Level Up Leadership
Trust in the workplace sometimes feels like it takes years to gain and seconds to lose. Changing workplace culture to facilitate trust is never an easy process, but it can be done, and it is certainly worth investing time and energy into. As we’ve outlined in previous posts, distrust is toxic in the workplace. It…
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In the dark ages of business, companies relied on fear as a motivator of performance. The intuition was that if employees felt that their jobs were constantly on the line, they would be frightened into doing their best possible work. As Dr. Edward Marshall points out in this great article, the reverse is actually true.…
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When we interact with new people, we have biological responses within .07 seconds. We are naturally predisposed to be more trusting of some people than others. But as we interact more with the same people, those predispositions get washed away and we begin to have even stronger biological responses to the people that we like…
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You should never judge a book by its cover. But we all do. And we do it in milliseconds. A recent study out of NYU showed test subjects pictures of faces for just 33 milliseconds. In that miniscule amount of time, different parts of the subject’s amygdala lit up, indicating that they either trusted the…
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One of the easiest ways to tell if your organization is suffering from poor workplace culture is to take a look at your customer satisfaction. As Tim Kuppler points out, companies with the best customer service often have exceptional workplace culture, because they understand how to treat both customers and employees with dignity and respect.…
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In the first two parts of this series, we discussed how awareness and understanding are the first two steps toward eliminating behaviors that kill initiative in the workplace. The final step is action. While awareness and understanding are essential to identifying issues with a person’s management style and getting a sense of why those problems…
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In the first part of this series, we discussed how leadership assessments can help managers and executives become aware of behaviors that might kill initiative in the workplace. Once leaders are aware of problems with their leadership style, the next step is to understand why their team responds negatively to their behavior. Every Team is…
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Last month, we focused on four leadership behaviors that can kill initiative in the workplace. Those behaviors are micro-management, a short-term focus, excessive bureaucracy, and a dictatorial style. These four problems are prevalent in a number of workplaces, but leaders often seem unaware of or unable to change their behavior. This month, we’d like to…
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Every year, US companies are thrilled to make it on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. They take out ads, they write press releases, and you can be sure they list that accolade in every one of their job postings. However, these companies aren’t just pleased that they made a…
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Gallup has found that lost productivity in US companies as a result of employee disengagement costs businesses more than $300 billion every year. In other words, having unhappy employees isn’t just an issue affecting your company culture; it’s an issue affecting your bottom line. Employees who are passionate about what they do and satisfied with…
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