Build meaningful conversations in your organization

Gallup's 2024 Employee Engagement Checklist includes this: Prepare managers to have meaningful conversations with their employees.

It goes on to define 5 characteristics of a meaningful conversation:

1) Recognition or appreciation for recent work.

2) Collaboration and relationships.

3) Current goals and priorities at work.

4) The length of the conversation: Between 15 and 30 minutes is enough time for a meaningful conversation, but only if it happens frequently.

5) Employee strengths or the things they do well: Managers can have much more meaningful discussions about how each person gets their work done if those conversations are based on what they do best. The takeaway is that feedback is meaningful to employees when their manager focuses on recognition, collaboration, goals and priorities, and strengths. And if these conversations happen every week, they can be brief. Naturally, problems and challenges will arise — and managers and employees should discuss them — but to improve engagement, managers must have conversations that inspire each individual.

As you have these meaningful conversations, taking communication preferences into account will make these successful and Wiley's Everything DiSC portfolio provides data to help each person adapt to the other's preferences. DM me for more information.

Let's work together to get your team certified in DiSC!

Build your team's ability to engage and get the best from your workforce using the DiSC family of profiles by asking me to lead their certification! DM me to set up a schedule that works for all of us.

Pay Attention to your Managers

From Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace Report:

The hard job of managing people has gotten even harder in recent years.
New demands for worker flexibility in the remote and hybrid workplace and increased risk of employee mental health problems add to the already difficult job of managing. In 2023, Gallup found one in five employees reported feeling loneliness, anger, or sadness during a lot of the previous day, and four in 10 felt a lot of stress.

Managers already have many responsibilities such as carrying out leadership initiatives, keeping up to date with customer and product needs, monitoring time and expenses, performance management, and training. But their role of inspiring people has never been more urgent. They are uniquely positioned to know each employee’s specific needs, career goals and work-life situation.

You can build your managers role awareness, engagement and capacity with the Everything DiSC Management profile either on the Catalyst platform or through traditional training. DM me for more info or a demo.

2023 Wiley Annual Report on the State of the Workplace

Wiley Workplace Intelligence does ongoing research about the state of our workplaces and here are the top 10 takeaways from their 2023 Annual Report:

1. People are optimistic about the future of their organization. In addition, a large majority of respondents also shared that managing the well-being of their people while achieving results continues to be a priority.

2. Communication is the most important quality in a leader. It's clear that there is a need for more communication and relationship building skills in order to increase psychological safety across all organizational levels.

3. Communication has a direct impact on engagement. The frequency and kind of communication in your organization has a direct impact on the engagement, morale, and productivity of your people.

4. Individual contributors feel less safe than executives taking risks at work. A psychologically safe environment as defined by Amy Edmonson of Harvard B-School, is an environment where we feel comfortable taking risks, expressing ideas and concerns, asking questions, and admitting mistakes without fear of negative consequences.

5. Generations have more in common than not. Surprisingly, respondents largely feel understood by other generations regardless of the generation they belong to.

6. Managers lack training on how to manage conflict. Only 57% of managers reported receiving training around conflict management.

7. Upskilling employees fills the widening skills gap. Most organizations in the study didn't have a clearly identified process for identifying current skills gaps. But, almost half (42%) reported that technical skills were the most critical missing "hard" skills with interpersonal skills following at 36%.

8. Where you work doesn't impact organizational culture. Many organizations made a return-to-office push in 2023. There were concerns about the impacts of remote work on organizational culture and many companies moved from completely remote to hybrid models or required a full return to the office. This research found that location doesn’t have as big of an impact as we might expect when it comes to creating a positive workplace culture. Instead, we found that feeling connected and experiencing a sense of belonging is more critical to creating a positive culture than simply occupying the same physical space.

9. AI is not ready to replace humans when it comes to learning and development. Using AI for administrative tasks increases efficiency but knowing people seek human connection when learning, L & D practitioners should consider ways to continue meeting that need while incorporating technological advances into their practice.

10. Well-being positively impacts performance. Balancing employee satisfaction and productivity ranked the highest, and the increased focus on well-being positively impacted performance throughout these organizations.

