Tag: workplace

When Candidates “Ghost” an Interview, It May Be Proof of a Bad Candidate Experience

HERE’S A HIRING TREND we could really live without – job candidates who are “ghosting” (aka, blowing off ) scheduled job interviews, or, failing to show up to work for new positions they had accepted. Last month, USA Today published a story that indicated that this new phenomenon was due to the strength of the job market and our near-record

Continue reading

Improving on Your Weaknesses? The Smart Play Is to Build on Your Strengths

If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a hundred times while listening to managers give performance reviews to their employees – “Here are the areas you need to work to improve on.”  It sounds like a really smart thing to do, doesn’t it? After all, don’t we all want to improve on our weaknesses? Well

Continue reading

What I’ve Learned About Leadership: There Are Many Ways to Be a Great Leader

ONE OF THE FIRST things you learn about leadership is that there are a lot of ways to be a leader and demonstrate leadership. Years ago I had a boss who tried to tell me that I wasn’t a leader. Want to know my response? “Hey, I AM a leader — I’m just not your

Continue reading

You Can Learn a Lot About Your Culture If You Look Closely at HOW Employees Quit

DESPITE THE FOCUS on improving how we recruit and hire new employees, we also know that we should spend as much, if not more, time on how we can better retain the people who are already on our staff. That’s a great thought, but there’s something to consider: No matter how good a job we do

Continue reading

I Can Thank the U.S. Supreme Court for That Extra $8.37 I’ll Get in My Paycheck

I SUPPOSE I SHOULD offer up a big “thank you” to the United States Supreme Court. That’s because one of their decisions impacts me directly — to the tune of $8.37 per month. In the final decision of their 2017-2018 term, the court ruled “that teachers, police officers and other public employees cannot be forced to

Continue reading

The Best Leaders Know That Letting People Fail Can Help Them to Grow and Improve

RAISING CHILDREN, and leading people, isn’t easy. In many ways, leadership is similar to raising a child. The goal is to have people who are self-reliant and self-sufficient, but the trick is knowing just how much help to give along the way  — and when you might actually be giving too much. Although it seems to

Continue reading

No Matter What You Call It, Taking Time Off Between Jobs Is a Good Idea

I LOVE IT WHEN a long-time workplace practice suddenly gets re-defined and is referred to by some silly new terminology. Yes, I was excited when I discovered what The New York Times is now calling that time you get off in-between jobs. Although I have a lot of problems with America’s Newspaper of Record – it’s

Continue reading

A Business Truism: You Learn a Lot More From a Bad Boss Than a Good One

HERE’S A MANAGEMENT TRUISM you can’t avoid: You learn more from a bad boss than you do from a good one. I was struck by this when I came across an old Corner Office” column in The New York Times. It was a Q&A with Dawn Lepore, the now-former chairwoman and CEO of Drugstore.com, and

Continue reading

Starbucks Training Day Was More About Changing Culture Than Anything Else

HERE’S THE BOTTON LINE on the recent anti-racial bias training at Starbucks, and it was captured perfectly in the headline on The New York Times story about the big event. It said: Starbucks’s Tall Order: Tackle Systemic Racism in 4 Hours Yup, the NYT is right; it’s unlikely that Starbucks, or any other company, is going to make much

Continue reading

Queen Elizabeth Should Be Proud: Her TV Counterpart Is Finally Getting Paid Properly

LIKE SO MANY PEOPLE, one of my very favorite shows on TV today is the Netflix original The Crown. I love it for the same reason’s I loved Mad Men — it brought me up to speed on an era I was too young to fully appreciate but just old enough to vaguely remember. But,

Continue reading