I was doing a presentation on how to be a supervisor when one of the participants shouted out, “My coworkers suck.” There was nervous laughter from the other people in the room. I was silent. I didn’t know how to respond and, in fact, if I should. I waited. Suddenly from the other side of the […]
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A VISIT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM
It is the middle of the night, and I am sitting in the middle of the emergency waiting room. But that isn’t where this story begins. Early in my career, I worked at Susquehanna University in event management. One particular busy weekend, my boss and mentor invited me and a few others to hang out […]
Why do new employees fail?
Why do new employees fail? Spoiler Alert: If a manager tells me they have a bad employee, I blame the manager. Always. No Exceptions. So why do new employees fail? The number one reason new employees fail is that the manager did a lousy job with the hiring process. Or in some cases, the recruiter […]
“Sh*&, my feet are on fire.”
“Sh*&, my feet are on fire.” This is something that you don’t want to hear when you are doing team building for your organization. But that is exactly what happened when a Swiss company decided that having their employees walk on hot coal would be a great idea. (Learn more here) Walking on hot coals […]
Can you be arrested for violating Employment Law?
Typically, when we hear about a boss who doesn’t pay his employees properly or allows discrimination to happen in the workplace, we hear about fines and penalties to the organization and occasionally to an individual within the business. But can we be arrested??? Well….just asked the owner of Merryman Grounds Maintenance Inc. He was arrested […]
How to Ask for Advice?
Last night I found myself surfing the web looking for information on building a barn door. There are millions of web pages with information about how to build a barn door, but none seemed to have the information I needed. (In full honesty, it was probably among all the junk I read; I just couldn’t […]
The Job Posting: Why Should I Work for You?
“Another employee resigned this week,” a manager relayed to me during our monthly coaching session. “How many is that this month?” “Two, but the big challenge is finding replacement workers, and we can’t seem to attract suitable candidates for our jobs.” It is a common refrain across America. Employees are leaving organizations in droves. According […]
Listening to Feedback (Doing it Well)
In the last twelve months, I have delivered thousands of hours of workshops, presentations, and seminars. I am reaching over ten thousand hours of presenting information to audiences in my lifetime. I still don’t see myself as an expert. In each seminar, I try to be better than the last. Last week one of my […]
It is not your manager’s fault. It’s yours.
“My boss is an idiot*.” I have often heard this frustration from well-meaning employees who blame their boss for their performance. Do not get me wrong, there are a lot of bad bosses in the world; I know this because I have worked with them, coached them, trained them, and in my early days, I […]
Personal Energy Reserve
Let’s not talk about setting goals. Do you care? I know it’s the beginning of the new year and traditionally our conversations turn to what our New Year Resolutions will be or what goals we have for our organizations. And I agree that having a direction is important but as I study performance, I don’t […]