The No. 1 reason why most Americans leave their jobs is the feeling they’re not appreciated.

In fact, 65% of people surveyed said they received no recognition for good work in a previous year, according to Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, authors of How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life (2004).

According to newer Gallup research, what employees want most — along with competitive pay — is quality management. When they feel unappreciated and disapprove of their managers, they leave or stop trying.

Almost 25% of U.S. employees would fire their bosses if given the chance, and about 50% of actively disengaged workers would follow suit.

Because of current economic realities, people may not be leaving their jobs. Instead, they join the growing ranks of the disengaged and “missing in action.” It rests upon managers to learn better ways of interacting with the people on whom they depend.

Based on a great deal of previous research, positive managers practice these three leadership behaviors:

1. Use a strengths-based approach
2. Provide frequent recognition and encouragement
3. Maintain a positive perspective when difficulties arise

Past studies have shown these practices have a direct effect on employee engagement, and each is an observable and testable behavior.

None of these characteristics are innate, but all can be learned. Very few executives intuitively know:

1. How to work with people’s strengths
2. How to automatically give frequent credit where due
3. How to respond with your best game face when the going gets rough

This article examines the bottom line results of a positive, strengths-based approach to improving performance.

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The complete 2,000 word article includes these important concepts:

• 3 Steps to Positive Leadership
• A Strengths-Based Approach
• Focus on What Works
• The Problem-Seeking Mindset
• The Brain Power of Negativity
• When Things Go Wrong
• Positive Results

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Positive Leadership: Real Results -

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Positive Leadership: Real Results, condensed version –

To effect change, you must do something differently.

It starts with you. Do it right, and you’ll enjoy a snowball effect that helps your team, direct reports and even family members implement change.

While many books have covered organizational change, business school professors Chip and Dan Heath cover the patterns all successful change efforts have in common in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010).

The Heaths avoid looking at the history of failed changes. Instead, they share stories of spectacular changes that worked because execution built upon prior achievements.

In researching significant social, educational, governmental, marital and organizational changes, what are the patterns that emerge that anyone can apply in real-world business situations?

In many ways, the first small steps you take to change your behavior are the most important. Once you initiate change, it seems to feed on itself.

Perhaps the famous Stephen Covey maxim, “Begin with the end in mind,” needs to be revised: Start with the beginning and the end in mind.

Here’s how to get started and unleash the snowball effect.

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The complete 1,000 word article includes these important concepts:

•    First Steps
•    The Snowball Effect
•    The Problem with Problems
•    Follow Your Bright Spots
•    Start with the Beginning in Mind
•    Unleash the Snowball Effect

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Snowball Effect – Start Change Now

A growing body of research reveals that our behavior and decisions are influenced by an array of strong psychological undercurrents, all of which are more powerful and pervasive than we realize.

By charting these undercurrents and their unanticipated effects, we can identify our faulty thinking that lead us to make irrational decisions.

Despite a great need for them, judgment and decision-making skills are only beginning to appear in better business schools’ curricula. But studies show we still don’t know enough about how good decisions occur.

Rational versus Emotional?

Psychologist and political scientist Herbert Simon in 1957 laid the groundwork on the limits of rationality when he attacked classical economics and game theory. Simon’s work made it clear that we must take the real world’s messiness and irrationality into account when making decisions.

“Research indicates that people are myopic in their decisions, may lack skill in predicting their future tastes, and can be led to erroneous choices by fallible memory and incorrect evaluations of past experiences,” wrote psychologist and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman.

Neuroscientific research also proves that the brain is influenced by subconscious emotional reactions from its more primitive centers. We’re not in control of our reasoning capabilities as much as we’d like to think.

Scientists have identified several flaws in how we think when making decisions. Because they’re hardwired into our thinking process, we often fail to recognize them. This means they can undermine everything from new product development to acquisitions and divestiture strategy to succession planning.

This article examines 5 biases that lead to bad decisions and how we can avoid their traps.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 2000 & 1000-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 2,000 word article includes these important concepts:

• Rational versus Emotional?
• Loss Aversion
• Commitment
• Value Attribution
• Diagnosis Bias
• Too Much Information
• Decision Effectiveness
• Rate Your Company
• Leaders Can Improve
• The Certainty Bias

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5 Biases that Lead to Bad Decisions – July10-103a  2000-word article, reprint rights

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5 Biases that Lead to Bad Decisions – condensed version – July10-103b  1000-word article, reprint rights

Business is fundamentally an extended conversation. Whether you’re speaking with your boss, team members, colleagues or direct reports, conversations shape what gets done.

