5 Mistakes Managers Make When Giving Negative Feedback

Confronting direct reports about performance issues can feel overwhelming, especially for first-time managers, who may worry that sharing critical feedback could damage their relationship with the employee. But performance conversations, especially where you need to give critical feedback, don’t have to be scary. There are a few common mistakes to avoid when giving critical feedback. One of the biggest mistakes is avoiding the conversation or waiting … [ Read more ]

8 Practical Tips for Leaders for a Better Onboarding Process

More than ever, leaders need rich onboarding experiences that help remote workers integrate with the company and become productive team members.

Are you overlooking your greatest source of talent?

Few large companies have cultures of internal mobility that can help meet skill shortages, prepare the next generation of leaders, and fuel a virtuous talent cycle.

The big power of small goals

Employees who are disciplined about setting daily goals not only accomplish more but also feel better about their work. Here are three ways that managers can make daily goal-setting a habit.

Elevate Your Performance Review Conversations with these 12 Expert Tips

But it doesn’t have to be such a chore. When done well, performance reviews are an incredibly valuable exercise that enables a manager and direct report to track growth over time, align on how the work impacts what matters most to the business, and build a more open and trusting relationship. The conversation should flow both ways — a back-and-forth dialogue, not a lecture.

That’s why … [ Read more ]

Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage

A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge.

Scott Galloway’s Section 4: Business Education At A Fraction Of The Cost Of An MBA

Section 4, a growing online platform for business education founded by Scott Galloway and working with top business professors and practitioners, distills MBA-quality courses into two- to three-week sprints in topics such as Product Positioning, Brand Strategy, Data & Analytics, Customer-Centered Innovation and more. Sprints are designed to be short, intense, and instantly applicable. They deliver the content at a fraction of the cost of … [ Read more ]

Why People Crave Feedback—and Why We’re Afraid to Give It

How am I doing? Research by Francesca Gino and colleagues shows just how badly employees want to know. Is it time for managers to get over their discomfort and get the conversation going at work?

Your Startup’s Management Training Probably Sucks — Here’s How to Make it Better

At early-stage companies, where you’re still wrestling with product/market fit and building up the company foundation, management often falls to the back burner, leaving folks to generally figure it all out for themselves. However, many of the cracks that emerge as startups scale can be traced back to those missing managerial cornerstones.

One root cause? Manager training, which is largely ignored by startups as a BigCo bucket … [ Read more ]

How to be a great sponsor

When you’re asked to help young, underrepresented talent succeed, here’s what you’ll need to know to do the job right.

Pull, Don’t Push: Designing Effective Feedback Systems

To get favorable results from performance evaluations, evaluators must set positive expectations, showing that they believe improvements can be made, and that the feedback itself — even negative feedback — is an opportunity to learn rather than a punitive final word. They should also be willing to assist with concrete steps toward the suggested improvements, including coaching and goal setting. Done correctly, performance feedback can … [ Read more ]

7 Problems With Your Onboarding Program

Over the past decade, many organizations have developed onboarding programs to improve retention, engagement and their overall employee experience.

But a recent study by Gallup has found that most organizations are falling woefully short of the mark. Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.

The consequences are significant regrettable turnover within the first year of employment and low … [ Read more ]

5 Questions Every Onboarding Program Must Answer

From Gallup’s perspective, onboarding should do two important things:

  1. fulfill the promises made during the hiring process
  2. lay the foundation for long-term engagement and performance

So what aspects of onboarding are proven to lay the foundation for consistent high performance?

Here are the five questions every employee needs to have answered if they are to have an exceptional onboarding experience.

Revealing Leaders’ Blind Spots

There is very little overlap between the management areas leaders think they need to improve and the weaknesses identified by those they lead. Reconciling these differences will improve leaders and their organizations.

Six Keys to Unlocking Upskilling at Scale

Research suggests that with the right mind-set, technological literacy, and community engagement, you can shepherd your entire workforce into the digital future.

The ‘Hidden Talent’ That Determines Success

In our era of globalization, your job performance may depend on your “CQ”. So what is it?

A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills

With critical thinking ranking among the most in-demand skills for job candidates, you would think that educational institutions would prepare candidates well to be exceptional thinkers, and employers would be adept at developing such skills in existing employees. Unfortunately, both are largely untrue.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

To demystify what critical thinking is and how it is developed, our team at Zarvana turned … [ Read more ]

The Essential Components of a Successful L&D Strategy

The ACADEMIES framework is a useful tool for conceptualizing learning strategy.