Personalities & Change Resistance
Many leaders wonder why change initiatives take twice as long as they should. The answer might be simpler than you think. A large part depends on personality styles. Many managers and some supervisors are “drivers” — they have a dominant personality type. There are pros and cons to this personality type. They tend to be […]
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Empower Employee Decision-Making
Why is it that employees are so good at delegating up to their boss when really the manager or supervisor should be pushing those decisions down to the front line? Think about the kinds of decisions and problems that you’ve been addressing recently. How many of them should have been addressed by the person who […]
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Accountability: Pitfalls at the Front Line
Accountability means receiving consequences for one’s actions, behaviors, or results. If a team member demonstrates good behaviors and results, front line leaders should offer praise and positive reinforcement. If the results aren’t what they should be, or the pace of work isn’t where it needs to be, or the behaviors are unacceptable, the leader is […]
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To Promote From Within, or Not: That is the Question
Promoting from within is still a good idea, despite many of the pitfalls involved. Most of the people in our training classes report being promoted from within. There are several advantages that come along with it. For instance, they know the work; they have a better understanding of how the company operates, and they already […]
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Dealing With Accusations
If you’re a front line supervisor or manager, occasionally someone’s going to make some allegations that might turn out to be totally false and inaccurate. How should you, as a leader, respond when somebody levels an accusation about you? First, let’s understand that the reason why somebody would fabricate something to harm your reputation as […]
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Managing Insubordination
Dealing with insubordination is something that you might run into as a front line supervisor, manager, or even as an executive. We’re going to look at what insubordination is, and what you should do about it when you encounter it. Insubordination can be defined in two different ways: one is a work refusal. You ask […]
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Aligning Your Team To Reach Your Goals
How can you get your team aligned to hit their goals? As a leader, you have a few different tools at your disposal. First, realize that if you want your team to achieve different results than before, you’re going to need to take those goals and translate them into behaviors that need to change. You’ve […]
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Why Messages Don’t Make It To The Shop Floor
We are going to look at some of the reasons why executive and management messages never seem to make it to the front line employees. It can be frustrating as a manager and executive when the important decisions you make don’t end up permeating down to the front line employees. You count on the various […]
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Why Safety at Amtrak is a Leadership Problem, Not a Compliance Problem
Amtrak experienced another tragic accident on Sunday that resulted in the death of the train engineer and conductor and injured a reported 116 passengers. While the focus was on the absence of Positive Train Control (PTC) which would potentially have brought the train to a halt without intervention by the crew, the issue might be […]
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How To Provide More Recognition At Work
You don’t have to go to many management or leadership classes to learn that more positive feedback is something that all leaders should be using to motivate their team and encourage them to hit even more ambitious goals. But why don’t leaders give more positive recognition? The number one reason is, when things are busy […]
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