Learning Center

It is critically important for organizations to be certain that their employees fully understand the definition and risks of harassment in the workplace. A well-designed training program can have a positive impact on reducing the types of misunderstandings and confusion that, if left uncorrected, can lead to a disrespectful or hostile work environment. An ounce of prevention is truly worth ...

Is your company prepared for a potential increase in the reporting of harassment due to the social momentum and heightened awareness generated by the #MeToo empowerment movement? There has never been a better time to review your organization’s training strategy in this critical area. You only have to look at the Wynn Corporations losing 18% of its value following sexual ...

One of the most irritating, and unfortunately too common,   injustices of the contemporary workplace is seeing an individual with less competence and an inferior work ethic advance ahead of a more skilled and hard-working person simply because they are more adept at office politics. When the wrong people are getting promoted for the wrong reasons organizational productivity and morale eventually ...

We tend to focus on resolving conflicts and not on what happens much farther upstream.  Forget about resolving conflict, what about those of us who have a hard time facing conflict at all, and when we are forced to, feel furious and awful. For many of us, due to a complex mix of upbringing, temperament, and experiences, disagreeing with someone ...

Many companies are beginning to change the way they operate in order to reduce employee stress. In doing so they are recognizing that excessive stress is not only bad for employee health and happiness but it’s also a drag on productivity and the bottom line. Some of the most promising initiatives in this area are focused on creating a workplace ...

I can’t cite a source for the widely circulated statistic that “ten percent of conflicts are caused by a difference of opinion and 90% are caused by tone of voice” but my EAP consulting work supplies a steady stream of examples demonstrating the primacy of emotional tone in business communications. Whether a difference of opinion ends up leading to a ...

One of the most valuable classes I took as an undergraduate college student was a debate class. The professor took the time to uncover beliefs that we felt strongly about.  He then surprised us by having us debate the opposite position.  We were forced to develop and deliver a compelling argument that went exactly counter to what we felt strongly ...

Many organizations try to boost employee productivity by using traditional analytic approaches which focus on strategic planning, goal setting and process efficiency measures. These methods reflect the belief that better systems, planning and processes lead to better employee performance. Other organizations emphasize improving employee benefits, perks, compensation, and schedules as a means to increase productivity. This approach reflects the belief ...

What happens when you have a winning product and/or business strategy but your managers have poor people skills? Lost opportunity is what happens. Failure to capitalize is what happens. Your business loses is what happens. Even the best business strategies do not implement themselves. They require communication, coordination, alignment, and efficiency. In other words, they require leaders with strong people ...

We are forgetful creatures. I’m not referring to the “senior moment” variety of forgetfulness. I’m talking about the habitual forgetting that takes place in the midst of everyday life challenges and stresses, when we “forget” to make those choices that we know will keep our bodies, spirits and relationships healthy. We forget that change can only happen today and not ...

Advances in brain imaging technologies are extending the reach of scientific comprehension into the complex and fascinating recesses of human motivation. By studying detailed pictures of the brain’s responses to different situations neuroscientists are changing our understanding of why people act the way they do. Business leaders have an opportunity to translate these discoveries about human motivation into organizational cultures ...

The current Market Basket saga features product and customer shortages but there certainly is no lack of compelling story lines and business lessons here. The intricate melodrama of the Demoulas’ family feud, the emergence of a rank and file army supporting a fired CEO and the suspense concerning how and when all the complicated elements will be resolved have captured, ...

Organizations are on a quest to identify the essential elements of employee engagement. They dream of building cultures and work environments that will capture every last ounce of employee discretionary effort. They want employees who arrive at work every day with all the optimism, ambition and enthusiasm that they brought on their first day believing that happy people create more ...

The year was 1971, my first as a school psychologist in Michigan’s Willow Run School District. On April 3, the eve of the third anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Willow Run School Board met to consider its options for honoring the life and work of Dr. King.   Dr. R. Wiley Brownlee, the high school principal, ...

I usually write about the experience of working. Today I want to write about the experience of not working and the plight of the unemployed. HBO’s heart wrenching documentary, American Winter, offers a compelling primer on the life-changing consequences of being without a job in America.   The film documents the daily personal struggles of 8 families in Portland, Oregon ...

One of my best management experiences was coaching my son’s Little League baseball team. I may not be able to remember the name of the movie with what’s-his-name in it that I saw last week but I can tell you the name of each kid on the team and what position they played. That group played hard and had a ...

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” More than ninety heads of state, and tens of thousands of South Africans, met in a Soweto soccer stadium today to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. What accounts for the deep reverence we ...

Of the 21.5 million veterans in the United States, 9.1 million are currently in the workforce. According to government estimates, one million service members will be leaving active duty over the next five years. Last year on Veterans Day I posted a piece on the special value and skills veterans bring to civilian work. I would like to observe this ...

“If management stopped demotivating their employees then they wouldn’t have to worry so much about motivating them.” W. Edwards Deming If you read my blog post last week you know that I was the winner of The Listserve email lottery and as a result had the opportunity to ask 5 questions to a diverse group of 25,000 strangers. This week ...

What would you want to say if you had the chance to send an email to 25,000 strangers dispersed across planet earth? That’s the question that faced me last week and I had 48 hours to decide what to do with this opportunity. The Listserve is an email lottery. One person every day has a chance to broadcast a message ...

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Washington civil rights march and Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream speech.” I have listened to that speech countless times and it never fails to inspire me. David Brooks wrote a wonderful tribute in the New York Times yesterday analyzing the leadership approach of Dr. King where “the idea was ...

A few weeks ago the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Dr. James Knight had a right to fire his dental assistant Melissa Nelson because Dr. Knight’s spouse (based on his admission of an attraction to Ms. Nelson) viewed the relationship as a threat to their marriage. Ms. Nelson, who had been an excellent employee for 10 years, filed a gender ...

A few years ago one of our client companies merged with their biggest competitor and they asked us to facilitate some preliminary meetings with the other management group which, until the merger, had been their rivals. There was much anxiety in both management groups about how to merge the two very different, adversarial and extremely competitive cultures. Andrew, a senior ...

In March of this year, I had the honor of being invited to Brazil as part of a vocational and cultural exchange sponsored by Rotary International. During my month abroad, I met with many talented Human Resources professionals, primarily in the manufacturing sector. Here are five observations I made in the course of those meetings.   1) Brazilian Human Resource professionals ...

In the midst of the Olympic competition I received a request to help a company create a more respectful workplace.  As is usually the case when we get a request to address incivility in the workplace, there is unacceptable behavior that demands attention.  Often it is the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.  Typically the problem has been building for ...

While we do not have access to the performance appraisals Snow White might have completed for Happy and Grumpy , the business research consistently demonstrates that happy employees produce more, miss less work, are less likely to quit and make a greater commitment to their jobs than grumpy employees. In their recent review of this research in the Harvard Business ...

I am completely amazed that there has not been more debate surrounding the emergence of the so-called “free” EAP that is being offered as a throw in by some carriers as a way to attract business to their more profitable insurance products. Let’s start by calling this “free” EAP by its real name which is “pretend” EAP. “Pretend” EAPs offer ...