Category: Management, Supervision & Leadership
Seven Simple Actions that Build Employee Motivation
Thoughtfully motivating employees requires focused energy and a diverse set of motivational strategies and tools. There are also simple activities that can support employee motivation. Here’s a list of opportunities to motivate others. Commit to them, and you will see positive outcomes in both the short and long term. Say…
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Advancing Leadership for Women
2018 has seen a lot of women’s movements with women rising up in media, politics and business. While there have been positive changes there are still few women in today’s top leadership roles. According to the Pew Report [1] women occupy less than 22% in the US Senate, US House…
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Building New Leaders
In Pryor Learning seminars, we often meet professionals who are eager to lead, but are not yet supervisors or managers. Many say, “I’m not a leader yet;” or ask, “How do I lead when I have no control?” Our seminars and online learning focus on developing leadership competencies in emerging…
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Three Management Success Books
Looking for some good management books for National Reading Month? Here are three that have been around a while but remain timeless in their insights. “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (North River Press; 30th Anniversary Edition; 2014). Who thought an operations management book could be such…
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Building a New Project Team
Many articles focus on the importance of teamwork. Often, these articles assume the team is in place, and your goal is to introduce team building activities that maximize its performance. In this article, we share activities that can help build a project team when it is first getting started: Define…
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Great Team Building Icebreakers
Sometimes, a team doesn’t need or isn’t quite ready for an in-depth set of team building activities. Maybe it’s a team that is just forming after reorganization, or maybe it’s a team of individual contributors and teamwork is less essential to success. In these cases, team building icebreakers can be…
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Selecting Team Building Activities: Maximizing the Benefits
Many managers are interested in realizing the benefits of team building, but aren’t sure where to start in selecting team building activities. Here are some questions to ask when selecting effective activities for your team: Is there a clear learning point? Effective teambuilding activities are designed to highlight and develop…
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What Is Agile Leadership? Core Agile Principles
The dictionary defines “agile” as, “able to move quickly and easily.” Effective agile leaders exercise this definition at organizations every day. For leaders, new to this approach, let’s look at some key principles: Incremental delivery of usable product – Part of moving quickly is developing products or services quickly, and…
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Agile Leadership: Playing to Your Strengths
The “Agile Manifesto” was published more than a decade ago, but agile leadership is here to stay. Originally designed to help leaders create better software, the manifesto emphasizes the importance of individuals and interactions, working products developed in an iterative approach, customer collaboration and responding to change (Agile Manifesto, 2001).…
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Agile Leadership in Times of Rapid Change
As we write this post, leaders throughout Texas, Florida and Georgia are guiding recovery efforts following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. They are making tough choices about where to send resources; leading teams of people that have experienced personal loss; and making decisions in the moment that impact thousands of lives…
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