Increasing Productivity and Profits with Employee Engagement

What if you could increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, and outperform your competitive set by over 2X?  Not only is it possible, it’s proven!  In this session that I delivered at the Entrepreneur Organization’s Thrive event, I share practical, actionable ways to increase employee engagement from building trust with co-workers to helping employees feel valued and understand how they fit in the big picture.

standardOctober 30Tom SalonekCommunication

Trick or Treat! The Leadership Lucky 13

halloweenWith the leaves changing and my kids asking to try out their costumes, it can only mean Halloween is just a short few weeks away.  Whether or not you’re not superstitious, here’s my Leadership Lucky 13:

  1. Think and act positively.  Earle Nightingale said we become what we think about.
  2. Match words and actions.
  3. Plan goals.  “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road can take you there.” –Lewis Carroll
  4. Insist on results.  I remember an Intertech board meeting where I was going through a litany of accomplished “to-do’s” for the past quarter.  A board member stopped me and said, “I don’t care what you do.  I care what you delivered.”
  5. Solve problems.  I’ve not seen a dedicated course on solving problems.  The closest I’ve seen is in a Dale Carnegie leadership course where a section was focused on a problem statement… “In what ways can I solve [enter problem here]”, sort worst to first, then get going on execution.
  6. Delegate.  I used to take pride in arriving early, staying late, and doing it myself.  Now I realize delegation is a key part of leadership.  As Tina Fey said, the job of a good leader is hiring the right people and getting out of their way.
  7. Give away credit.  Jim Collins stated “Leaders look out a window when there’s problems and in a mirror when there’s success.”
  8. Correct, correctly.  In private.  With clear examples and not sandwiched between praise.
  9. Care.  In Rudolph Giuliani’s book on leadership he shares “Weddings are optional.  Funerals are mandatory.” I’ve rescheduled sales calls, business meetings, and vacations to be available or present for those going through a rough patch.
  10. Accept the importance of communication.  When in doubt, over communicate.  You can’t hold someone accountable for something you’ve never communicated.
  11. Give meaningful feedback.  “You did a good job” isn’t impactful.  Meaningful feedback is specific and shares what it means to you specifically.
  12. Tell the truth.  My dad told me, “Tom, you’re not smart enough to remember two stories.  Tell the truth.” It also makes life a lot simpler.
  13. Listen.  I asked a board member for the one piece advice to follow in business and life, he paused and said, “Seek first to understand… things aren’t always what you think.”

Tip a hat or raise a glass… here’s to The Lucky 13.

standardOctober 8Tom SalonekLeadership

Increasing Productivity and Profits with Employee Engagement

Power-of-the-North

What if you could increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, and outperform your competitive set by over 2X?  Not only is it possible, it’s proven! 

I’ll be speaking on employee engagement at the EO Thrive event on Thursday, October 29th.  Check out the conference and register here.

In my session, I’ll share practical, actionable ways to increase employee engagement from building trust with co-workers to helping employees feel valued and understand how they fit in the big picture.

 

standardSeptember 24Tom SalonekHappy Employees

Technology. Friend or Foe. Third in a Series

Man-vs-machineRecently the Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs and The Atlantic all had cover stories on whether technology is a friend or foe.

“What may be looming is something different: an era of technological unemployment, in which computer scientists and software engineers essentially invent us out of work, and the total number of jobs declines steadily and permanently” stated the article in The Atlantic.

That’s scary.

Many experts are seeing a “new normal, where the expectation that work will be a central feature of adult life dissipates for a significant portion of society.” At Oxford, researchers have stated machines might take half of all U.S. jobs within 20 years.

MIT Management Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in “Will Humans Go the Way of Horses” in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, make the simple and clear point… we humans will decide how technology our lives and futures.  They state “We humans are a deeply social… the desire for human connection carries over to our economic lives.” They go onto argue that in light of these technological changes, governments should be passing education reform, stimulating entrepreneurship and investing in research.

standardSeptember 8Tom SalonekIT