Learning from the pros Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Amplify Your Business, produced by Amplomedia in partnership with Troy Media, will interview professional entrepreneurs who are currently in the trenches growing their businesses. Through insightful conversations, we will be unpacking their common business challenges and identifying the lessons every business owner needs to learn so…
Creative hiring strategies can be the big difference between success and failure
Hiring employees has been difficult for many employers in the current job market. This is a result of a number of factors, including an aging workforce, the "great resignation," and a booming economy. While this will change in time, here are five things you might consider that will improve your chances of success if you…
Short of standing behind them with a pitchfork, what can you do to get the best from others?
Motivating yourself can be difficult at times, but motivating other people offers a different kind of challenge. Short of standing behind them with a pitchfork and an evil grin or offering them a gazillion dollars, what can you do to get the best from others, be they employees, colleagues, or even family (although that’s a…
Employees are keen to learn new skills. That is a positive for business leaders
The importance of employee upskilling has been heightened since the pandemic. The world of work has changed faster and in more fundamental ways than any of us have experienced before. However, the speed at which digital transformation has taken place has not been matched by the supply of talent available for these roles. This is…
Collaboration begins by building on those positive qualities that already exist in your team
Several years ago, I was in Germany working with a group of high-potential employees worldwide. Their organization had identified them as valuable candidates for leadership development. It was quite an event – a week of various topics and speakers with dog sledding as the team-building event the afternoon before my program. (Which was quite a…
Not everyone is designed to thrive in the traditional workplace
Had the COVID-19 pandemic ended sooner, there’s every possibility that office life would have returned to ‘normal.’ In 2021, we were all hoping to go back to the office. Today, office workers are putting their foot down en masse and refusing to return. Having adapted to remote work and proving themselves capable of being productive,…
The success of any organization or team hinges on the strength of the relationships of its employees
Xerox Corporation, in the 1980s, was looking for a way to boost the productivity of its field service staff. An anthropologist from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) travelled with a group of tech reps to observe how they did their jobs – not how they described what they did, or what their managers…
Learning from the pros Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Amplify Your Business, produced by Amplomedia in partnership with Troy Media, will interview professional entrepreneurs who are currently in the trenches growing their businesses. Through insightful conversations, we will be unpacking their common business challenges and identifying the lessons every business owner needs to learn so…
How do you attract and retain over 50s talent?
As we lead longer and healthier lives, the reality for many of us is that we will need to, or indeed want to, work longer than previous generations. However, despite this, ageism in the workplace continues to hold people and businesses back. Ageism at work largely ignores the many positive attributes mature-age colleagues bring to…
Do nothing? Fire the staff member? Throw in the towel and sell the business?
George has a small manufacturing plant he bought six months ago because it had good revenue and came with some real estate. However, he didn’t know much, if anything, about the industry. The previous owners kept everything in their heads and had very little documentation. George quickly realized that customer orders were being lost, there…
Building your team the right way is essential for your company's long-term success
The three most common reasons startups fail are having the wrong product, running out of capital and having the wrong team. Today, I will focus on building your startup team. How do you attract, build, and expand your team as a startup? How do you keep them engaged, creative, and focused on tasks? How do…
Competitive salaries, fitting benefits, flexible schedule, value-based hiring, and creativity
“We just can’t find anybody qualified to do the job for us.” This is a line I hear regularly in working with clients lately. In some parts of the country, there’s a drastic shortage of labour. That’s putting a strain on the ability of many leaders to fill spots in their organizations with qualified staff.…
Treat them the way they wish to be treated
Bill Toppeta, a former executive officer of MetLife, Inc., once told the Fordham Leadership Forum, “What you need to know as the leader is what motivates your people, not what motivates you.” To bring this philosophy into reality, here is the simple yet revealing exercise Toppeta used: He would distribute a questionnaire to managers and…
It doesn’t take much to make people feel left out
Naomi Eisenberger, a social neuroscience researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), designed an experiment to find out what goes on in the brain when people feel rejected by others. She had volunteers play a computer game while their brains were scanned by fMRI machines. Subjects thought they were playing a ball-tossing…
Before jumping into a team-building session, ask yourself if it really going to resolve the issue
Leading a team requires a skill set that is completely different from that of managing direct reports, the people who work directly under you. I have worked for leaders who were great at galvanizing a team but ineffective one-on-one, and amazing bosses who were terrible team leads. Actually, most of the people I’ve worked for…