The Most Critical Leadership Skill for Leading Yourself and Others
There's one leadership skill that, no matter the management techniques and practices you learn, is needed above all else if you are to truly step into Leadership. Leadership is not about your title or what you do. It has more to do with the choices you make every day....
Equity and Inclusion Takeaways from Workhuman Live
It's been a month since Workhuman Live in San Diego, and we are continuing to remember and apply things we learned and heard at the conference. There are a few highlights that stand out as extra relevant and helpful as we work with our clients to develop inclusive...
Want More Autonomy? Level Up Your Accountability
In an Awesome workplace, people have full freedom to determine where, when, and how to get their work done. They have 100% autonomy. And that comes with personal responsibility - they hold themselves accountable for their work. In Dan Pink's book, Drive: The...
How You Might Be Nurturing Lack of Accountability
The A in AWESOME stands for Accountability. Accountability, or lack of it, is a common complaint when we are brought into an organization. Leaders complain that employees aren't accountable. CEOs tell me that their senior team comes to them with problems rather than...
7 Essential Elements to Make Work AWESOME
How can we Make Work AWESOME? This is the question that we strive to answer every day. Over the years, we've absorbed employee engagement research from Great Place to Work, Harvard, Gallup, Dan Pink, Josh Bersin, Deloitte, Google, and many, many more. We also reviewed...
Why the 4-Day Work Week Won’t Make Work Awesome
The 4-Day Work Week is gathering a lot of steam lately, with companies and governments in Europe and Canada implementing the change. I can't help but get a little triggered every time I see organizations putting a 4-day work week policy into place. I've been asked,...
Consider This Before You Create a Remote Work Policy
A lot of leaders are working right now on how to manage remote work after the pandemic. What's your policy going to be about flexible work? You might be weighing whether you want to operate mostly in the office, remote only, or maybe a hybrid model. I want to...
How to Get Buy-In That Remote Work Works
How can I get buy-in from my senior leaders to allow flexible, remote work? This is one of the most common questions we get when we discuss ways of reinventing work. Our Pandemic Work Survey showed that working from home and not wasting time on a commute have been...
Your Ultimate Work From Home Flexibility Policy
Work from Home Policy: Work from wherever is best, whenever it's best for you to meet your personal and team objectives. That's it. That's the policy. OK, I know what you're saying... "But, Pam, not everyone can work from home!" True. "Wherever is best" for some...
Your Staycation Guide To Southern Ontario
While COVID-19 continues to restrict travel, many people are cancelling vacation time altogether. But in times of stress, we need time to rest and rejuvenate more than ever. Plus, Neuroscience research confirms that people feel happier when they experience variety in...
Being a Change Agent for Anti-Racism
The past couple of weeks have been rough, and one thing that has become very clear to me is that if we believe that black lives matter, we have to speak up. We have to examine our own white privilege, and we have to get really uncomfortable. As leaders and HR...
Speaker Tips from the Pros at CAPS
If you are a Speaker or aspiring speaker, this post is for you! i had the opportunity to learn speaker tips from the pros at a Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) meeting last Monday, and I'm sure they'll be helpful to others. In the meeting, eleven...
This Labour Day, Let’s Commit to Making Work Awesome
According to Wikipedia, "Labour Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest." Canadians were pioneers in this movement to make...
Hugs and High Fives to Build Trust at Work
In case you missed it, a kindergarten teacher's video of her class's "Greeting" practice recently went viral across news and social platforms. This kind of behaviour isn't just for kindergarteners - it can be used to build trust in the workplace! In the...
Want to help us make work awesome?!?
We are excited to be looking for a Leadership Agent to collaborate with our team and help us develop courageous leaders! While the exact details of the role will depend on the unique skills you bring, responsibilities may include: On-site facilitation of half-day...
How to Coach Yourself To Solve Your Leadership Challenges
We spend a lot of time discussing leadership challenges with leaders at all levels in our workshops, peer learning discussions and coaching. The consensus amongst leaders is that leading people is difficult - or more than that, leading people WELL, is difficult. Being...
Can You Have Too Much Empathy?
I remember one of my first employee relations jobs. I was working in a particularly disengaged organization, listening to people's problems all day, and coming home feeling exhausted, depressed and hopeless. One day, I remember pulling up to a location that had...
The Hard Truth For HR About #MeToo and What To Do Now
At the WorkHuman Conference in Austin this week, we had the rare opportunity to hear from three of the most powerful leaders in the #MeToo movement. Tarana Burke, who started #MeToo over a decade ago, Ashley Judd, one of the first to speak out against Harvey...
3 Things We Need to Stop Doing to Make Work More Human
On the WorkHuman "pre-conference" day, we heard from Cy Wakeman, Steve Pemberton, and David Rock. There is so much I could share but I am going to focus on one behaviour from each of them that we need to STOP doing at work, and what we need to do instead to make work...
Three Simple Changes to Make Your One-to-One Meetings More Effective
Effective, regular one-to-one meetings with your team member is one of the most valuable uses of a leader's time. The problem is that most one-to-one meetings are not effective at all. In fact, most meetings in general are less than effective - I'm betting we can all...
Scrap Your Work From Home Policy
I published this post on LinkedIn more than 3 years ago, and it continues to be discussed. I thought I'd share it here, in case you've missed it there. I so strongly believe in the concepts discussed here, today just as much (if not more) than I did in 2014. Here's...
How Hiking in Cinque Terre is like Leading Change
A few weeks ago, I had the extreme pleasure of spending a day in the beautiful coastal area of Cinque Terre, Italy. If you're not familiar, Cinque Terre is, just as the name implies, five lands, or villages, that line the Italian Riviera. Most of the villages are not...
What makes an awesome training facilitator?
Our leadership development programs have seen amazing results - double digit increases in ratings of manager trust, communication, one-to-one meetings, feedback and more. We know we're doing something right... but what is it? Part of it is our format - we don't do...
Time For the Truth About Leadership Today
One of the first questions I ask leaders during our client discovery process is “what keeps you from being the leader you strive to be?” As Cy Wakeman shared in her session at WorkHuman, the answers I usually get are not the true reality. She dropped truth-bombs...
Senior Leaders – Who Is Your First Team?
Senior leaders often prioritize the needs of their department specific teams, but their first team should be the senior team itself. Who is your first team?