The Perils of Communicating Offhanded Information Dave is a Vice President at a regional insurance firm. He has just hired Michelle to be a claims administrator. She works at a satellite office several hundred miles away. After a three-day orientation with Dave, Michelle has settled into her job. While Dave is her boss, she won’t…
One-Way Communication in Contrast to Two-Way Communication Have you ever encountered this very interesting workplace situation: A decision doesn’t go the way an employee wants. His boss wants to turn this into a developmental experience for his employee. So when he gives the employee the bad news, he also tells him what his problem was,…
Sugarcoating Have you ever had employees who sugarcoat bad news? This works well for the moment — the boss is pleased and everything sounds great. However, this can be disastrous down the road when a sugarcoated issue mushrooms into something worse. If only we could have known about and addressed these issues sooner! This case…
Substandard Work What do you do when you have an employee with good potential — and some performance issues? You have mentioned the issues to him briefly, and he became surprisingly defensive. Should you not worry about it right now, giving him time to grow? Confront him sternly and tell him this behavior is not…
2020 has brought dramatic shifts in how we live, work, and learn. But whether you’re working from the kitchen table or the corporate office, companies still need effective leaders to drive performance, motivate teams, and propel innovation. Those skills don’t show up fully formed – great leadership requires development. Right now, that means virtual leadership…
Raise Your Standards What do you do when your workplace culture is very friendly, and harmonious, but standards of performance are lax? No one confronts each other about low performance and it is starting to impact the business. Should you crack the whip? Convince the president that you need to change the culture? Try to raise…
I Do Just Enough Work To Get By. What do you do when your employee approaching retirement is mailing it in? Coasting and disengaged. But they have important work to do before they retire. How to engage pre-retirees? We’ll examine 3 approaches and show you which is most effective. Then when you are faced with…
Angry at Work How do you deal with an angry coworker who’s zeroed in on you? In this post we’ll explore two options. Hopefully you don’t have to deal with colleagues who are angry at work too often. But when you do, remember this post! The Situation You work at a fairly large financial organization….
Poor Performance When an employee’s performance is sub-par, how do you discuss it without offending him? And how do you motivate him to actually improve performance rather than just giving it lip service? Master this and you’ll learn a key leadership skill! In this case example, we’ll explore several alternatives for managing poor performance. We’ll…
An Employee Retention Problem When you have invested a lot of time to train and develop someone, and you find out that they are thinking of leaving your organization, it can be very disappointing, costly, and frustrating. In this case study we explore this problem, and provide 4 actionable, low-cost strategies for employee retention. The…
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