Why is it that some leaders are able to stretch and build the intelligence, creativity and motivation of their employees, while other leaders seem only to disengage and drain the collective talent found within their teams? That’s the basis of my conversation with leadership researcher and best-selling author Liz Wiseman.

Liz is the president of The Wiseman Group, a research and development firm that conducts research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence. Some of her clients include Nike, Apple, PayPal, Genentech, Dubai Bank, Salesforce.com, and Twitter. Prior to founding her research firm, Liz worked for 17 years at Oracle as the Vice President of Oracle University and the global leaders for Human Resource Development.

In addition to writing for the Harvard Business Review, Liz co-wrote the Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter”, which features some of the research she’s done looking at leadership and collective intelligence.

Over the course of our conversation, Liz shares a number of stories and research findings that help to illustrate:

• What’s the “dirty little secret of the corporate world” that we don’t talk about and how it’s impacting employee engagement.
• How “multiplier” leaders stretch and grow talent to increase team productivity, instead of relying on attaining more resources to achieve goals.
• Why leaders need to go “public” with their mistakes to engender team success and building community.
• How encouraging debate can improve both decision-making and employee engagement.
• What “multiplier” leaders do that motivates their employees to do their best work.
• What the research findings into “multiplier” leaders reveals about opportunities to improve our education system in order to create leaders and employees that organizations will need in the years ahead.

Click here to continue reading »”Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast #11 – Liz Wiseman On How Leaders Grow Intelligence”

With only a few days left to this year, it’s natural that many of us are now breathing a sigh of relief that we’ve seen through the completion of another year at work. And if you’re one of the fortunate ones in today’s tough business climate, you’re probably also feeling that sense of relief that comes from achieving the goals we set out for ourselves, our team and our organization 11 months ago.

While many of us use the last week of December to rest and recuperate, it’s important that we not overlook the opportunity this time presents for reflection and review.

Indeed, whether this year was full of successes or losses, there is much that we can gain from the exercise of assessing not just what went right/wrong and why, but whether our efforts, culture, and beliefs remain aligned with our organization’s shared purpose.

To help with this process, I’d like to provide you with a series of questions to help you assess what lessons and insights you’ve learned over the past 12 months as you guided your organization towards your shared goals.  For those who’d like to examine some of the questions in further detail, I’m also providing a link to a piece I wrote this year that reveals something about each question and what you can do to help your employees to achieve their shared goals. Click here to continue reading »”What Have You Learned Going Forward?”

The following is a guest post by Mark Royal from The Hay Group.

What is it like to work for a high performing company? Hay Group’s High Performing Companies Norm provides an insider view. Our High Performing Companies Norm is based on survey data gathered from employees working in approximately 40 companies that are financial performance leaders.

Indeed, these organizations roughly double industry averages on five-year ROA, ROI and ROE. From a total rewards standpoint, high performing companies offer their employees a lot. But they also ask for a good bit in return.

The Good News

1. You’ll feel like the company puts people first
While organizations often proclaim that their people are their most important asset, many of them may not act like they really believe it. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Strategies, business models, products, and services can all be copied by competitors. Talented staff, by contrast, represent a more sustainable source of differentiation.

High performing companies demonstrate the value they place on their people by being open and honest in communications (65 percent favorable, +10 over our general industry norm) and showing concern for employees’ health and safety (80 percent, +5). They are also given high marks for taking employee interests into account when making decisions (66 percent, +11) and informing employees of reasons behind decisions that affect them (61 percent, +11).

2. You’ll be on a long leash
As highly desirable employers, high performing companies tend to recruit more than their fair share of the best and the brightest talent. And they leverage their talent both by Click here to continue reading »”Life In A High-Performing Company – An Insider View”

Over the last few years, whether we might like it or not, reality-based shows have become a regular staple on most television networks. For my wife and I, we’ve become fans of some of the recent cooking show competitions, especially those that put talented and experienced chefs against one another to see which ones are the top chefs in the group.

While we don’t consider ourselves “foodies”, we do find it educational and entertaining to watch how these respected and clearly talented chefs work to create an appetizing and innovative meal within a narrow time frame. These shows also prove to be insightful on how leaders can improve their ability to guide their organization forward in today’s evolving global market and workplaces.

To help illustrate some of the lessons we can learn from the experiences of these top chefs, let’s take a look at the following four questions to help you evaluate the approach you take in leading your team and organization towards attaining your shared goals.

1. Do you adapt to changing conditions or insist on sticking to what you know?
One of the staples of these cooking competitions is getting the participants to create a new dish using various obscure or undesirable ingredients, at times working under difficult or limited working conditions. The goal in these challenges is simple – to test the ability of these chefs to work outside of their comfort zone while creating a great meal consistent with their talent and experience.

In response to this challenge, Click here to continue reading »”What The Top Chefs Can Teach Us About Achieving Our Goals”