moderating a session at the Conference Board’s Customer Experience Management Conference in New York City where Howard will be speaking. You can learn more about the conference at this link. And be sure to check out the above webcast I hosted with Howard.

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    Employee Engagement: Why Now, More Than Ever

    Reading this article in The New York Times about the mood in New Orleans now that its football team, the Saints, is in the Super Bowl, got me thinking about employee engagement.  The article identifies a factor that has boosted the morale of New Orleans residents. It is a factor that has a positive impact on employee morale, too. What is it?

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    Jobs, Apple: What’s at their Core?

    LiveMint/The Wall Street Journal in India asked me to comment on why Steve Jobs and Apple have been so successful. In an interview entitled “‘Think Different’ is What Makes Apple Stand Out,” I shared that it is more than the beauty and functional excellence of Apple’s products that make the firm so successful. Apple’s inspiring identity plays an important role too. (Above is a video of the original “Think Different” television ad.)

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    Employee Engagement Conversation w/Michael Bungay Stanier

    It was my good fortune to be a guest on Michael Bungay Stanier’s Great Work podcast interviews series to discuss employee engagement and leadership. Michael is the founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a firm that provides coaching and training services to organizations.  He authored the book Do More Great Work and writes the Great Work blog.  I find Michael so knowledgeable and interesting.  He was the 2006 Canadian Coach of the Year, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, holds a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford, and law and arts degrees with highest honors from the Australian National University. You can listen to our conversation at this link.