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- Accountability
- Employee Engagement
- Professionalism
- Leadership Skills
- Multi-Generational Issues
Employee Development Systems, Inc.
The Personal Accountability Company
7308 South Alton Way, Suite 2J
Dry Creek Business Park
Centennial, Colorado 80112
Phone: 1-800.282.3374
employeedevelopmentsystems.com
info@edsiusa.com | | |
| | Featured Tool | 50 Activities for Coaching/Mentoring
-Introduce mentoring concepts and peer guidance techniques -Develop skills to express performance improvement goals clearly -Create open, trusting relationships -Refine managers' skills in providing constructive feedback Learn More!
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| | Connect with Thought Leaders in Your Field!
EDSI is hosting a FREE HR Learning Showcase on September 24, 2010, in Chicago. Come and learn about our proven solutions and network with other HR, OD and T&D thought leaders in the area. Register online here. | |  |
| Are You an Adaptive Leader?
 | CEOs and executive managers everywhere have been practicing white knuckle management for almost two years now. Your organization may have seen rapid and extreme changes in this time; still, we all are looking ahead to the emerging "cooling off" period.
Is the economy finally getting back to "normal?" And what is “normal” these days, anyway? All indications are that the new normal may not look at all like what we are used to. Amongst other things, consumers are likely to remain thrifty and the new appetite for simplicity is not likely to fade away soon. This new paradigm will affect all of us, from small and large part and product manufacturers to service-oriented businesses.
With that in mind, management will take on a new feel. Like they say, you can never go home again. So let’s take a look at what your digs might look like from here on out:
An essential part of your role will be to foster new leaders. Instead of taking on all of the issues and challenges yourself, as a leader of the company, you will need to let a strata of problem solving, which you likely have been taking care of for a number of years, go to new leaders. Mobilize everyone to generate solutions.
Your input will be much better spent on looking ahead at what is coming down the road or making contingency plans for the next pot hole or construction zone. You will be best served by letting the new leaders take care of the daily challenges of your organization’s best practices while you focus on “next practices.”
Streamline development processes. Even more importantly, should your organization continue to develop the same products and services at all? Do your legacy partnerships still make sense? How can your organization answer current business needs in this fluctuating environment?
These are the “someday” questions that you probably never gave yourself time to address in the past. Now they must become part of your everyday work. So, get comfortable with the new normal. If you do, you (and your organization) will come out ahead of the pack.
| | | | | | Become an Influence Maverick
 | How do you shepherd your employees through the roadblocks and challenges that they face? How can you increase the chances of seeing the desired outcomes for the plans you put into place? Make more than one plan, that's how. Studies show that the use of four or more sources of influence in combination is ten times more likely to succeed than relying on a single source of influence. That being said, are you facing organizational issues or career challenges that seem to hang on, no matter how you try changing the force of inertia? Change initiatives can be approached in a variety of ways, many of which are valid. The key learning here is to enlist more than one method. Perhaps you have a lack of accountability, consistently low morale, or a quality issue that seems to be endemic to the organization. Maybe you have been trying to get recognition or a new position, without success. All of these issues can be most successfully dealt with by offering up more than one solution.
Don't know where to look for new potential solutions? You are probably just stuck in a rut. You have been using the same sources for a while; sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, keeping you waiting in the lunch line forever. Starting today, use a multi-pronged approach to your challenges. Combine the multipronged approach with the following tactics: 1. Enlist peer pressure and social support as your allies. 2. Change the work environment. 3. Take a cue from your first grade teacher; use rewards and accountability.
4. Build personal motivation in others.
Implement these tactics to help the herd move together, and reach your desired destination or solution, with each situation you face.
| | | | | | Situation Room: Integrating Change
You are the Human Resources Manager for an auto parts manufacturing plant. One of the line managers quit and you replaced him with an innovative thinker who has already come up with two efficiency ideas since he started, two weeks ago.
You hired Jim in the hopes that he could help reinvigorate the team. There is a lot of cynicism on the floor, and Jim's attitude could help change the atmosphere. However, instead of acting as a catalyst, the rest of the floor managers have not accepted Jim. His presence seems to antagonize them.
What would you do?
| | | | | | Author Interview: Mary Scannell
For this issue, we caught up with author, Mary Scannell. She has written extensively about training, communication and conflict, including The Big Book of Conflict Resolution Games (McGraw-Hill, 2010) and (as co-author of) The Big Book of Team Motivating Games (Mcgraw-Hill, 2009). What communication problems endure over time, and how do they compare to the issues that seem to occur more these days than in the past? Communication issues in general are the basis for all the good stuff and bad stuff that happens in a team. What is recognized more now than in the past is the cross-generational issues that are occuring in the workplace. However, communication is at the core of the current problems that people experience in a cross-generational workplace, like any other setting. The bottom line is that we all make assumptions without gaining clarity about situations, and that can be said with regard to multigenerational challenges as well as other communication roadblocks that we experience at work. What part does technology play in communication issues? The media that we use now, especially email, contributes to miscommunication. I’ve taught writing for 20 years, and I love the whole idea of what email can do for us, but I don’t like the idea that it could be right for every situation. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate. You aren’t likely to solve a conflict effectively through email.
How would you like to see organizations should shift their focus for increased effectiveness?
I don’t see companies set any sort of communication goals. They have their organizational goals, their mission statement and other metrics that are tied into the bottom line, but the fact is that communication is going to help the organization reach all of those goals. What projects are you working on right now? I’m very interested in the dynamic between conflict and collaboration. I don’t think they are opposites. I believe conflict can lead to collaboration; to tap into the creative genius of your team, you need to teach them that conflict is part of that process, and out of that you can get greater overall results. What one piece of advice would you like readers to take away from our talk today? Listening is the key. If there is one key word that is really transformational, I would always go back to listening.
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 | Featured Tool |  |
| 50 Activities for Coaching/Mentoring
These activities provide stimulating exercises, realistic case studies, and creative role-plays that will enable your managers and supervisors to sharpen their skills in several key coaching roles - as team leader, facilitator, counselor, and director. Each fully reproducible activity is organized in a user-friendly format with detailed trainer's notes, clear objectives, and suggested variations for customizing the activity to meet your group's needs. Training Objectives - Introduce mentoring concepts and peer guidance techniques
- Develop skills to express performance improvement goals clearly
- Create open, trusting relationships
- Refine managers' skills in providing constructive feedback
$139.95 Learn More!
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