As a leader, you must engineer conversations to foster:

• Clarity
• Cooperation
• Creativity
• Connection to company values

Sadly, the quality of many work conversations borders on mediocrity and/or boredom, with meaning and connection reserved for personal conversations.

Fierce Conversations

In her books, Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership, consultant Susan Scott explains that the word “fierce” doesn’t imply menace, cruelty or threats. In Roget’s Thesaurus, the word fierce is associated with synonyms like robust, intense, strong, powerful and passionate.

“The simplest definition of a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation, and make it real,” Scott writes.

Some people, however, are intimidated by the idea of talking about what’s real because it requires raw honesty and vulnerability. In truth, it’s the unreal conversations that should scare us because they never address what needs to be said, cost organizations untold fortunes and limit individuals’ career advancement.

While politeness and constructive criticism matter, they should not come at the expense of meaningful interactions that explore diverse perspectives and competing recommendations.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 2000 & 1000-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 2,000 word article includes these important concepts:

•    Fierce Conversations
•    Making It Real
•    The Risk of Being Real
•    Start Having Fierce Conversations
•    Four Goals of Real Conversations
•    Human Connectivity
•    Emotions Have a Bad Rep
•    How to Sharpen a Conversation

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Leading Change, One Conversation at a Time

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Leading Change, One Conversation at a Time, Condensed Version, 1000-words

Almost everyone keeps a “to-do” list. We begin the New Year with resolutions to start new regimes to make us healthier, wealthier, and, hopefully, wiser.

What’s needed is a “to-stop” list of bad habits, when it comes to communicating and interacting with our peers, colleagues, direct reports and even family members.

The following list of bad habits is from Marshall Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. These bad habits can easily be turned into good ones. Which habits are you engaging in, and which would be hardest for you to stop?

Habits That Hold You Back

The most common bad leadership habits aren’t personality flaws. They’re challenges in interpersonal behavior — the egregious annoyances that make the workplace substantially more noxious than necessary. These faults do not occur in isolation; they involve one person interacting with another.

They are bad habits in communications. And as such, they can easily be stopped.

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The complete 1,000 word article includes these important concepts:

•    20 Habits
•    Information Compulsion
•    How to Break a Bad Habit
•    How to Change
•    Action Steps

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Anyone with workplace experience knows men and women process information and communicate differently. Dealing with gender differences can prove challenging, especially for managers and leaders.

Regardless of which industry you’re in or the position you fill, male and female coworkers can experience a shared event and come away with different emotional stories.

We seem to be hardwired this way. Now that neuroscience is becoming more sophisticated, with tools like brain imaging, what are we learning about the gender divide?

Here are the key findings:

1. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention.
2. Men and women process certain emotions differently.
3. These distinctions are a product of complex interactions between nature and nurture.

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The complete 1,000 word article includes these important concepts:

•    Brain Differences
•    Small Talk
•    Giving Orders
•    Asking Questions
•    Mental Disorders
•    ”She’s So Emotional…”

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“Leaders are almost by definition people who change minds.”  —Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds

There is a lack of trust in senior management, according to a survey by the human-resource firm Watson Wyatt:

• Only 49 percent of employees have trust and confidence in their senior managers.
• Just 55 percent say senior leaders behave consistently with core values.
• Only 53 percent believe senior management has made the right changes to stay competitive.

Clearly, much is going wrong in the workplace. Some 40 percent of surveyed executives doubt their leaders have credible plans to address the economic crisis. Certainly, this lack of confidence harms an organization’s ability to move forward.

In light of these problems, middle managers have unprecedented opportunities to become more proactive by stepping forward and offering course corrections — and they should act with deliberate speed. Good times allow organizations to ride out challenges, but today’s tough financial climate won’t permit a wait-and-see approach.

When strong leadership doesn’t come from above, it’s up to the organization itself — in particular, the people in the middle — to launch a rescue operation.

“Leading up requires great courage and determination,” says Michael Useem, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the seminal book Leading Up: Managing Your Boss So You Both Win. “We might fear how our superior will respond, we might doubt our right to lead up, but we all carry a responsibility to do what we can when it will make a difference.”

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This is a brief synopsis of a 2000 & 1000-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 2,000 word article includes these important concepts:

• What’s Happening
• Emerging from the Middle
• 3 Questions to Ask
• The View from Above
• What’s Needed to Lead Up?
• Assertive Diplomacy
• Challenge Ideas, Not People
• Push Back
• Dealing with a Jerk Boss
• Bounce Back

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Leading from the Middle Feb10-98a – 2000 word article
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