Challenging Conversations -- Avoid？Engage?
August 2008
Whether the topic is delivering a difficult message, giving tough performance feedback, or confronting insensitive behavior, most managers feel some reluctance when faced with having challenging conversations according to Eryn Kalish and Pat Zigarmi, coauthors of The Ken Blanchard Companies new Challenging Conversations training program.
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First Time Manager: It's not just about you anymore
July 2008
Being promoted into your first management position is exciting. Suddenly, you have the opportunity to move up the organizational ladder and do some of the things that you've always wanted to do. The resources to act on your good ideas are now at your disposal. But being a new manager also brings a whole new set of responsibilities.
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Defining Your Corporate Culture
May 2008
There is no denying that culture is a powerful catalyst of organizational excellence. After all, culture is the organization’s personality—it’s “how things are done around here.” Culture consists of the values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and practices of the organizational members. So how does this critical determinant of organizational success get established in most organizations?
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Talent Management: Set People Up for Success
April 2008
What is the biggest mistake leaders make when working with others? Inappropriate communication according to ongoing research by The Ken Blanchard Companies. In open-ended questioning, 1,400 survey respondents identified that too often leaders either don’t communicate, overcommunicate, communicate inappropriately through outbursts, anger, or blaming, or simply don’t communicate clearly.
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Sharing Your Leadership Point of View
March 2008
People like to see into the heart of their leaders—to know that they're working for a good person; someone they can trust. Most leaders are busy. And because they are juggling so many priorities, they can't take the time to be personal and to disclose and to inquire about the other person. This creates distance in a working relationship that erodes commitment and engagement.
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Building Trust
February 2008
Most people do not pay attention to the issue of trust in their organization until it is broken. But by then the damage is done: people withhold facts and information, managers set convoluted goals, management is not available, people talk behind each others’ backs—the list goes on and on.
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Use a Coaching Approach to Improve Feedback
January 2008
In today’s work environment, managers are being asked to be more coach-like when working with their direct reports. They are being asked to develop new capabilities around coaching for performance, coaching for development, and coaching to build skills. With practice, the managers we work with in our coaching skills program develop quickly in all three of these areas. But one aspect of managing using coaching concepts has proven to be a big challenge for most of the people we work with—giving feedback.
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Making Training Stick
December 2007-b
Organizations invest millions of dollars in training to develop employees' skills and increase overall productivity within their companies. Still, research shows that the best training in the world won't translate into changed behaviors back on the job unless initiative leaders and participants understand their roles and responsibilities before, during, and after any training initiative.
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Eight Employee Needs Leader Must Address
December 2007-a
New research by The Ken Blanchard Companies has identified eight needs that employers must address if they want their employees to perform at their best. Failure to meet even one of these needs will tend to "keep the brakes on" in your organization.
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Keeping a Vision Strong through All Levels of Your Organizations
November 2007-b
Research by The Gallup Organization indicates that senior executives are more than twice as likely to feel that an organization’s mission and purpose inspire them to higher levels of performance as frontline workers. That’s a shame considering that customers are much more likely to come in contact with frontline employees than they are with senior executives in an organization’s corporate headquarters.
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Bringing Out the Best In Others
November 2007-a
Over-supervising or under-supervising—that is, giving people too much or too little direction—has a negative impact on people’s development. That’s why it’s so important to match leadership style to development level.
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Communication is the Key to Great Frontline Leadership
October 2007-b
The ability to communicate appropriately is an essential component for effective leadership - especially frontline leadership. Yet 41% of people polled in a recent survey conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies® identified poor communication as the number one mistake leaders make.
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Leadership The Key To Organizational Vitality
October 2007-a
There are many elements that go into creating a successful, vital organization. Customer focus, a great marketing strategy, and passionate employees are just a few of the factors that come to mind. But the one place that organizations should focus on first is leadership. That's because leadership is the engine that drives the other factors.
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Great Frontline Leader
September 2007-b
The Ken Blanchard Companies' Situational Leadership ®II Model tells that the day-to-day communication between supervisor managers and direct reports has more impact than any other single factor on employee productivity, quality, morale, and retention.
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Leadership and Vision
September 2007-a
Why is it so important for leaders to have a clear vision of the future? It's because leadership is about going somewhere. And if you and your people don't know where you are going, your leadership doesn't matter.
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Managing Up to Get What You Need
August 2007-b
When it's working well, leadership is a partnership between two people (manager and direct report) who work together to achieve common goals. But what if you need more from him or her in terms of direction and support to do your job well? Is there anything that you can do?
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What is Leadership?
August 2007-a
For years, The Ken Blanchard Companies® has defined leadership as an influence process. In recent years, The Ken Blanchard Companies has changed its definition of leadership to “the capacity to influence others by unleashing the potential and power of people and organizations for the greater good.” We made this change for an important reason.
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Dealing With Declining Performance
July 2007-b
The Ken Blanchard Companies® Situational Leadership®II model teaches managers that improvement in a direct report's performance requires them to provide the matching direction and support the employee needs. But what should managers do when faced with a decline in performance?
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A Future Look at the Trends and Issues Organizations and Leaders Face in 2010
July 2007-a
The Ken Blanchard Companies has just released the results of its 2007 Corporate Issues Survey: A Five-Year Look at the Trends and Issues Organizations and Leaders Face. A special feature of this year's survey was a question asking participants—which consisted of 1,091 human resource, training, and line managers from a range of companies, industries, and countries—to identify what they feel are the most critical organizational, managerial, and employee development issues they will be facing in 2010.
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Manage & Develop People to Be Their Best
June 2007-b
Only over a period of time, by receiving the appropriate leadership styles, do employees reach the levels of confidence and competence that enable them to increase their productivity and effectiveness on given goals and tasks. Without the proper leadership styles, most employees end up achieving only a moderate level of performance on key tasks instead of pushing through to the highest level possible. The challenge then is for organizations to develop their employees to reach higher levels as quickly and efficiently as possible, thus improving productivity and overall corporate performance.
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Improving Performance at All Levels in Your Organization
June 2007-a
Only 20% of workers feel that they work in an environment that allows them to be their best. Moreover, research from The Ken Blanchard Companies indicates that only a small percentage of employees reach their full potential after joining an organization. In fact, in organizations without a solid leadership development strategy in place, the majority of employees are only developed to 65-70% of their potential productivity, according to self-assessments by company leaders.
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Great Leadership Begins with a Serving Heart
May 2007
At The Ken Blanchard Companies® much of our work has focused on leadership behavior and how to improve leadership style and methods. In recent years we have added to this model by looking at leadership character and intention. Why are you leading--is it to serve or to be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is very important. We believe that if leaders don't have the heart right, they simply won't ever get leadership right.
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No One Best Leadership Style
April 2007
Effective leaders know that there is no one best way to manage people. Instead, they adapt their style according to the development level of the people they are managing.
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