Blog Posts

I recently had the honor of giving the Opening Keynote at The Doolittle Institute in Niceville, Florida. In their words, “The Doolittle Institute has the privilege of providing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education to thousands of underserved students, many of them military personnel. These hands-on programs include robotics, coding, computer-aided design, managing job stress, time management, and others. One of our primary goals is to inspire and educate our country’s future workforce.” About half of my audience were in uniform. Needless to say, I was inspired to bring my “A game” and deliver a kick-ass keynote speech. ...

While giving keynote speeches and leadership development workshops, I am often asked how to engage employees who work in the most repetitive or boring jobs. In this post, I want to highlight an awesome individual who provides the most telling answer to that question. The Tarmac Dancer, as he's come to be known on social media, is stunned by his sudden viral fame, though for passengers and employees at the Greater Rochester International Airport it's nothing new. His name is Kyran Ashford, and he's worked at the airport almost five years. He is employed by JetStream Ground Services, which is ...

Happy New Year! Many people ring in the new year with renewed commitments to improve aspects of their lives that have previously been challenging. Often, these commitments are made around individuals’ jobs and careers. As my New Year’s gift to those of you looking to be more engaged at work, here are four strategic measures you can consider to lead you to quite possibly one of the best work years of your life. Seize the power of reflection. Studies have repeatedly shown that disengaged workers are often disengaged because they are in the wrong role, are performing tasks they do ...

One day, as a small child, Thomas Edison came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He said to her, “Mom, my teacher gave this paper to me and told me only you are to read it. What does it say?” Her eyes welled with tears as she read the letter out loud to her child. “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.” Many years after Edison’s mother had died, he became one of the greatest inventors ...

Millennials are a unique generation in the workforce for a variety of reasons, including their plans for staying with their current employer. Unlike other generations, Millennials aren’t afraid to pick up and leave a company if a better offer comes along. This new approach to career development has many managers scrambling to retain Millennials, but most don’t do the single easiest and most effective thing to engage these workers and entice them to stick around for the long haul. In just two minutes, this video shows you how to be a better boss for Millennials. ...

Last week I conducted a Leadership Development workshop for a large Fortune 500 company on the East Coast. The workshop centered on the very hot topic of how to successfully engage a sales force and reap the benefits of that engagement. The sales managers and salespeople attending the event left on a real high, fully ready to take their game to a whole new level. The data and tips related to salespeople engagement are especially important given that: - Salespeople are more engaged than non-salespeople (23% fully engaged versus 13% for non-salespeople). Yet, salespeople are much more likely to be ...

This video illuminates the myriad dividends that come with building a culture of world-class employee engagement, not the least of which are great talent attraction, retention, creativity, innovation, productivity, customer service, and ethical behavior.  Is your organization reaping all of these benefits?  Find out. ...

Welcome to the second of a series of videos on Employee Engagement, Culture, and the Best Practices on each of the key drivers of engagement. This video unveils how many working people fall into two categories of engagement, that being Actively Engaged, and Neither Engaged Nor Disengaged. It also clearly defines these two buckets of engagement and discusses the Key Driver Analysis that was conducted to determine the most impactful drivers of employee engagement, which will take your organization to the next level. ...

One of the single greatest mistakes organizations make when trying to increase their levels of employee engagement is forgetting to encourage their employees to accept some responsibility for increasing their own job engagement. Even if you hire the right employees, they still need to know the steps they can take to stay engaged at work in the long term. Many employees know the “to-dos” of engagement, but they often forget to implement them, or execute them consistently. So why not give them a checklist? Well, I created one for you, based on a key driver analysis of millions of survey ...

I have been a Cubs fan all of my life. Some of my fondest memories of Wrigley Field were shared with my step-grandfather Victor, who has long since passed away and never got a chance to see his Cubbies win a World Series. I brought him with me in spirit to Game 3 of the World Series this year. While at the game, I also teared up seeing the many father and son duos in attendance, in addition to the many octogenarians who had waited their entire lives for this moment in time. Is it a coincidence that there are ...

I was saddened to hear the news of Gene Wilder’s passing on August 29th, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, a terrible illness that my Father has as well. Born on June 11, 1933, in Milwaukee as Jerome Silberman, Gene Wilder touched the hearts of millions as the character Willy Wonka, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Although the film was not a commercial success, it later gained a cult following and an Oscar Nomination for Best Score. Wilder also earned a Golden Globe award nomination. In Wilder’s memory, I’d like to highlight nine best practice lessons on employee engagement ...

There are myriad positive outcomes that come with building a world-class culture of employee engagement, not the least of which are higher productivity, more ethical behavior, less turnover, and greater profitability. But I have a favorite outcome, which exists within the healthcare industry: better safety compliance. Sadly, each year hundreds of thousands of people are admitted to hospitals with moderate health conditions, only to leave later in a body bag. The culprit? The spread of infections in the hospital. The gravity of this situation first got my attention when I learned Americans are five times more likely to die of ...

As an author, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone reading your book. The first time I witnessed this was on an airplane, when the woman sitting next to me pulled my book, Building a Magnetic Culture, out of her bag and started reading it. Needless to say, I smiled widely. I then asked her, “How do you like that book?” Thankfully she said, “I love it. It’s full of neat and new ideas that we are implementing at our company to build and foster employee engagement.” She then asked me if I had read it and ...