I have tools to help you maximize each of these findings. DM me for more information or a demo!

Build Engagement and Related Results Throughout your Organization!

Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace reports these key findings:

-20% of the world’s employees experience daily loneliness. Loneliness is highest for fully remote workers.

-Well-being among younger employees dropped in 2023.

-Employee engagement is a significant factor in overall life experiences.

-Managers account for 70% of the variance in team employee engagement.

-Across countries, when managers are engaged, employees are more likely to be engaged.

-In best-practice organizations, 3/4 of managers and 7 in 10 non-managers are engaged.

When organizations increase the number of engaged employees, they improve a host of organizational outcomes, including profit, retention rates and customer service.

There are resources I provide that build engagement which increase employee and manager well-being as well as measurable results like profit, retention rates and customer service.

This graphic provides more specifics - dm me for more information or a demo!

Integrate DiSC into your work culture so build capacity and engagement!

You can create a useful shorthand to make the most of your work relationships by integrating DiSC into your language, and introducing the complete portfolio of DiSC applications builds awareness and engagement throughout your organization. This includes Everything DiSC Workplace, Everything DiSC Management, Everything DiSC Sales, Everything DiSC Productive Conflict, Everything DiSC Agile EQ and Everything DiSC Work of Leaders. It's worth a look and has a high payoff!

Develop agility and emotional intelligence in your workforce!

Here's a valuable tool that helps your workforce be agile so they can make progress faster and pivot on short notice which is necessary now as our work environments become more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous To stand firm in our ideas while remaining open to new perspectives.

Staying agile demands that we develop and use our emotional intelligence (EQ)—a level of sophistication that we’ve never demanded before.

The tool is Everything DiSC® Agile EQ™: a classroom training and personalized learning experience that teaches participants to read the emotional and interpersonal needs of a situation and respond accordingly.

By combining the personalized insights of DiSC® with active emotional intelligence development, participants discover an agile approach to workplace interactions and learn to navigate outside their comfort zone, empowering them meet the demands of any situation.  

Pairing their personalized, 26-page Everything DiSC Agile EQ Profile with a short facilitation session, your learners will: 

1. Discover the instinctive mindsets that shape their responses and interactions,

2. Recognize opportunities to stretch beyond what comes naturally to them,

3. Take action to become more agile in their approach to social and emotional situations.

The result is an emotionally intelligent workforce that can support your thriving agile culture. 

Interested to learn more? Contact me to discuss how Everything DiSC Agile EQ can help your organization today.

Make your hiring simpler and smarter!

PXT Select™ helps make the very human decisions about hiring simpler and smarter.

- It is a powerful selection assessment that measures a candidate’s cognitive abilities, behaviors, and interests. Assessment results equip organizations and hiring managers with easy to understand information about the candidate, and provides intuitive questions to strengthen the interview process.

- PXT Select measures a candidate’s thinking style, behavioral traits, and interests: three areas that impact an individual’s approach to situations in the workplace.

- PXT Select provides data about a candidate’s cognitive abilities, behavioral traits, and interests, providing organizations with insights to make smart, wellformed hiring decisions.

- PXT Select - One Powerful Assessment – A Suite of Reports. For the price of just one assessment, PXT Select’s suite of reports help you select, onboard, coach, and develop employees. PXT Select offers the following reports:

Comprehensive Selection Report. Is the candidate a good fit? This powerful report helps you make smarter hiring decisions with confidence. Featuring dynamic interview questions and tips on “what to listen for” with each candidate, this report gives you a meaningful edge in your hiring process.

Comprehensive Selection Report: Sales. This powerful report helps identify a candidates fit to a role. It features dynamic interview questions to help strengthen the overall hiring process. With a focus on sales, this report highlights critical sales practices and describes how a candidate might demonstrate them, helping you select the right salespeople for your organization.

Leadership Report. This report is designed for selection but may also be used for coaching or development purposes. It provides one candidate’s results presented in graph form and linked to narrative about their possible approach to six leadership skills commonly required of organizational leaders. Each of the six leadership skills are illustrated in relation to the candidates results. The report includes a candidate’s potential leadership strengths and challenges, as well as customized questions that can be used to interview the candidate or analyze their leadership potential.

