The following is a guest post by Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson.

Is your employee a risk-taker, or does he avoid risks like the plague? Does she get uncomfortable with too much optimism or praise, or is she known for her sunny outlook? Do some assignments always seem particularly hard for her, while she excels at others naturally?

The answers to these questions give you a window into your employee’s motivational focus – something every leader needs to understand in order to give feedback and create incentives that are persuasive and motivating.

There are two ways to look at the goals we pursue at work (and in life). Let’s start with a goal many of us share: “doing my job well.” For some of us, doing our jobs well is about the potential for advancement, achievement and rewards. It’s about what we might gain if we are successful, how we might end up better off. If you are (or your employee is) someone who sees goals this way, you have what’s called a promotion focus.

For the rest of us, doing our jobs well is about security – about not losing everything we’ve worked so hard for. When you are prevention focused, you want to avoid danger, fulfill your responsibilities, and be someone people can count on. You want to keep things running smoothly.

What’s important to know is that promotion and prevention-focused people work very differently to Click here to continue reading »”Is Your Team Promotion Or Prevention-Focused? Here’s Why It Matters To Leaders”

The following is a guest piece by author Dennis N.T. Perkins and Jillian B. Murphy.

In 1998, a tiny 35-foot boat called the AFR Midnight Rambler accomplished an amazing feat — winning one of the toughest ocean races in the world. The Sydney to Hobart is demanding every year, but in ’98, an unexpected “weather bomb” hit the fleet, creating 80-foot waves and 100-mile-per-hour winds.

While bigger, better-equipped boats tried to maneuver around the storm, the crew of the AFR Midnight Rambler chose to head directly into its path, and ultimately won the coveted Tattersall’s Cup — the smallest boat in ten years.

How did they do it? And what lessons can we learn from this team of “amateur” sailors to make our own teams more successful?

One of the keys to the Midnight Rambler‘s success was their ability to recover quickly from setbacks. Just as people vary in their ability to deal with stress, so do teams. And like individuals, teams can develop the capacity for rebounding from pressure and setbacks. Click here to continue reading »”Into The Storm: 4 Lessons In Teamwork From The High Seas”

The following is a guest piece by digital and business strategist Joe Wozny.

Success comes in many forms . . . including digital marketing success. The digital marketing promise has always included the ability to measure the impact of your online marketing dollars. Delivering on this promise has been a challenging activity that many leaders grapple with when measuring digital marketing benchmarks for success.

How can digital marketing deliver on measurement – particularly in an increasingly, socially saturated world? Should and can digital marketing success be gauged on items broader than just analytic measurement?

Framing ROI
The reality is: business needs to measure things. Measurement creates a context of success and progress. Without measurement, you can’t address where you are generating value or profits nor gauge where new or continued efforts should be directed.

Regardless of how it’s asked, “are we earning a return for our digital dollars” is a “hot button” marketing question poised by leaders, management and operating staff. Agreeing to what is being measured, and how to measure it, are natural follow up questions to this “hot button” item.

To address return on investment in the digital landscape, Click here to continue reading »”Understanding How Organizations Can Measure Digital Success”

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?”