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 w

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 i

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 ha

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 v