Tag Archives: leadership training and development

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How to Maximize Employee Engagement During Difficult Times

During difficult times it’s natural for anxious individuals to retreat into isolation, a state that nearly always results in diminished productivity. When it comes to the amount of effort employees put in their work, research by the Corporate Leadership Council has shown that emotional connections are on average four times as important as rational factors.  Emotional connections arise when employees feel: 1) proud of their organization’s mission, values and reputation, 2) valued by their supervisor and colleagues, and 3) informed and that their opinions and ideas about matters that are important to them are considered by decision-makers before decisions are made.

Recently I visited an impressive organization that is poised to continue performing well even through the challenging economic environment we are presently facing.

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Pixar: Keeping Its Eye on the Ball

Pixar Ball

I’m in San Francisco this week filming SmartBytes for Athenaonline.com, speaking at ALI’s social media conference, doing a television interview and meeting John Walker, a producer at Pixar Animation. John was the producer of “The Incredibles” and pre-Pixar he produced “The Iron Giant.” John’s the business guy in a partnership with director Brad Bird.

Presently, I’m working on an article about Pixar Animation and why it has been so successful. My thesis is that Pixar has a Connection Culture that provides a competitive advantage. I also suspect that there is so much pressure to produce results that the risk to Pixar is that it focuses on task excellence alone to the detriment of its Connection Culture. To sustain its success, Pixar must keep its eye on maintaining both task excellence and a Connection Culture that produces relationship excellence.  When organizations fail to maintain relationship excellence it ultimately sabotages task excellence because disconnected workers don’t give their best efforts to their work and stop communicating (which leads to ill-informed decisions.)

I’m pulling for Pixar and believe as long as it stays keenly aware of this risk and actively maintains a Connection Culture, it will continue to be the shining star in the dismal motion picture production industry.

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Q&A from My AMA Webcast on Employee Engagement

During the recent webcast I did for the American Management Association, participants submitted more questions than we were able to answer in the allotted 15 minutes for Q&A. The AMA sent me the questions so that I could answer them on my blog. Although I am not able to answer them all at once, I will continue to chip away at the list and post all the answers below.

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My AMA Podcast on Employee Engagement (now on iTunes)

Today the American Management Association posted a podcast I did with the AMA’s Dave Summers. The topic of the podcast is how to create Connection Cultures that increase employee engagement. You can hear the podcast and even download it on an iPod or iPhone by clicking on employee engagement.

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My Upcoming American Management Association Webcast

On November 5th I’ll be doing a webcast for the American Management Association entitled “Fired Up Leadership: How to Make Your Team Thrive.”  The webcast is already oversubscribed but the AMA will be making it available to the public at no charge beginning on or around November 10.  To receive an email notifcation from the AMA when the webcast becomes available, click here.

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AMA Webcast on Connection Cultures and Employee Engagement

On November 5th from 12:00 P.M. until 1:00 P.M. Eastern, I’m presenting on a webcast for the American Management Association. The webcast is about Connection Cultures, leadership, teams and employee engagement. It will include Q&A with AMA program manager Susan Zeidman as well as from listeners. There is no charge for the webcast. You can register to attend by clicking on employee engagement.

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“Amazing Things Are Happening Here” Featured on Leadership Development Carnival

Dan McCarthy, leadership blogger and head of leadership and management development at Paychex, selected one of my blog posts to be included in his current edition of Leadership Development Carnival. While you’re there, check out some of the great posts by insightful bloggers such as Steve Roesler, Wally Bock an Miki Saxon.

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Book Review: Why is Everyone Smiling?

Paul Spiegelman, CEO of the Beryl Companies, has written a wonderful book about Beryl Companies and its extraordinary culture.  Rather than write a review of Paul’s book, I’m posting the review written by the business maven and book reviewer extraordinaire Robert Morris (see below).  On Monday at 11:00 AM Eastern, I will be hosting a webcast with Paul Spiegelman and you can sign up for it by clicking on employee engagement.

Robert Morris review of Why Is Everyone Smiling?