About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.
You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.
Chief Continuity Officer: ‘Sweating the Small Stuff‘ by Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland makes a great point that simple low-cost high-impact solutions are often overlooked because when people have big problems, and big budgets, they tend to look for expensive solutions. In this entertaining and informative video, he creates a simple chart and poses a question, ‘What do you call the bottom right quadrant?’
While the TED viewers make many suggestions, the one that popped into my mind is ‘continuity’. Many problems occur when businesses or organizations don’t take the time to experience their products or solutions through the eyes of their clients. In movies, the ‘continuity’ person is there to make sure that you aren’t taken out of the story by changes that occur between takes (small stuff like a watch suddenly disappearing from the actors arm, clothing changing, etc.). Similarly the ‘Chief Continuity Officer’ would be in charge of finding these high-impact low-cost details that typically derail the best intentions of the organization.
Enjoy the video, and suggest your own name for the bottom-right quadrant. (Thanks for the link Gary!)
Retaining a Workforce That Wants to Quit by Sharon Daniels
People are quitting faster than they are getting laid off for a change, and while that is a good sign for the economy, it may not be a good sign for your business.
Those that are first to quit are often the ones you want most to keep, so Daniels provides some great advice on how to ‘keep the [potential] quitters’:
- Personalize the position: Consider if jobs can be tailored to better fit individual’s talents and motivators, with managing others, travel, special projects, and role definition all being on the table.
- Personalize the rewards: People have an innate need to be validated, and this doesn’t happen when you provide cookie-cutter rewards. Also, across-the-board rewards run the risk of becoming perceived as entitlements by the work force. Learn more about what makes your employees tick, and tailor the rewards accordingly. For example, training may be seen as a penalty by some, as a reward by others.
Read the full post for some specific proof points at Lennox, Molly Maid & UPS.
The #1 Reason Your Managers Don’t Make the Grade by Kathleen Stinnett
From original research conducted by Zenger Folkman, we know that leaders who excel at driving for results have a less than 10% probability of being a great leader. However, when leaders are highly effective at driving for results and at coaching and developing others, they have almost a 90% probability of being an exceptional leader.
For those unfamiliar with Zenger Folkman, they are the source of one of the better research-based works on leadership excellence ‘The Extraordinary Leader‘. This jump from 10-90% based on the one variable –coaching skills– should warrant some attention!
Skinnett contends that the quality of coaching in companies is typically poor, and this is the result of a lack of focus on coaching the coaches. In companies surveyed, 38% of respondents said that their manager’s coaching was done ‘so poorly it hurts more than helps’ or not done at all. When companies were asked if they supported training in the area of coaching, 46% had no plans in place.
She closes by citing several more benefits associated with the impact of effective coaching on employees, who:
- Express higher engagement and commitment
- Are more willing to go the extra mile
- Are more willing to put in extra effort
- Are less likely to think about quitting
(Disclosure: Skinnet did write a book called ‘The Extraordinary Coach’… just sayin.)
PDF 
Recent Comments