“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to do work.” ~ Peter Drucker

As any fan of The Office can attest, negative managerial behavior severely affects employees’ work lives. Managers’ day-to-day and moment-to-moment actions also create a ripple effect, directly facilitating or impeding the organization’s ability to function. (photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

The best managers recognize their power to influence and strive to build teams with great inner work lives. In The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Harvard Business Press, 2011), Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer describe how people with great inner work lives have:

• Consistently positive emotions
• Strong motivation
• Favorable perceptions of the organization, their work and their colleagues

The worst managers undermine others’ inner work lives, often unwittingly. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees at seven companies, Amabile and Kramer found surprising results on the factors that affect performance.

What matters most is forward momentum in meaningful work—in a word, progress. Managers who recognize the need for even small wins set the stage for high performance.

But surveys of CEOs and project leaders reveal that 95 percent fundamentally misunderstand the need for this critical motivator.

This is a brief synopsis of an 1300 & 800-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 1300-word article includes these important concepts:

•  What Really Motivates Us?
• Facilitating Progress
  • Catalysts
  • Nourishers
• Dealing with Setbacks
• Inhibitors
• Toxins
• The Daily Progress Checklist
• Discovering Your Inner Work Life

(Photo by photostock, freedigitalphotos.net)

Baby Boomers are lingering in the workplace. Economic uncertainty has caused many to remain on the job.

The younger Gen X and Gen Y are growing impatient to ascend to leadership responsibilities, and new graduates are knocking at HR’s door in record numbers.

Until we see the inevitable changing of the guard over the next decade, the workplace will be inhabited by a multigenerational stew. Learning how to work, live and play together is crucial.

Baby Boomers occupy most positions of power and responsibility on organizational charts. Most of today’s corporate management practices still reflect the systems and values of their predecessors, the veterans.

Gen Xers and Millennials aren’t interested in “the way things have always been done.” Rather, they’re single-mindedly focused on what it takes to reach their perceived career destination.

This group shuns past definitions of success: climbing the company ladder and earning the rewards that come with greater responsibility. The company ladder, in their view, is irrelevant.

This article summarizes the four main ways generations differ at work, a must-read at any age.
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This is a brief synopsis of an 1800 & 900-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 1800-word article includes these important concepts:

• Who Are the Generations?
• How Are They Different?
• Clash Point #1: How We View Work
• Clash Point #2: Communications
• Clash Point #3: Meetings
• Clash Point #4: Learning
• Issues You Can’t Ignore

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“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.”  ~ Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady

Every person in an executive role aspires to be wise and is expected to exercise wisdom in their decisions. Unfortunately, far too often senior leaders are more concerned with meeting the numbers and fail to come close to being astute over the long term.

The question is, can wisdom be practiced as a leadership competency in today’s incredibly complex environment of corporate governance? What are the consequences of ignoring it?

While volumes have been written about it over the ages, from philosophers and theologians to psychologists, it remains hard to define. Everyone believes they know it when they see it, especially in retrospect, without being able to pinpoint how or why.

We crave wisdom and hope our decisions will be viewed that way. We strive for brilliant decision-making in business, career, and work situations, and even more so when it comes to family, community, and moral issues.

This article defines the elements of wisdom, how it shows up in corporate leadership, and suggests questions to explore and develop your own ability to be wise.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 1800 & 900-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 1800 word article includes these important concepts:

• Defining Wisdom
• Finding Wisdom
• Wisdom in Action
• The Contradictions of Wisdom
• 8 Pillars of Wisdom
• Business Intelligence
• Social Intelligence
• Business Compassion
• Developing Your Wisdom

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I love animated videos. Here’s one with a message about motivation, from Dan Pink’s wonderful book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The animator is RSAnimate, and it’s fascinating to watch.

If you’re an executive coach and need content on this topic for your e-newsletter or blogs, here are a couple I’ve written and made available for purchase:

• Rethinking Motivation
• 10 Myths about Motivating People…and the Real Truth
• Once Again, How Do You Motivate People?

“The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of their organization is going to blow the competition away.” ~ Walter Wriston, former CEO Citicorp

If your people continue to think and act as they do now, can you expect to achieve the results you need?

If your answer is no, then changing your organizational culture is not an option—it’s an imperative.

The ultimate responsibility for both the Colombia and Challenger shuttle failures fell on NASA’s organizational culture and the executives who ignored, dismissed or minimized the engineering experts.

How can changing organizational culture prevent disasters? And conversely, how can we use culture to drive spectacular results?

Research shows that the right culture champions high levels of performance and ethical behavior. When organizations design and support a culture that encourages outstanding individual and team contribution, they achieve amazing bottom-line results.

Optimizing your culture should command as much attention as performance metrics, operations, finances, sales and every other organizational discipline.

In Change the Culture, Change the Game, authors Tom Smith and Roger Connors write: “Either you manage your culture, or it will manage you.”

This article examines how culture drives results and how you can rapidly effect change in your organization by optimizing the culture first.
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This is a brief synopsis of a 1500 & 850-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 1500 word article includes these important concepts:

●    What Drives Results
●    Manage Your Culture
●    How People Experience Work
●    Achieving True Accountability
○    See it
○    Own it
○    Solve it
○    Do it
●    When to Change the Culture
●    Change Begins with Desired Results

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Most managers want their people to achieve excellence at work. We really can’t ask for more. In fact, peak performance can be defined as a combination of:

• Excellence
• Consistency
• Ongoing improvement

How can managers bring out the best in their people?

To achieve peak performance, each person must find the right job, tasks and conditions that match his or her strengths. Facilitating the right fit therefore becomes one of a manager’s most crucial responsibilities. While every employee has the potential to deliver peak performance, it’s up to the manager to find ways to make it happen.

It’s easy to spot peak performance when it happens. It’s what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008). Employees who work at optimum levels experience a state of “flow,” typically losing themselves in a project, meeting or discussion. They may lose track of time or where they are.

Each of us has relished such moments, but it’s hard to purposely replicate “flow” experiences. Many managers struggle to find the right words to rekindle motivation in people who have lost their enthusiasm.
Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, author of Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People (Harvard Business Press, 2011) has researched behavior and performance to define a Cycle of Excellence that leads to optimal performance.

This article examines new research into five critical steps managers can apply to maximize employees’ peak performance.
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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:

• Two Sides of the Disengagement Coin
• Using Brain Science to Bring Out the Best
  • Step 1: Select
  • Step 2: Connect
  • Step 3: Play
  • Step 4: Grapple and Grow
  • Step 5: Shine

• Maintaining Excellence in Uncertain Times

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The word “boss” conjures up memories of the good, the bad and the ugly ones we’ve endured throughout our careers.

Bosses shape how people experience work: joy versus despair, enthusiasm versus complaints, good health versus stress.

Most bosses want to be good at what they do, yet many lack the essential mindsets that precede positive actions and behaviors.

As a boss who strives to do great work, you must adjust your thinking. The beliefs and assumptions you hold about yourself, your work and your people will determine your actions, according to Stanford University management professor Robert I. Sutton, PhD, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst (Business Plus, 2010).

“The best bosses embrace five beliefs that are stepping stones to effective action,” he writes.

This article examines five critical mindsets that lead to becoming a better boss.
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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:

• Killer Bosses
• 5 Mindsets of a Great Boss
• Mindset #1: Goldilocks Management
• Mindset #2: True Grit
• Mindset #3: Small Wins Count
• Mindset #4: Avoid Power Traps
• Mindset #5: Provide a Human Shield
• The Questions to Ask Yourself

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