Tag: Harvard Business Review

Leadership: 'Bring Me Solutions, Not Problems' Is the Wrong Message

Topic:  Training Strategy Traditional management wisdom would say that it’s good to tell employees: “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions,” but some experts and educators are suggesting that this approach, rather than being empowering employees, does the opposite. It may actually cause employees to shut down and refrain from bringing issues to their managers’ […]

Beware the Slippery Slope of Affinity Groups

Today’s workplace is far more diverse than workplaces of the past. That diversity is exhibited through a wide range of demographic characteristics: age, sex, sexual preference, nationality, ethnicity, and religion, for example. There are big benefits to building a diverse workforce. Researchers writing for Harvard Business Review, for instance, were able to draw a correlation […]

Organizational Structure as a Roadblock to Change Management

Employee training programs are important elements of change management in the business world. These programs often seek to change the behavior of employees en masse and often involve the use of outside consultants and experts to design and run the training efforts. But these programs can leave employers and managers disappointed with the results.

Can You Train Leaders? Or Are They 'Born'?

We often think of leadership as an inherent trait, something you either have or you don’t. The phrase “born leader” comes to mind. At the same time organizations, from businesses to political entities to sports teams, are often lacking in leadership.

7 Challenges for Creating Development Programs that Work

According to Training Magazine’s annual report on training expenditures, U.S. organizations spent a total of $104.25 billion dollars on training and development in 2016. These learning and development initiatives range anywhere from traditional live training sessions to participation in outside seminars to training delivered through webinars, podcasts, or other technological means.

The Evolving Landscape of Performance Management

In the old days, employees and their immediate supervisors would have a formal meeting once a year to talk about their past performance and set goals for the future. In today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing environment, spurred by technology advancements, global competition, and changing consumer demands, that annual process seems woefully inadequate to ensure high performance.

Dealing With 5 Generations in the Workplace

The economic downturn that hit the nation in 2008 as well as the tendency for people to live longer and healthier lives than ever before have both contributed to a tendency for employees to choose to stay in the workplace longer, delaying their retirement.

Placing a Focus on Emphasizing Strengths, Not Overcoming Weaknesses

If you think about the typical performance evaluation, where does the focus generally lie? When evaluating employees on a scale of 1–5 (where 5 is high), do managers tend to spend most of their time talking about the items they rated 4–5, or the items they rated 1–3? Most, perhaps unfortunately, tend to focus on […]

Research Unveils Markers for HiPo Candidates

In today’s competitive job market, high potential (HiPo) employees are even more of a Holy Grail than they normally are. That’s because research consistently shows that a small percentage of the workforce drives a large portion of organizational outcomes. And those star employees are multipliers, too, boosting the performance of their colleagues—especially their direct reports—by […]

Develop these 5 Skills to Foster Innovation

At our company, one of our core values is innovation. We believe creativity and progressive thinking are critical to our success. I happen to share the opinion of former Ford CEO Mark Fields, who said, “Without innovation, I strongly believe companies die over time.”