Category: Professional Development

Quick Tips for Maintaining Work-Life Balance

Is your work-life balance a bit lopsided?  Are work demands keeping you from being at your best with family, or is your work performance suffering because of life circumstances or repeated emergencies?  While we often talk about work-life balance in terms of making sure we protect family life in the…
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Three Types of Leadership Creativity

There are many forms of creativity – some creative ideas are abstract ideas that come from seemingly nowhere; other creative ideas are incremental improvements or a new way to frame a problem or an existing process. Most leaders excel at one or two types of creativity – this is driven…
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Choosing Creativity: A Problem-Solving Exercise

Some people are naturally creative. New ideas and innovative approaches come with ease, and they thrive on generating new possibilities or troubleshooting ideas.  Of course, creative ideas are just that – ideas – and leveraging that creativity for problem-solving can be challenging. For others, creativity does not flow as easily,…
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Creativity and Risk

Martin looked at his computer screen – he had been carefully drafting an email to his boss with a new idea, but was hesitant to push send. His boss, John, was known for being somewhat risk averse. New ideas were often rejected, with dismissive comments such as: We tried that…
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Finding the Meaning Behind Team-Building

Much is said about the benefits of team-building, but how do we do it in a way that doesn’t just feel like adult games at work? First, it is important to have a “why” behind the games—a larger learning point or goal that adults can get behind. Here’s an example.…
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Corporate Team-Building Activities

The best team-building exercises have a goal or purpose— one goal may be to provide a shared structured experience that allows team members to get to know each other better. Here are some ideas for team-building exercises that tend to achieve better team camaraderie. While this may take some planning,…
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Team-Building Activity: Playing the Cards

Here’s a team-building activity for adults that is fun and generates valuable information at the team level.  It works for teams of 6 to 60+ and requires only a stack of index cards (at least 3 cards per person) and pens or markers. First, create small groups of 2 to…
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Motivating Employees Through Employee Engagement Surveys

There are many survey tools available to assess employee engagement in your organization. This article provides ideas and activities to engage your employees through two simple and interactive employee surveys. These surveys will provide you with feedback about employee motivation and offer paths forward for increased engagement. Survey 1: Defining…
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8 Simple Activities that Build Employee Engagement

Thoughtfully motivating and engaging employees takes a concerted and systemic approach throughout the organization. That said, there are also simple activities that also support employee engagement — make it a point to do one a day and you will see the benefits in both the short and long term. Say…
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Connect to Engage

As a newly-promoted leader to the position of a project manager years ago, one of the most daunting tasks that I faced was the motivation of my team members. These were my former colleagues. We worked together as peers on project teams, and my technical expertise was recognized by many…
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