“Evaluations are the single greatest indicator of your long term success in business. They support accountability and create performance environments.” Organizations without a strong evaluation framework are what we call operationally focused. Each day they bring a new set of challenges, which must be resolved prior to the execution of other business tasks or goals. […]

A Mentor and a Coach are very different from each other, yet their skills can be intertwined, depending o the situation you find yourself in. As a coach, you may need the person being coached to reflect and consider, before you can coach for performance. As a Mentor, you may need to coach people in […]

As we move into our series on employee evaluation, we start with the first key component of a strong performance environment: Performance standards. Performance standards are the bedrock of any organization and its ability to perform, over time.When effective performance standards are in place, it is clear who holds what roles, how those roles are […]

When I discuss brand, I almost always ask the question:   What do people say about (your business), when you are not in the room?   The answer to this question is the result of everything you do within and outside of your business. It is influenced by your advertising efforts (which bring people in […]

Trust is an essential component of all workplace relationships. When trust is firmly entrenched,employees feel supported by peers, supervisors, managers and the organization. Trust goes beyond words to actions, reactions and practices. Trust creates a more cohesive, functional and effective team.   A recent survey of nearly 13,000 workers in all job levels and industries […]

The other day, my daughter and I were talking about my parenting style. She told me how easy it was to bring issues to me to talk about because I don’t freak out. While I appreciated the sentiment, (I think it means I’m doing ok as a parent), I admitted to her I haven’t always […]

“Trust is an Emotional Response to a logical Framework.” In other words, we can predict, create lose and gain trust. This is quite simply done through the behaviours we exhibit to others or others exhibit to us. Similarly, someone can appear trustworthy to you, when they meet your criteria for feeling the emotion of trust.  […]

What do they need? Employees cite a large number of reasons for leaving their employment, so its equally important to the retention conversation to discuss why your employees may stay. In every workplace across North America, there are both internal and external forces which influence our retention rates for our employees. External factors may include: […]

Recent surveys and studies have underscored the importance of the leader’s influence over the work unit. In fact, most employees surveyed in these projects cited “disputes with their leaders” as their primary reason for leaving their employment. In many cases these disputes can be attributed to communication-based misinterpretations, although others can be clearly linked to […]

Last week, I finished the article with a worksheet to reflect on your leadership. What did you learn? Are you persuasive? Do you think people follow you because they want to? Leadership is not about being the boss, its about being effective. Many times when I’ve spoken with organizational leaders, it’s the Assistant who is […]