I am so delighted to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the start-up of Gail Golden Consulting with all of you. This is really a joyful day for me, and for the many people who have supported and collaborated with GGC over the past decade.
Hiring the right manager, and how it can transform your business
Early in my career as a management psychologist I had the good fortune to learn the importance of hiring the right manager. I was helping a major retailer transform the way it did business. Anyone who has participated in a large-scale change initiative knows how difficult it is to turn a company around. There are all kinds of barriers — inertia, fear, turf battles, company politics, the list goes on and on.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons from that project. One important insight was that the key player in this kind of change process is the store manager. More than the front-line workers and more than the corporate honchos, the store manager has the presence, the customer contact, and the clout to make change happen — or not. When we focused our change efforts on the store managers, the effect was very powerful.
6 leadership lessons learned by crash landing a plane
In a sea of demoralizing news stories, it’s important to remember the leadership lessons learned during the wonderful events. It’s been 10 years since Captain “Sully” Sullenberger managed to land his disabled passenger plane on the Hudson River, saving the lives of every single passenger and crew member. It was a remarkable and inspiring achievement.
Billions, and a warning about coaches who bring their “B game”
Wendy Rhoades, performance coach extraordinaire, is back in the new season of Showtime’s Billions, the melodrama about life in the world of high-flying hedge funds and unscrupulous prosecutors.
My networking tips for women? Stop these 3 bad habits at events
I am fortunate to be invited to a lot of women’s meetings, and they often give me a chance to think of appropriate networking tips for women. It’s great to be around high-powered women and enjoy their energy and their achievements — but it also needs to be great for business. Coming together is one of the ways we as women overcome obstacles, help each other, and thrive.
Receiving critical feedback effectively starts with a fearless analysis
My client, we’ll call her Amy, was receiving critical feedback, and she was upset. Her direct reports were skipping constructive criticism and going straight for harsh descriptions of her leadership style. Several of her team members described her as demanding, too bossy, and overly emotional.
As a senior executive, Amy understood how important it was to engage and motivate her team. She had worked for both good and bad bosses and recognized the differences between them. She was shocked and hurt by the feedback, and unsure of how to handle the criticism with grace.
The dangerous myth of the person who has it all
One of the first executives I coached was a golden boy — let’s call him Christopher. In his early thirties, he was bright, handsome, and well-spoken. He had a beautiful wife and three lovely young children. He had been promoted four times in the past twenty months. From others’ perspective, Christopher was leading a charmed life. He had it all.
So why was he coming to see a psychologist? Underneath his polished exterior, Christopher was paralyzed and overwhelmed. When we finished our first meeting, I offered to see him again in a week. He paused and replied, “If it’s ok with you, I’d like to come back sooner than that.” So I scheduled a meeting for us in four days.
A compassionate bereavement policy that sees the employee as a person
“As baby boomers age, ‘we are in for a death boom’” the Chicago Tribune recently proclaimed. The older you are, the more people you know who are dying. Since baby boomers are staying in the workforce longer than recent generations, that means there will be more grieving people in the workplace over the next few years — and more use of the company bereavement policy.
Business leaders may ask, “So what?” It sounds heartless, but the purpose of a for-profit company is to make money. It’s not a therapeutic community. What is the responsibility of employers or colleagues to respond when someone has suffered a personal loss?
How to optimize HR for the modern workforce
As the shape of business shifts rapidly, it’s crucial to optimize HR for the task of attracting, retaining, and motivating top talent in an evolving landscape. Many human resource practices that were effective in 2009 are now outdated. Here are the top trends in HR today, as outlined by Linda Villalobos at Insperity, along with my recommendations for how business leaders can respond with focus and agility.
How to adapt your leadership toolbox and embrace free trait theory
I call it the leadership toolbox, a model for leadership development that focuses on the tools available to you. After years of helping leaders become more effective by identifying their styles, I needed a way to talk about the behaviors and mental models that come naturally to us. The “toolbox” metaphor fit — a place where we keep all of the techniques that help us achieve results.
The one magazine every business leader needs to read
As we business leaders enter 2019, we’re looking ahead to what the new year will bring. I keep running into the term “VUCA,” which stands for volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. That doesn’t begin to describe what many leaders are seeing as we review the waning year and plan for what’s ahead.
Generational differences in the workplace are a myth — and a harmful one
Oh, those millennials and their generational differences in the workplace! We continue to tear out our hair about their horrible qualities — the laziness! the impatience! the entitlement! The list goes on and on. A colleague of mine recently send me a video of speaker Simon Sinek talking about the awful millennials — first, about how useless they are, and second, about how they’re really just helpless victims of their upbringing and their environment.
When gravitas matters more than authenticity
I came of age in an anti-authoritarian time when executive gravitas rang false to many of us. The suits and ties, the gloves and girdles of the ‘50s were replaced by the sandals and long hair of the hippies. One of our catchphrases was, “If it feels good, do it.” The phrase captured a mindset that being true to yourself and living the good life meant acting on your impulses and sharing everything — thoughts, feelings, desires, and choices.
The current emphasis on “authenticity” shows just how much this stance has swung back into favor. Both in our personal and professional lives, some coaches are advising us, as people and as leaders, to be open and true to our feelings and preferences.