To Retain Top Young Talent, Stop Dangling Nebulous Carrots!

Carson, the son of a friend of mine, is an MBA whose passion centers on business mergers and acquisitions. Two years ago, Carson accepted a position with an investment bank that offered him an embarrassingly low starting salary that was packaged with the promise that he’d be seeing some nice bonuses as the firm closed large deals.…

The Best Question You Can Ask Employees to Keep Them Engaged

A great workplace culture does more than merely share timely and relevant information with its employees; it goes to great lengths to listen to them and digest that feedback. Employee surveys can be useful tools, but by themselves they’re not enough to truly know what your people are thinking. There’s no survey, assessment, or digital app…

The Difference Between Mothering, Managing, and Mentoring Millennials

In Western cultures, the transition from school-to-work-to-career generally happens between the ages of 16-to-24. This is a period of explosive personal growth when an individual crosses over from a dependent child to an independent adult who no longer relies on their parents to provide food, clothing, shelter, laundry services, and gas money.  (This transition is not happening as early…

5 Steps to Keep Your Employees in the Growth Zone

Regardless how they obtain the skills they need for the job, employees worth their paycheck have the desire to get better at what they do. They want to acquire and develop new skills, talents, and abilities that will help them increase their value to their present employers and other prospective employers. To ignore your employees’ need…

LEADERS: If You Were Stripped of Your Title, Would People Still Follow You?

Guest Post by Mark Sanborn, Author of the NTY Bestseller, The Fred Factor and Fred 2.0 Over the years, I’ve used several definitions of the term leadership. Here’s one I keep coming back to: Leadership is the ability to help people and organizations surpass themselves. Essentially, leaders enable others to be better than they’ve ever been,…

7 Crucial Questions That Employees Ponder About Your Workplace Atmosphere

Standing 726 feet high, and weighing more than 18 Empire State buildings combined, the Hoover Dam is a jaw-dropping wonder of the industrial world. It was built in the early 1930’s during the Great Depression by a consortium of six major tunnel, railroad, and highway contractors that went by the name Six Companies. The promise of above-average…

Employee Engagement is Not the Goal; It’s the Starting Point

Roy and Beth have been dating for a year. One night after a romantic dinner in a posh restaurant, Roy pretends to drop a napkin on the floor. While reaching down to get it, he falls to one knee, pulls a big, shiny ring out of his coat pocket, and proposes to Beth. Totally caught…

Eradicate Micromanagement: 4 Steps to Creating a Culture of Autonomy

On-fire employees—the kind you’re perpetually attempting to hire, develop, and retain—need some latitude to make decisions in the workplace. The companies that are known for being the best places to work in their respective industries train, trust and empower their people to think and act on their own. In its 2014 Employee Satisfaction and Job Engagement…

Employee Sales Contests that Demotivate Performance and Destroy the Culture

“We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is…you’re fired.” In the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, Blake—famously portrayed by Alec Baldwin—issues this decree, exposing an artful…

The Secret to Engaging Millennials is Actually No Secret at All

To get back to Kansas, Dorothy never had to jump through all the death-defying hoops the Wizard put her through.  She had everything she needed (ruby shoes) from the very beginning. All she lacked was the understanding of how to unlock their magical powers. Since they began making their way into the workforce in the late 90’s, business leaders, owners, and…