Susan Scott's Blog, page 94

Fierce Resources: Can Better Development Save a Disgruntled Workforce?

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published this week on the Chief Learning Officer website and was written by Joe Ungemah.

Can Better Development Save a Disgruntled Workforce explores how many organizations are experiencing their leaders not growing in the areas they need to, and as a result, are less happy.

“The professional landscape is at a point where most companies need to demonstrate long-term commitment to their employees. Leadership development is the answer. Despite increased investments, less than 40 percent of organizations report necessary improvements in leadership development programs, according to a 2013 report titled “Building Senior Leaders for the New Work Environment” by the Corporate Executive Board, or CEB. Professionals working in talent management are on a collision course between companies needing to reinvest in development and a disgruntled workforce waiting for the opportunity to jump ship”

To read the full article, click here.

Don’t Get Stuck in the Engagement Blame Trap

I’m guilty of being in a meeting and having a leader share a decision about a new strategy that I had a strong reaction too, and I did not s ay anything. I’m not proud of it.

After the meeting I would pay attention to how the strategy shifted or changed the organization, typically my opinion on it only grew stronger, and yet, I remained silent. Finally, after some of the things I predicted occurred, I sat back smugly and thought, “I knew this was coming, I could see this from the outset.”

At the root of my apathetic attitude was not being truly engaged. Engagement can be tricky because it is a topic that often brings out a person’s desire to assign blame. Don’t waste your time in this trap – just start showing up the way you want others to show up as well.

If you’re a leader, you have a unique power to begin to draw out engagement in a larger way. Often, when I adapted the attitude I did above it was because those strategies were handed down without any input from myself or my co-workers who were directly affected.

In our Fierce whitepaper, 6 Key Trends that Increase Employee Productivity and Engagement, we explore the results of a survey we conducted in which 98% of respondents believe a leader’s decision-making process should include input from the people impacted by the decision. However, 40% feel leaders and decision makers consistently fail to ask.

What does this mean for you as a leader? Ask early and mean it. Invite different opinions to the table and see what happens. If this is not common practice inside your organization, then make sure you explain to those you’re inviting that you want to truly hear their thoughts and that this is something new you are trying. Be transparent.

Do you give others the chance to engage and speak up?

Fierce Tip of the Week: How Do You Influence Others?

It’s easy in a world that moves as quickly as ours to not pay attention to the type of influence we have on one another. This is even more true for leaders. Everything leaders do has impact from looks to comments to decisions.

However, for those of you who are reading this and thinking, “phew good thing I’m not a leader”… sorry, this still applies to you.

Leadership is a mindset. You can be a leader without having any direct reports or formal decision-making power. Original thought leader Napoleon Hill said, “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”

So this week, take the time to look at how your words and actions are influencing others. At Fierce, we say: Take responsibility for your emotional wake.

Ask yourself: Are you leaving an aftertaste, an afterglow, or an aftermath?

Fierce Resources: Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Development at a Distance

This week’s Fierce Resource highlights an upcoming  learning opportunity. Netspeed Learning Solutions is hosting a five part, 2013 Thought Leadership Webinar Series, Fierce CEO & President, Halley Bock presented her own webinar as part of  this series this summer: The Connected Leader: How To Improve Results Through Conversations.

Continue the learning and join Beverly Kaye, Founder of Career Systems International on November 7th, at 2 PM EST, as she presents the fourth webinar in the series: Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Development at a Distance

“Study after study confirms that what employees want most is support for their professional development and career growth, and that offering this to them is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving employee engagement, retention, productivity and performance results. This session sheds a much needed light on effective methods and specifically what managers can do — within the time-starved, priority-rich, pressure-cooker environment in which they operate — to support employees who are not co-located.”

To learn more about the webinar and register for this event, click here.

Happy National Boss’s Day: What Type of Leader Are You?

Today is National Boss’s Day, and at Fierce, we know that great leaders are learners. While we hope you receive accolades and maybe a yummy treat from those you lead today, it’s also important to take the time to look at areas you can improve your management and solicit feedback from your team.

The first step is to know how you lead, so today ask yourself: What type of leader am I?

In our experience, while we see many types of bosses there are 4 common styles of leadership. Check out the styles below and get a quick tip on ways you can improve your leadership for a more productive and engaged team. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself!

The Dictator – often characterized as someone who gives orders, the Dictator’s behavior may be a factor of more than just personality. Combine lack of time, a demanding role, mixed with stress, and you’ve got a recipe for a Dictator, someone that seems to simply walk, or sometimes run, around giving orders with little or no appetite for feedback.

Fierce tip – Proactively solicit feedback from employees and coworkers.  Motivate and empower direct reports to employ creative problem solving. It is entirely likely that they have useful perspectives, new insights on issues, and opportunities for innovation.

The Cheerleader (aka the Softie or the Friend) – this boss type is easy to work with day-to-day, but in the long haul employees become dissatisfied because they aren’t challenged or given enough constructive feedback to make them better at their jobs.

