Through electrifying keynote speeches and actionable books, Hall of Fame award-winning speaker Eric Chester helps leaders of the world's top corporations, franchises, and associations attract, recruit, manage, engage, motivate, and retain the right employees.

There Ain’t Nothing Sexy ’bout a Blue Collar Job, so Compete on Pride of Workmanship

Recently my wife commented on how much time I was spending watching the NFL Draft coverage on ESPN.  “You’re a Bronco fan. They don’t pick again for an hour, at least. Are you really that fascinated by who Buffalo selects in the 5th round?” she asked. But there I sat along with 45.7 million other…

Why Equal Pay for All Your Employees Isn’t Fair to Any of Them

The Sawmill Jake and Justin, 23-year-old twin brothers, worked for a large sawmill not far from where they grew up. As a friend of the sawmill’s owner, their father was aware that even though both sons had essentially the same job title and duties, Justin was paid significantly more than Jake. Curious as to why, the father…

Bobbing for Spam – Ridding Your Culture of the Fashionably Late Syndrome

A disturbing trend I’ve noticed in the 60+ meetings, conferences, and conventions I attend each year is the increasing frequency of how many of these events get thrown off schedule.  When attendees are still clustered around the coffee stations 10 minutes after the meeting begins or they refuse to disconnect from their smart phones in…

Want Engaged Employees? Here's The Most Important Question You Need to Ask Yourself

“If I had me for a boss, would I like coming to work?”  Face it, the people who work for you have other options. (If they don’t, you not only have the wrong people on your bus, you’ve got a lousy bus.) Offering a competitive wage and benefit package may be enough to attract talent…

Why is Roger Gunlikson Still On Fire at Work at Age 76?

I returned home from a conference and got off the tram at Denver International Airport and took the escalator up to the top level, where the first person I saw was an elderly gentleman in a cowboy hat who greets arriving passengers with a hearty “Welcome to Denver!” This is followed by an earnest, “How…

Falling on Deaf Ears: Why Millennials Don't Do What You Tell Them to Do

“Do as I say, not as I do.”  There was a time when a parent who smoked, drank excessively, cursed, etc. could demand – and often expect – a different standard of behavior from their children simply by telling them ” I want you to have a better life than the one I’m living, so…

Four Pieces of Solid Gold Old School Advice for New School Millennials

Most readers of this blog are business owners, execs, leaders, and managers looking for ideas and strategies for engaging and developing the emerging workforce. This particular post, however, is written for the emerging workforce, i.e. millennials. While this generation is not lacking in talent, many are somewhat deficient in the revered social skills, primarily because…

You Don’t Need a Survey to Determine if Your Employees are Engaged

With a veritable army of scientific researchers, the Gallup Organization spent decades developing their famed Q12 Survey. They now package and market this tool for organizations that want to determine the level of employee engagement in their workforce calling it “The Only 12 Questions that Matter.”  To date, more than 25 million employees worldwide have taken that…