Performance Management

,

Absentee leaders and Zombie Managers: Hidden, Harmful and in need of Help

,
Absentee leaders and Zombie Managers: Hidden, Harmful and in need of Help

Absentee Leadership is where individuals occupy leadership positions (and enjoy their attending privileges) but neglect to fulfil many of leadership’s core responsibilities. They occupy leadership roles but fail to be present in them, are psychologically absentee (if not also physically absent!). Such leaders and managers, despite being prevalent and toxic to group and individual functioning, are often invisible to those in power. Why does it happen, why is it not addressed, and how can it be reversed?

, , ,

Evaluation from an Appreciative perspective

, , ,

People who are interested in the Appreciative Inquiry approach sometimes struggle to understand how they can apply it to the challenge of assessment or evaluation.

, , , , , ,

Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning

, , , , , ,

Lots of people feel instinctively that happiness and wellbeing at work must be important. But are they a business necessity or a ‘nice to have’. Surely it makes more sense to ensure your business is profitable and thriving before you start worrying about how people feel?

Increasingly research suggests that investing in employee wellbeing by ensuring positive work relationships, an emphasis on strengths-based development, and worker happiness has productivity pay-offs. So why delay, start promoting positive psychology practices at work today!

, ,

Guest Blog - Talent and determination get you there, but how do you get them? by Saira Iqbal of Zircon Management Consulting

, ,

We know it's important, where does it come form?

One of the most successful men I know grew up in the roughest streets of Bristol, and shared a cramped bedroom with his five brothers until he could  leave the family home and ‘escape’ to his second choice university.  Now a multi-millionaire cabinet minister, each of his milestones made it more and more apparent that his success was no simple stroke of luck.

There were no useful networks that his working class parents were a part of, there was no private school education to teach social poise; but there was drive that came from great ambition and pure determination.

, , , , ,

Women Make Groups Cleverer! (Evidence for collective intelligence)

, , , , ,

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:That the collective intelligence of a group is more than the sum of its parts and that the presence of women in a group is key to high collective intelligence

, , , , , ,

Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

, , , , , ,

Much research has now confirmed happiness has many benefits. One easy way to use positive psychology to bring these benefits into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. All too often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. Starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success not only boost people’s mood in the moment, it also prepares them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow. As an added bonus,  we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.

, ,

How To Improve Compliance In Organizations

, ,

When people don’t comply with legal requirements organizations can face penalties and fines running into the thousands. To take just a few recent examples

 

In November last year a Greater London pizza manufacturer was fined £15,000 after failing to respond to warnings about an unsafe doorway. 

 

Also in November Hertfordshire County Council accidentally faxed details of two cases it was dealing with to a member of the public and was fined £100,000 for breaching the Data Protection Act.

, , ,

The Hidden Costs Of Rudeness

, , ,

We all know rudeness is an unpleasant aspect of life, did you also know it has a cost attached? Two researchers, Porath and Erez, have spent years exploring the effect of rudeness on people at work, this is what they have found:

 

    Between 1998 and 2005 the percentage of employees who reported experiencing rudeness once or more in a week doubled from almost 25% to almost 50%. Indeed in 2005 25% of employees reported experiencing rudeness at least once a day.

Does Happiness Contribute To Success? Reasons To Be Cheerful

While much research confirms that successful outcomes can foster happiness, it has tended to be seen as a one-way linear relationship: you have to be successful to be happy. But might it be more of a circular relationship? A virtuous circle where being happy makes it more likely you will succeed? In 2005 Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener and Laura King pulled together all the research they could find that addressed the question: does happiness contribute to success?

,

Charming Devils And The Mischief They Make

,

It is increasingly apparent that sometimes people with severe personality disorders (narcissistic, psychopathic, paranoid and schizoid) slip through the organizational selection net. The problem is they don’t appear in our midst with ‘trouble’ tattooed on their foreheads, instead they are often rather charming devils who do very well until they fall (and bring everyone else down with them).

,

Ten Top Tips For Courageous Conversations At Work

,

Many people at some point in their working lives have to have a difficult conversation with someone. It might be about a performance issues or something more personal. It can be with a peer, a subordinate or indeed a boss. Very often people are highly anxious, understandably so, about having this conversation. They then either avoid it for so long that when they do tackle it it comes as a complete shock to the other party, or they rush at it like a bull in a china shop just to get it over with. Here are some tips to help produce a good result

, ,

How Working With Strengths Can Improve Performance

, ,

Our strengths are those abilities we have that are hardwired into our ways of doing things. They are a combination of genetics we inherited and the environment in which we were raised. By the time we are adults some neural pathways are much more practiced than others. We have habitual ways of being and behaving that we find effortless: indeed almost irresistible. These, in essence, are our strengths. We might use them for good or evil, with or without much skill, but they are our go-to, default way of being in the world. While they can and frequently do get us into trouble when applied badly or inappropriately, they are also our greatest asset. And yet....

, ,

Five Ways to Get Your Team Working More Effectively

, ,

Teams are the building blocks of organizations. Teams are groups of people who work together to achieve things, but not all groups are teams. Teams are characterized by interdependencies, in other words team members have to work together to get things done. While this interdependency creates the potential for the whole to be more productive and creative than the sum of the parts, it can just as easily be a recipe for frustration and conflict. How can you help your team get the most out of working together?

, ,

How Does Positive Organisational Behaviour Turn Into Positive Organisational Performance

, ,

Positive organisational scholarship researcher Kim Cameron reports that flourishing organisations, that is organisations that are success as well as being described as great places to work, exhibit three key cultural characteristics.

,

Performance management and appraisals - common pitfalls and how to do it successfully

,

Too often appraisals are seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.