Happy Employees
Do your employees understand what you are saying?
Businesses spend time and resources learning how to speak to clients. You do this through your copywriters, website designers, and messaging experts, all to make sure that your message is truly connecting. Now look inward: are you also connecting with your employees? Are they hearing the things you truly want them to hear? The good…
Read MoreYou only need two things to meet your goals ✌️
Motivation and support. When you have the motivation to do the thing, and the support to get it done, you have the perfect formula. Motivation means willingness, but it is more than that. Motivation is also the excitement of doing the thing, it means looking forward to it and being a reliable party. Support means…
Read MoreDid your employees mess up? It’s probably your fault.
Raise your hand if you ever had a roommate. Keep your hand up if you ever tried to pour yourself a glass of milk only to discover there were only 8 drops left. So you tell your roommate to please add milk to the shopping list when they finish it, and your roommate answers: “I…
Read MoreHow to be a good leader: (hint: know when you should follow 😉)
One way in which people demonstrate leadership is by knowing when to be followers. This was a lesson I picked up recently from listening to the McKay Interview podcast episode with Dr. Cynthia Cherrey and Professor Mike Hardy. (If you want to both feel and be smarter, spend some time with The McKay Interview). A…
Read MoreAn introduction to company culture
It’s not really a “thing”, it’s more of a concept. An abstract we can talk about but not physically build. Right? No that’s not right. Culture is when we put ping pong tables in the office and offer beer on tap and relaxation pods. Right? Is it when I let all my employees work from…
Read MoreHow to be specific and not too specific at the same time
Tell your employees exactly what is expected of them. But don’t tell them what to do. A client recently asked me how to balance these two instructions. We were building role descriptions and she wanted to know how to be specific enough that people knew what to do but also open enough that she wasn’t…
Read MoreYour next employee is exactly nothing like you
There are so many theories about how to decide who to hire. Only hire somebody you’d want to hang out with on a weekend. As well as Hire people who are completely different from you, and that you wouldn’t otherwise connect with. And everything in between. What’s a business owner to do? The hiring balance…
Read MoreThe one question that will transform your performance reviews
You can throw company happy hours, host team dinners, buy pinball machines and eliminate job titles all you want. But once you put an employee in a performance review, there is a strict hierarchy of who reports to whom. And that hierarchy is what makes it challenging to get good feedback: the employee knows you…
Read MoreThe formula for happy employees
One of the top three challenges that new employees have is unmet expectations: the job is not what they expected it to be. That means difficult conversations where they are telling you that they expected something different, and what are you going to do about it. Or even worse: they quit. One simple fix will…
Read MoreHow to talk to problem employees
Nothing you tell your employees should ever come as a surprise. This is especially important with bad news. If you are telling an employee that they are at risk of being fired, and they had no idea, then you are the one who made a mistake, not them. But don’t tell your employees about their…
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