This past week I had the opportunity to do a leadership presentation for a new client. After the presentation I asked my client (we’ll call him Jason) if his company had ever done a survey to measure employee engagement. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “We do an Employee Satisfaction Survey every year.” I asked Jason why his company measures satisfaction instead of engagement. “We believe a satisfied employee is an engaged employee,” he replied. I spent the next half hour explaining why nothing could be farther from the truth. If you offer me the opportunity to work from home two days a week, I’ll be very satisfied but I may not be engaged in helping the company realize its bigger vision. If you offe
Empowerment is an amazing thing. Every employer I know wants employees who solve problems and take responsibility for their actions. In a nutshell, they want empowered employees. Every employee I know wants to be trusted and given flexibility in the way they do their job. In a nutshell, they want to be empowered employees. While empowerment may have been a huge buzzword for the past decade or more, it is perhaps the least understood of most management practices. The concept is simple. If we give people more responsibility, then they’re empowered. If we give people the power to make decisions, then they’re empowered. But empowerment is so much more than that. It is based far more on culture t
As Seth sat back to enjoy the half-hour drive, he noticed the cab driver was listening to a talk-radio show. It was an election year, and the discussion on the radio was surrounding a candidate who had confessed to some indiscretions in his personal life. Apparently he had an affair and hadn’t been paying taxes on a housekeeper he recently hired. From the backseat, Seth could hear the cab driver mumbling about what he was hearing on the radio. He looked at the cab license hanging on his visor and noted the driver’s name was Barry. Barry looked at Seth in his rearview mirror and said, “Can you believe this? This bucket-head seems to be more concerned with what’s going on in this guy’s person
Bad news. Disappointing news. Turn on any television news channel first thing in the morning and you’ll get a giant heap of both. Open a newspaper and you’ll have your choice of tragedies from which to select. Get online and you’ll find seemingly endless sites prepared to load your head with crud. It can sometimes seem overwhelming. However, we must keep in mind that newspapers are trying to sell newspapers, and television stations and online sites are trying to gain enough viewers to make it attractive to advertisers. They are simply living by the old axiom that bad news sells better than good news. As long as we’re willing to tune in to see or read the bad stuff, they’ll keep putting it in