Fierce tip – Avoid cultivating a culture of nice. Talk openly and honestly with employees about both their achievements and areas that need improvement. Be timely by addressing things as they occur and don’t sugar coat it – employees are not children.

The Visionary (aka the Innovator) – focused more on what’s next and what the business will look like in 10 or even 20 years. The Visionary is an inspirational personality for which to work, but may not have much input on the day-to-day work.

Fierce tip – Remember to stay grounded with employees. Balance challenging them to think about the future while addressing current performance, accomplishments, and areas for improvement. Ground actions items and next steps in the present. Have regular conversations with teams that focus on today as well as tomorrow.

The Perfect Boss – that elusive combination of mentor, leader, and fun-to-be-around person. The perfect boss respects employees and challenges them to be their very best.

Fierce tip – Chances are, if the perfect boss worked hard to earn that title, she knows it takes work to keep it. Continue to perfect listening and communication skills, and endeavor to build a culture where employees are motivated and want to be heard.

“When bosses create an inclusive culture where employees are invited to communicate their perspectives and have open conversations, whether it’s with coworkers or the boss, the business wins,” says Halley Bock, CEO and president of Fierce, Inc. “An overly nice, but repressed culture can be as ineffective as a tense militant one, which is why it’s the leader’s responsibility, regardless of personality, to be open, honest and solicit feedback from employees.”

What type of leader are you?

Fierce Tip of the Week: When Is Silence Golden?

As we enter the third week of the U.S. Government shut down, the topics of leadership, conversations, and relationship are all around us. It’s in moments like this, when nobody is actually communicating, that it becomes so clear how important the conversation is.

In our leadership training we talk a lot about letting silence do the heavy lifting, and in Washington, they are practicing this principal to an extreme. Which got me thinking, could there be moments when there should be no silence? Perhaps there are times when silence is not golden, and the very nature of your role demands that you don’t leave people hanging.

This week take a look at your world and ask yourself: Should I make more noise about this?

I’m not suggesting this week you be tyrannical or talk over people. Instead, I hope you challenge your own beliefs on whether you’re playing it safe under the guise of silence.

Fierce Resource: The RIGHT Way to Deal with a Toxic Colleague

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published on the Women’s Health magazine website and was written by Alison Goldman.

The RIGHT Way to Deal with a Toxic Colleague, features our most recent Fierce survey that focused on the effects of toxic employees. The article provides 5 tips on how to handle a toxic colleague so they don’t negatively impact your work experience.

“Do you have a cube neighbor who’s a major Debbie Downer or Negative Ned? You’re not alone if your colleagues put a serious cramp in your work-week: Seventy-eight percent of people say that a coworker’s negative attitude is “extremely debilitating” to team morale, according to a recent survey conducted by Fierce, Inc., a leadership development and training company. Fierce, Inc., talked to more than 1,000 customers about what they call “toxic employees” for the survey.”

To read the full article, click here.

Learning through Boundaries

As a leader, when do you learn most about yourself? It is usually when you find yourself with parameters or criteria that you wish you didn’t have.

In Seth Godin’s blog, Boundaries, he states: “I think you can tell a lot about a person or an organization by looking at how they deal with boundaries. Rigid boundaries: What do you do when you hit a wall? Do you have a tantrum? Spend countless resources trying to scale the unscalable? Or do you accept reality and put your energy into something else?“

I love this notion of exploring how we react to boundaries.



Sit with this today. Where do you feel most constrained? Where can you look at the parameters you currently have as creative opportunities?
Then take on yourself and decide how you want to react. At the end of the day, your mindset will determine most of what you’re able to achieve.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Focus on Learning

Abigail Adams said, “Learning is not achieved by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”

Adams makes it sound like work, and we all know that in our busy, fast-paced lives, taking the time to learn something new can be difficult.

With Monday here, we all have our to-do lists for the week. And yet, it is essential that we take a few moments to pan back and make sure there is room in the week to grow.

This week’s challenge is to focus on something specific to learn. What do you want to learn? Do you want to create a new way to do something you always do? Or take time to understand why a process is currently in place?

Regardless of what you choose, schedule the time on your calendar.

The benefits may surprise you.

Fierce Resource: U.S. Employees Have Spoken: Managers and Employers Take Note

This week’s Fierce Resource is a study by Cornerstone OnDemand about their recently published 2013 U.S. Employee Report. Cornerstone OnDemand is a leadership development cloud based solution that is dedicated to helping organizations get the most out of their human capital investment.

U.S. Employees Have Spoken: Managers and Employers Take Note, was conducted by a third party national public opinion group Kelton, between November 23rd and November 26th in 2012. They surveyed 494 employed Americans 18 years and older across the United States. The questions in the survey ranged from topics around motivation, skill gaps, feedback and alignment.

Most shocking, however, was their statistic that 19 million Americans plan to leave their jobs in 2013 costing over 2 trillion dollars.

To download the full report, click here.

To download their infographic, click here.