Supporting Frontline Workers Is a Boon to the Bottom Line

With proper attention and investment, frontline workers constitute a motivated workforce that can unleash an organization’s highest potential.

3 Types of Silos That Stifle Collaboration—and How to Dismantle Them

The silo effect, characterized by limited communication between specialized business departments, can negatively impact communication and collaboration in organizations. In particular, there are three types of silos: systemic, elitist, and protectionist, each requiring specific strategies for resolution. These targeted solutions—aligning goals, improving communication, and fostering secure data sharing—can help dismantle silos and foster a more collaborative environment.

Amid Rapid-Fire Workplace Change, Pulse Surveys Emerge

Companies should seek ways to track real-time employee experiences and gain insights into issues affecting employees’ work lives and their organizations’ performance. Leaders realize that engaging employees takes more than sending out an annual survey. Instead, it requires a year-long people strategy aimed at clarifying expectations and maximizing performance. To that end, leaders want a way to gather employee feedback throughout the year. Thus, the … [ Read more ]

B2B Organic Growth Demands a Strong Organizational Identity

In Gallup’s experience, companies that want to create or sustain a strong culture can only do so by focusing on the larger dynamic: their organizational identity.

Organizational identity is made up of three interrelated elements: purpose, brand and culture.

  • Purpose: Why does our organization exist, and why are we here?
  • Brand: How are we known to the world?
  • Culture: How do we live, and how do we accomplish

[ Read more ]

What Drives Managers to Sabotage Talented Employees

Intense competition in the workplace may lead managers to sabotage talented employees to protect their own job security, says research by Hashim Zaman and Karim Lakhani.

Crossing the mental Rubicon: Don’t let decisiveness backfire

We demand that leaders be decisive, but research in social psychology and behavioral economics suggests that decisiveness is not an unequivocal good. Studies on “mindset” reveal that, when contemplating an important decision, prematurely focusing on execution can exacerbate decision-making biases and lead to overconfidence and excessive risk-taking.

How to Bring Out the Best in Your People and Company

Connecting with others and belonging are basic human needs that are essential to being our best selves.

When we leave an experience where we presented our imperfect selves yet felt belonging, we feel energized and at our best. When we leave an experience where we presented our imperfect selves and were ignored or ridiculed, we feel deeply disconnected and disengaged.

This is as true at work as … [ Read more ]

4 Listening Skills Leaders Need to Master

Leaders who listen well create company cultures where people feel heard, valued, and engaged. In addition, employees who experience high-quality listening report greater levels of job satisfaction and psychological safety. If you’re interested in sharpening your listening skills, try using these four techniques: (1) Listen until the end — don’t jump in or interrupt the speaker; (2) Listen to summarize the problem, not to solve … [ Read more ]

Go, teams: When teams get healthier, the whole organization benefits

Creating effective teams depends on multiple factors, including high levels of trust and communication, and understanding team context. A new approach helps elevate performance and create value.

Why Workers Should Evaluate Their Managers

Implementing bottom-up feedback can improve management and productivity, according to research by Wharton’s Shing-Yi Wang.

Well-Being Enhances Benefits of Employee Engagement

Two major factors influence employee performance, Gallup has found: engagement and well-being. Gallup measures engagement for employees through the Q12 survey, which consists of 12 actionable items with proven links to performance outcomes. And with Healthways, we measure well-being through five elements that are crucial to a life well-lived.

Now, many organizations measure and evaluate their employees’ engagement, while others focus on improving their workers’ well-being. … [ Read more ]

Research: When Bonuses Backfire

Why do bonuses sometimes backfire? It’s because each incentive design choice both signals information about your own beliefs and intentions as an employer and shapes the signaling value of employee behavior within the organization. If you don’t think through these signals carefully, you may end up approving a bonus scheme with results that are the opposite of what you intend. This article offers a way … [ Read more ]

What I learned from Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman was the psychologist whose findings helped launch behavioral economics. The encouraging words he shared with me offer good news for organizations.

Strengths-Based Employee Development: The Business Results

Key findings from Gallup’s major study of companies that have implemented strengths-based management practices.

Four Keys to Boosting Inclusion and Beating Burnout

Organizations can focus their attention on just these four areas to diagnose where they may be falling short in their efforts to meet employees’ needs.

  • Our survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries found that nearly half are dealing with burnout, which heightens attrition and lowers morale, engagement, and productivity.
  • Burnout is highly correlated with low feelings of inclusion.
  • The four sentiments that have the greatest impact on

[ Read more ]

A Growth Strategy that Creates and Protects Value

For organizations to truly innovate and grow, leaders in every role and at every organizational level must be attuned to how they are creating new value while simultaneously protecting existing value. Just as a soccer coach must simultaneously pursue both scoring and defending, leaders must constantly focus their attention on opportunities to create value — through innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation — and to protect value … [ Read more ]

Why so many bad bosses still rise to the top

Narcissism. Overconfidence. Low EQ. Why do we persist in selecting for leadership traits that hamper organizational progress—and leave the right potential leaders in the wrong roles?

Rethinking organizational health for the new world of work

Yes, organizational health still drives long-term performance—but the way leaders measure and diagnose health should change, new research shows.

Are middle managers in or out?

IESE Profs. Anneloes Raes and Mireia Las Heras consider the pros and cons of non-hierarchical companies.