As more organizations focus on return on investment (ROI), implementing an effective learning and development (L&D) strategy to aid engagement and retention has never been more important. Employers that place a high value on equal opportunity and continuous learning are…
Coaching & Mentoring
Why Are Latinos Leaving Corporate America?
Latinos in America are currently facing huge challenges. Latino children have been separated from their parents at the border and anti-Latino speech has been on the rise. With these stories in the news, it is easy to forget another area…
Every Manager Should Have a Leadership Coach
From athletes to actors, everyone improves with a good coach. More companies should invest in their potential future leaders, not just the lucky few who break through to the corner office. Will was a young up-and-coming director at a brand-name…
Here’s What You Need to Attract and Keep Your Young Talent
Are you having trouble recruiting and retaining young talent? Recruitment has been an ongoing concern for human resources for a number of years, particularly with regards to the younger generation. It has recently come to light that more and more…
American Idol’s Lesson In Mentorship
ABC’s American Idol may be a strange place to find an example of perfect mentorship, but stay with me here. Rachel Platten, a world class singer, songwriter and performer, doesn’t withhold or “dumb down” her talent in this duet she…
What If Everyone Had a Personal Coach at Work?
What’s better than a performance review? If you said a poke in the eye, you’d be right there with the vast majority of workers. Kris McGuigan says 4 out of 5 workers say their performance evaluations aren’t working. She didn’t…
What’s a Mentor and Why Don’t More People Mentor?
The March (Cincinnati) HR Roundtable dipped its toes into a more personal side of professional development to discuss the topic of mentoring. There are countless recommendations about mentoring and encouragement to either have a mentor, be a mentor yourself, or…
If You’re Privileged, Embrace It to Help Others
If you’re privileged and you know it, clap your hands. Is that the sound of one hand clapping? “Were all privileged in some way. And yet,” says Kristen Bakalar, “We’re scared to talk about it in the workplace.” If insisting…
It Takes Hustle to Make Wishes Happen
“The dream is free, but the hustle is sold separately.” As I read daily sometimes certain quotes have me stopping in my tracks. This was one of them. When I searched, no one person was aligned to it. But for…
RIG Your Young Workers For Employment Success
Think about this for a moment: Creativity is one of the soft skills most desired by employers. Yet too often, when a young worker comes up with a creative idea, a manager’s first reaction is to say why it won’t…
Coaching the James Bond Way
Remember what it was like to be busy in the year 2000? It was nothing compared with today’s overwhelmingly-connected-at-all-times kind of busy. Now we’ve got texts, emails, WhatsApp, phone calls, Skype and Zoom to contend with. Given our high level…
Are You Bike-Shedding Your Feedback?
Bike-shedding refers to the act of spending lots of time on unimportant details while leaving crucial matters unattended. The term traces back to 1955 article in The Economist by C. Northcote Parkinson, a British naval historian and author. “Parkinson’s Law…
Teach the ‘Invisible Lines’ When You Onboard Your Executives
“My marriage keeps getting better and better and I never have to work at it.” That’s not a statement you hear often. Instead, we hear that “building a successful marriage takes work.” Building a leadership team that works well together…
Why It’s A Mistake To Think Managers Are Effective Coaches
In 2015, Joseph R. Weintraub and James M. Hunt argued in the Harvard Business Review that there were two types of managers: those who coach and those who don’t. After years of researching the topic, they identified how the two…
5 Tips to Getting the Most From a Leadership Coach
Working with an executive coach can have a huge payoff for leaders as they develop, improve their skills and stretch in new areas. Like anything in life, coaching is as much about what you give as what you get back….
How to Deal with Negative People in a Positive Way
I remember Mike like it was yesterday, even though I met him over a decade ago. He was the guy sitting in the back of the room with the dark cloud over his head in a supervisor training I was…
What You Can Do to Prepare the Next Generation of HR Leaders
One of our greatest assets in the field of human resources is our next generation of thought leaders. As we undergo significant changes in our industry and prepare for a new world of work in the information age, there is…
These Tips Will Make You a Better Coach
For many of us, the best part of being a manager is making a difference in the lives of our team members. We see coaching as an ideal way to help someone become better at what they do and more…
Help Them See How to Write Their Career Movie
“As you go through the workday, write the screenplay in your head for the movie you will eventually direct and star in — the movie about your life. Choose the actors to play each of your favorite characters. Keep breathing,…
3 Reasons Your Coaching Strategy Isn’t Working
Coaching strategies that aren’t personalized to individual employees will likely fail. So coaching must be flexible, with every employee having the opportunity to advance their skills and knowledge. The best way to personalize coaching strategies is by providing a one-on-one…