Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are sometimes a little nervous talking with chief financial officers. CFOs ask hard questions and want to see demonstrable bottom-line impact for training initiatives being proposed. It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “As gatekeeper of the financials, the…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior leader in a large commercial services organization. I spent many years learning how to make good use of an assistant and I’ve always made sure I had a great one. Over the last few years, the company has been reducing the size of the administration group and I have…
In today’s extremely busy, always-on work environment, communication is often driven by what needs to get done right now. It is fragmented, reactive, and more about immediate response than it is about long-term development or relationship building. “Rarely do we hear each other’s voices these days,” says Pat Zigarmi, leadership expert and founding associate with…
Consultants at The Ken Blanchard Companies have been recommending short bi-weekly conversations between managers and direct reports for over 20 years. The reason? They work in decreasing intentions to leave a company. In this short video, I share a quick story about the impact regular one-on-ones have on improving employee relationships. Why don’t more managers…
This post is by Paul Murphy, Director of Channel Sales, Asia-Pacific. It is commonly assumed that leadership behaviors are driven by the cultural norms of a given country or region. But research shows that organizational culture is actually a much stronger driver of leadership behaviors than is country or regional culture. For example, an employee…
This guest post is by Lynn McCreery. Managers sometimes have difficulty focusing on both people and results. They want associates to feel excited about their work, but also need them to perform. Many managers feel they have to choose—and most choose results, focusing on people only when improvement is needed. If organizations want to create…
A new infographic released by The Ken Blanchard Companies shows that work communication isn’t happening with the quality or frequency people are hoping for. The infographic looks specifically at one-on-one conversations and finds huge gaps (20 to 30 percent) between what employees want and what they actually experience when conversing with their manager. These gaps…
Did you know 35 percent of managers would rather skydive for the first time than address a problem with their team at work? That’s according to the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution. Effective leaders must know how to conduct difficult conversations with employees. Because of the common perception that conflict at work is bad, it’s…
Leaders should be more coach-like. I’m probably not the first person who has penned those words in a blog post. My guess is that you’ve heard that advice before—possibly even tried being more coach-like with your team members and direct reports but ultimately realized that it takes a lot of time to do well. A…
I went whitewater rafting down the Kern River this week with my husband and friends. (That’s me, underwater, at the front of the boat.) We had our choice of several guides, and we all agreed the guy with the grey hair looked like he had more experience than anyone else. We were correct. Our guide,…