Coaching Leaders about Employee Attraction and Retention

It’s a seller’s labor market. Jobs everywhere are going unfilled. Unfilled jobs handicap an organization’s ability to deliver on its promises. Unfilled jobs can even become an existential crisis for some companies.  Let’s look at how you might be able to help. Most companies seem to think that money is the answer. But for organizations looking to get out in front of their competitors for talent, it is only part of the answer. Unfortunately, many leaders don’t know what to do when they play the money card and it doesn’t work. Dan Pink, in his book Drive, talks about what motivates employees beyond money. Pink notes that the thinking and practices that most companies use today evolved to solve problems that were very different from the ones your client organizations now face. He calls it Management 1.0. Those problems and solutions have their roots in the Industrial Revolution. In those…

Overcoming Resistance to Change

These days, leaders who are asked to participate in EQ workshops are far less resistant to the idea of EQ than they were when I started the EQ Leader Program in 2004. The value of EQ has become largely accepted by most leaders in the executive ranks, though in truth, many people want “that other guy” to get some EQ, conveniently overlooking their own gaps. I bet you have stories to tell that would back this up! No matter how brilliant coaches, trainers, and development programs may be, participants will resist the changes requested. They will resist them even when they want to change. This blog post talks about some ways to partner with participants to overcome that resistance.  Resistance is a part of every learning process. Don’t take it personally. It’s just the way we human beings are. Plan for it. You may even feel some resistance as you…

Obey Nature’s Laws – Part One

Our blog is devoted to helping executive coaches, and the organizations that use their services, to succeed. For our purposes, “succeed” means this: Executives will achieve sustainable behavior change that transforms and improves their leadership skills. People want to follow high EQ leaders.  Ignore Mother Nature at Your Peril.  To achieve sustainable behavior change, the relevant laws, or principles, of psychological science regarding learning must be understood and followed. Otherwise, you will swim upstream and get disappointing results. These principles of learning have been bred into human beings since the dawn of time. And remember: Mother Nature always wins.  Fortunately, once understood, these principles are easy to follow. In this post, and the next one, we’ll talk about how you can apply the ten principles to your leader development program. This post describes the first five principles. The next post will describe the other five. (For extended discussions of these…