2011
Sometimes it’s the little things
One of our focuses at McBassi is measuring an organization’s “leadership environment.” Key elements of a good leader include central “boss” responsibilities like successfully eliminating barriers that make it difficult for his/her employees to get work done well.
But it’s important to keep the little things in mind as well. A recent WSJ article describes five signs you’re a bad boss. Among them? One word emails and failure to talk to employee face-to-face.
2010
Say it ain’t so
Here’s a juicy update from a reader (who, for reasons that will become obvious, prefers to remain anonymous). He works for a struggling company, with an ogre of a CEO. The CEO saw employees’ highly unfavorable ratings of him on Glassdoor.com, and instructed the IT department to turn over the names of any employee who had (unwisely) logged onto Glassdoor.com from their work computer, so that he could fire them.
Not surprisingly, it turns out this did little to improve employees’ ratings of him, and even less to improve the performance of the company.
But there is still a valuable lesson here. Be sure to log onto Glassdoor.com from your home computer!
2010
What employees need from leaders
Leadership is a key pillar of organizational success – it’s one of the three “environments” that we capture in assessing organizations through the McBassi People Index®.
There’s a great post on the HBR blog by Cleve Stevens about the 4 needs that leaders must satisfy for their employees: the need to love and be loved, the need to grow, the need to contribute, and the need for meaning.
Stevens argues that meeting all of these needs through the employment relationship is not easy, but when it does happen, “people instinctively play a bigger game, and show up in a more passionate, creative, engaged, and effective way.”
And, of course, every organization could use more of that!