1. Employee engagement is a three-way process and requires responsibility, accountability and ownership from employer, employees and the organization.  We talk about employee engagement including the kinds of things employees need to feel engaged and what the managers and leaders need to provide. The latter certainly have an active role in harnessing the best of their talent and creating a rich culture that people want to be part of and enjoy coming to work.  There is certainly a lot that can be done at the level of leadership engagement behaviours.  However, employees aren’t mere passive receptacles of these initiatives but are also active players who have a role in shaping a great workplace. (more…)

These points are  in response to Ron McLuckie’s question, “ how do we get organisations and managers recognising and acting on the strengths concept, rather than the negative weakness focus we see so regularly? ”

1) Having right people in the right job/role so they can use their key strengths has to be a start!

2) Continuously ask,  “What is working well for our team or organization?”

3) Ask routinely,  “What do we well which we need to keep doing?”
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The All Whites performance at FIFA has been remarkable; a demonstration of great leadership and excellent team work. With the World Cup they have –  rather suddenly, sprouted in our sporting consciousness and totally captured the nation’s imagination. After being an insignificant seventy eight in the world rankings, who would have expected them to do as well as they did? Here’s a team that did not have the support, backing and resources such as the All Blacks and yet they made every Kiwi feel proud by remaining unbeaten and scoring the goals they did – firstly with Slovakia and then against the World Cup holders, Italy! And we could go on here…. (more…)

In times of crisis, how a leader fronts and deals with the situation can either fan an already out of control situation or they can take full responsibility and become part of the solution. Sadly, BP’s CEO – Tony Hayward’s words, behaviour and demeanour have only but fueled the situation.

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster on many levels. And it appears that it could have been avoided. Questions are being asked of the CEO but answers to date have not been forthcoming – answers which could provide a deeper, systemic understanding about what went wrong and why and how best to deal with this major catastrophe. (more…)

Employee engagement is an issue of major concern for most organizations as the price of ambivalence or worse, disengagement in the work place can indeed be very costly. Employees are engaged when they have a sense of commitment to the company regarding it as a great place to work, when they willingly go the extra mile and put in the discretionary effort, and when they don’t want to work anywhere else.   According to global human resources management and outsourcing firm Hewitt, engagement is the extent to which an organisation has captured the ‘hearts and minds’ of its people and is made of three key behaviours – Say, Stay and Strive.  (more…)