Multiple Positions Report. What’s the best fit for a particular individual? Compare a candidate or employee to multiple jobs in your organization.

Multiple Candidates Report. Make hiring decisions with ease. Compare multiple candidates for a single position.

Team Report. See how a potential candidate fits an existing team or address your current team’s dynamic and strengths.

Manager-Employee Report.Discover how a manager and employee can work more effectively together.

Individual’s Feedback Report.Candidates can learn from PXT Select, too! This narrative report doesn’t reveal scores and is perfectly safe to share with applicants.

Individual’s Feedback Report: Sales. Candidates can learn from PXT Select, too! This participant report offers personalized feedback to the candidate or employee using common sales language and does not include critical sales practices.

Individual’s Graph. Are you more of a visual person? The graph illustrates a candidate’s results that you can view at a glance.

Coaching Report. Wish you had coaching advice tailored to each employee? This report gives you exactly that and more!

Coaching Report: Sales. This report provides tailored coaching guidance giving managers personalized tips and strategies to develop their sales team members.

Performance Model Report.Understand the range of scores and behaviors for the position you’re trying to fill. Learn about the ideal candidate for that role.

Use this simple and powerful leadership development tool!

If you're looking for a simple yet powerful leadership development tool, here it is: Everything DiSC Work of Leaders®. The content and related profile lays out a clear path for helping leaders at all levels make the connection between their DiSC® style and leadership. Bringing together best practices from 300 experts in over 150 organizations, the important work of the most prominent scholars, and over four years of additional research and development, this all-inclusive classroom and online program approaches leadership as a one-to-many relationship. With one unified model of leadership—vision, alignment, and execution—it focuses on helping leaders understand their own leadership styles and how their tendencies influence their effectiveness in specific leadership situations.

 Your participants will...
 -Recognize the priorities and tendencies, based on their own DiSC style, that shape their approach to the fundamental work of leaders: creating a vision, building alignment around that vision, and championing execution of the vision
-Explore in detail how to play to their strengths and overcome challenges to improve their leadership effectiveness
-Identify strategies to develop preferred behaviors based on context-specific best practices

The Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® Profile is a research-validated, online assessment that produces a 23-page leader-specific profile report providing detailed context-specific feedback based on the three-step Vision, Alignment, and Execution Model and the three drivers associated with each step. This report delves deep into what steps leaders can take to increase the behaviors linked to the essential best practices of leadership.

The Facilitation Toolkit gives you five 60-90-minute modules, including fully-scripted facilitation dialogue to use with experiential learning activities and thought-provoking group discussions.

DM me for more info or a demo!

Come to a thought-provoking webinar!

In the landscape of organizational change, the focus is often on strategies, systems, and structures. However, the deeply personal experience of how organizational changes impact their most valuable asset—their people— is often overlooked. Fortunately, organizations have a powerful change management resource at their fingertips—their managers.

Unlocking a manager’s potential doesn’t just happen. Managers need tools to improve interactions, build teams, and navigate the messy middle. Fortunately, many of your organizations already have access to a
powerful tool that will help your managers reach their full potential—Everything DiSC® on Catalyst™. Join Dr. Mark Scullard, Sr. Director of Product Innovation, Wiley Assessment Brands, to learn how people process change and what managers can do to meet their unique needs. Sign up today to help your managers bring out the best in their people during times of change. In this 60-minute webinar, you will learn:
ꞏ The emotional complexities of change
ꞏ The uncharted role managers play as navigators of change
ꞏ How Everything DiSC can help managers bring out the best in their people, teams, and organizations

This webinar is offered at two different times:
ꞏ1. October 26, 2023, 10–11 am Chicago (4–5 pm London)
or
ꞏ2. December 7, 2023, 1–2 pm Chicago (7–8 pm London)

Contact me to register!

New 360 Feedback Tool!

If you see the value of 360 feedback to develop teamwork, leadership development and self-awareness, I strongly recommend this product and this publisher - I've used their previous product for over 20 years and it's customizable and leads to great results.

