Leadership and Staffing

Leadership is a tough job. Not only do you have to be adept at managing multiple priorities, but you also have to possess expert people skills. After all, regardless of industry, a leader is only as good as his or her team. Without the buy-in and respect of your employees, you’ll have a difficult time accomplishing the organization’s goals. The challenge, then, is figuring out how to be irresistible to your team—how to create the conditions by which people can’t resist your message and vision and therefore want to align and partner with you.

You may know your business or your industry well. But do you know anything about yourself? Forward thinking executives and business leaders evaluate their employees and clients to help better understand work styles and personality types. Sales trainers try to understand the types of buyers their sales people are talking to and how those buyers will make purchasing decisions. Marketers try to understand the personality types that one can reach out to and how those personalities will receive a message. Understanding the types of people one works with is important knowledge especially for executives.

Many, if not most people, would argue that the ability for an organization to change over time is critical to that organization’s long-term survival. To this end, the literature is full of theories, methodologies, recommendations and analysis on how an organization should be structured in order to maximize the likelihood of obtaining successful change.

The key to long-term survival for many businesses is having a woman in charge, according to Cornell University researchers.

While you might think that having people fear you to some degree is good, fear in a relationship actually has many negative effects. In fact, research shows that when people are operating in fear, it impairs their analytical thinking skills, decreases their creative insight, and reduces their problem solving abilities—the exact things workplaces need to succeed in today’s marketplace.

A new study finds that corporate downsizing reduces managerial diversity, especially when layoff decisions consider workers’ position or tenure. But when layoffs are based on performance evaluations, managerial diversity remains intact — at least when it comes to white women and blacks.

To successfully navigate workplace conflict, managers must be able to confront team members in a positive, productive manner. Whatever the situation, whether two people are actively quarreling, or whether one person’s behavior is impacting the entire work culture, a manager must be able to step in, take charge and do so in a way that does not contribute to the drama.











