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What Companies Need to Do to Attract Top Talent in 2019

By Dave Clark

The employment landscape has changed significantly over the past few years. Gone are the days of employers having hundreds of candidates to choose from with employees scrambling to land any job they could get. Today, the employees have the upper hand. This shift took place the moment that job openings surpassed hires. That trend continues to rise so it appears that it will continue to be an employee’s market for the foreseeable future.

For an organization to grow in this environment, it will take a more concerted effort of attracting and retaining great employees. Companies will need to take a much more proactive approach in seeking out great talent. In a sense, it’s a role reversal with the company now needing to sell itself to the candidate.

When It Comes to Organizational Success, Your People Are Not Your Problem

By Ron Price

Leaders of organizations are constantly challenged to find ways to be more productive, more efficient and to increase the bottom line. Leaders expect a lot from their employees, and often push them hard to achieve the desired results. For some, when the results don’t match the goals, they fail to look in the mirror; instead blaming their failures and shortcomings on their people.

It’s a bit surprising to me. 48 years into my own journey of leadership, it seems I’m only beginning to see the potential of connecting more deeply and successfully with “my” people. Most of the barriers I can see today aren’t caused by my people at all; they are obstacles that I still need to overcome inside of me. My preferences, my biases, and my reactions are often what keep me from seeing and pursuing something much greater, more profitable and more satisfying.

The Dip: A Surprisingly Common Scenario for New Leaders

By Dr. Francis Eberle

I was recently asked how I would coach a highly successful employee who had been promoted to supervise a team. After the promotion, this individual’s performance, and subsequently that of the team, dropped dramatically. He experienced what might be called “The Dip.”

I wish this was an uncommon scenario.

Companies often make the mistake of taking employees who are succeeding in non-supervisory roles and promoting them to management roles—without adequate support for the new function—and expecting them to thrive. Read More

The Six Stages of a Leader’s Journey

By Ron Price

I recently gave a presentation on the stages of leadership where I began by challenging the audience to tell me what they thought the six stages were. They huddled into groups, brainstorming the stages and validating their ideas to one another. Then several of the groups read their answers aloud, hoping to match my list. There was plenty of laughter and some groaning as I told each group that while their list was thoughtful, it didn’t match the six stages I had come to talk about that day.

I give this example to demonstrate how different the leader’s journey can be for each person, as well as how we each perceive the steps on that journey differently, depending on where they fall in our lives. Here are the six stages of leadership I presented that day:

What Not to Do in 2019

By Whit Mitchell

At this time of year, there is no shortage of people telling us what to do to make the next year a success. I’m going to take a slightly different approach and tell you what not to do.

Don’t set goals that sound good.
Instead of shooting blindly ahead, now is a great time to look back on 2018. What worked well for you this year? What didn’t work so well? What could have gone better? And what can you change to see success? Don’t fall into the trap of setting lofty goals that look good on paper or sound good when you say them out loud. You may miss reaching them in if they aren’t realistic, or if you don’t have a passion for achieving them. Think SMART when setting goals, and make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

4 Ways to Deepen Goal Setting

By Sunnie Stobbe

At the beginning of every year, most people make New Year’s Resolutions. Many of us set grandiose and often unattainable goals that are difficult to achieve. Here are some strategies to deepen your goal setting for 2019.

Start with the end in mind. Visualize where you want to be in three months, six months, and a year. There are several resources and tools that can help you imagine the future. For example, you could create a vision board. Select a mélange of images to display that represent the items, events, or accomplishments you desire. Seeing these images every day keeps them fresh in your mind and is a cue to focus on what matters most to you. Another tool that can help you visualize is journaling. You can use a simple blank notebook to jot down your thoughts, or a journal that offers prompts and categories to explore your goals in more detail. Whatever tool you choose, try to keep an open mind and allow to tool to work for you.

Unconscious Bias: How to be Part of the Solution

Guest Post By Stacy Ennis And Ron Price

Recently, Ron Price and I published a leadership fable, Growing Influence: A story of how to lead with character, expertise, and impact. Along with teaching leadership principles, the story tackles gender discrimination in the workplace. The main character, Emily, meets and befriends an older retired CEO named David. Through their friendship, David is exposed to the unconscious (and sometimes quite conscious) biases in the modern workplace; Emily benefits from David’s wisdom over years of leadership and uses what she learns to overcome what feels like an impossible situation.

Can I Be a True Leader?

Avoiding Judgments as an Introvert Leader

By Dr. Francis Eberle

This past year three coaching clients taught me to remember that this is a complex question. All of them were already in substantial leadership roles but were questioning whether others perceived them to be leaders, including their supervisors. For me there was no question; it was obvious that they were true leaders. For them it was a different story.

Their confidence in their ability to lead was waning and causing them stress. The company was growing and they wondered if they would fit in the new model. Each of them had a unique personality with firm ideas about their leadership, while exhibiting a more quiet, thoughtful and detailed approach to their work. Read More

Are You Meeting the Needs of Your Team?

By Whit Mitchell

When you think back on your life, can you pinpoint what helped shape who you are today? Perhaps it was a person—someone who saw greatness inside of you and helped you discover your worth. Maybe it was a profound experience—something that helped you discover the value of life and those around you. For 11 young athletes back in 1982, one of those life-shaping times occurred during Dartmouth freshman crew, class of ’86. I was their coach, and they were my team. My experience coaching those freshmen was one of the richest in my entire sports coaching career.

Three Steps to Personal Goal Setting for Leaders

By Ron Price

Most leaders have completed their organizational plans for next year, communicated with specificity and enthusiasm to their employees, and appropriated the necessary resources to lay the groundwork for a successful year.

However, I tend to find in my work that few have applied this same discipline to creating and implementing their own individual performance plans for the year. Sometimes this is nothing more than an oversight; other times it is because the leader doesn’t feel accountable to the same disciplines imposed on others, and sometimes it is because of deeper feelings of insecurity that produce a subtle but lingering fear of failure. Read More

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