Change, whether you love it or hate it, is always inevitable. Everyone knows that. However, how you handle change makes all the difference between getting the results you want or going down in flames. Martin's Story: A Case in Point A colleague named Martin decided he wanted to expand his influence and be seen as a thought leader in order to expand his business. He decided he needed to put his thoughts out there frequently with weekly blog entries, postings on LinkedIn and actively using...

Leaders and human resource professionals spend a lot of time thinking and talking about employee engagement. An annual ritual in many companies is the employee survey where senior leadership waits anxiously to see what their employee base thinks. Some organizations use Gallup’s famed Q12 survey to give them a pulse on their organization. Employee engagement, however, is not about the survey or people’s opinions. Employees become engaged or disengaged daily depending on how you, as their...

No, it’s not a typo. I didn’t leave off the final “al.” I intended the title to say “norm” instead of “normal.” This distinction is important in the current climate in organizations. Everyone has had to adapt to working virtually and its likely that this will continue for the foreseeable future. Some people will continue to work-from-home, perhaps permanently. Some teams have been virtual all along. When I worked at IBM before starting my consultancy, I was on a global team where over the...

Bouncing back. That’s an expression you hear a lot these days. The economy will “bounce back.” You will “bounce back” after uncertainty, stress and staggering change bend you all out of shape. You’ll “bounce back” from dealing with working from home, tending to the kids, enduring ‘Zoom fatigue’ and general mental, emotional and physical disruption. It’s a nice, encouraging idea. But maybe it’s kind of wrong. I’m thinking it’s more about “bouncing forward.” Being resilient, in my opinion, isn’t...

One of the secrets about dealing with change and uncertainty seemed counter-intuitive when I first discovered it… Thinking can be dangerous. As someone who likes to be thoughtful and smart about the actions I take (heck, my company name is “ThoughtAction”), my first inclination in dealing with today’s unprecedented world situation is to try to ‘figure it out.” That works a lot of the time, just not right now. As a professional executive coach, my studies have explored the prevailing...