Now that I have your attention, please listen carefully. Engaging and motivating people is not a transaction. It is a life long mission. Just like romance, an obvious point for anyone who has made a long-term relationship work successfully. I’m reminded of an incident early in my career. I had the good fortune at age…
Boomers and Gen X’s think about Zen. Millennials don’t like Zen, far too passe’. They like Xhil (pronounced zil) a term so new that it’s not even in Wikipedia. Where does it come from, and what does it mean? Xhil comes from exhilarating, or perhaps exhilarated. When Millennials get engaged, they get that Xhil feeling.…
We are often asked to help leaders or teams think more strategically as they do their work. It’s not that they don’t do good work, it just lacks the cognitive structure of good strategic analysis that is more likely to lead to great work. We address these requests by co-creating workshops with the clients based…
Welcome to the StangerCarlson Talent Minute. I’m Carolyn Carlson. A few days ago I received an email from a former colleague of mine after listening to our last Talent Minute post –To be a Great Manager Develop your Coaching Success Competencies. I know that it was meant to be tongue and cheek however it was…
Increasingly, I’m seeing companies listing job openings for business partners in both the HR and IT areas. While there are advantages to bringing fresh talent to any organization, in this particular role, it is far better to develop your own candidates. Here are the reasons: [list style=”tick”] Consistency. — HR business partners need strong consulting and…
Increasingly, companies seeing the benefits of executive coaching are building internal coaching capabilities for high potential employees, a group for which it generally is not considered cost-effective to use external coaches. The programs vary widely in their quality. In fact, some have arisen ad hoc, while others have been planned carefully. Few, however, incorporate the…
It’s time to face a new reality: voicemail is dead, killed by Millennials. We all hate to check it and we rarely leave messages. When we see a missed call on our smart phone, we return the call. If we see that a voicemail was left, we probably don’t listen to it if we recognize…
In a recent blog, I talked about creating future leaders by building on successes. I advised doing this by mapping the behaviors of existing successful leaders in the organization with the Bizet Job Activity Rating job profiling tool and using these behaviors as the basis for developing future leaders. I suggested “gently” adding new behaviors…
I recently wrote a blog about the value of team building for consulting teams — including members from both the consulting firm and the client — to help prevent the “breakdown and rescue” that almost always seems to happen at some point during a project. As I pointed out, this costly cycle can be stopped…
We are often asked how strong leaders can be developed quickly with confidence that they will be successful in the organization. In responding to this question, we always ask three key questions: 1. What does a strong leader look like today? 2. What would make your leaders even stronger? 3. What is the best approach…