Plan to attend the July 13 webinar, 360 Feedback: Its Exciting Future is Now, featuring the founders of Grow Strong Leaders—Meredith Bell, Denny Coates, Ph.D., and Paula Schlauch.

Denny will describe the innovations that have expanded the power of 360 feedback for assessment and development.

Meredith will pull back the curtain on the new online GSL 360 program. You’ll see the dramatic innovations that make it even more user-friendly for administrators, raters, and feedback recipients. It’s so easy that no certification is required!

Reserve your spot now for this one-hour event on Thursday, July 13, at either 10:00 am ET or 4:00 pm ET:
https://lnkd.in/gT3cU6Ri. When they ask who sent you, tell them me!

The webinar will be recorded, and the replay will be shared afterward, so be sure to register even if you can’t attend the live event.

I hope to see you there!

Develop your leaders in place with this personalized tool

Do you have leaders who need an introduction to what the leadership role involves? Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® lays out a clear path for helping leaders at all levels make the connection between their DiSC® style and leadership. With one unified model of leadership—vision, alignment, and execution—it focuses on helping your leaders understand their own leadership styles and how their tendencies influence their effectiveness in specific leadership situations.

Participants Take-Aways

-Recognize the priorities and tendencies, based on their own DiSC style, that shape their approach to the fundamental work of leaders: creating a vision, building alignment around that vision, and championing execution of the vision

-Explore in detail how to play to their strengths and overcome challenges to improve their leadership effectiveness

-Identify strategies to develop preferred behaviors based on context-specific best practices 

The Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® Profile is a research-validated, online assessment. The 23-page leader-specific profile report provides detailed context-specific feedback based on the three-step Vision, Alignment, and Execution Model and the three drivers associated with each step. Strong visuals and illustrations, including 18 behavioral continua, delve deep into what steps leaders can take to increase the behaviors linked to the essential best practices of leadership. It is also easily customizable - you can remove or rearrange pages, customize the profile title, or print selected sections. And there is a Facilitation Kit to help you structure your delivery approach and timing.

Message me for a demo! #leadership #everythingdisc

Create an engaged team culture with Everything DiSC on Catalyst now with Your Groups

Even the brightest teams struggle with different workstyles. What if you had the power to replace disjointed communication with cohesive teams and growing bottom lines? Now you do with Everything DiSC on Catalyst – now with Your Groups! It's the same content you know from Everything DiSC but on a platform that works with our hybrid work environments. Call me for more info or a demo.

Build your Impact Portfolio in 2023!

Build your professional portfolio in 2023 - earn your certification in The Five Behaviors®.  This prepares you to deliver engaging and impactful Five Behaviors® learning experiences that help build cohesive teams. In this two-week immersive experience that combines live, instructor-led sessions with self-guided online learning, you will: 

  -Deepen your understanding of The Five Behaviors model and key principles.

-Familiarize yourself with the full Five Behaviors® solution portfolio: Team Development and Personal Development.

-Explore how to build, customize, and deliver impactful Five Behaviors learning experiences to address unique team development training needs.

-Practice facilitation techniques while receiving feedback from peers in a supportive environment.

-Gain access to Wiley’s online training center, connecting you to course content that you can continue to access as a resource after the course concludes.

Upon successful completion of the exam, you will earn the credential of The Five Behaviors Certified Practitioner, signaling proven competence in shaping engaged, cohesive, and high-performing teams—and knowledgeable in the language of The Five Behaviors.

Courses begin in February and here are the first few:

1. Opens February 23, 2023. Live sessions 2/27, 3/1, 3/6 and 3/8 from 3 to 5pm EST.

2. Opens March 10, 2023. Live sessions 3/14, 3/16, 3/21 and 3/26 from 10am to 12pm EST.

3. Opens April 7, 2023. Live sessions 4/11, 4/13, 4/18 and 4/20 from 2 to 4pm EST.

#certification #teamwork

Register now at The Five Behaviors® Certification — Karen Geiger & Associates, inc.!

Keep employee engagement high to retain your best and

As you know, employee engagement is a foundational component to workplace outcomes. If you want to talk about wellbeing, manager development, performance (and more), you also have to talk about employee engagement. Why? Because every conversation a manager has with an employee affects their engagement -- and engaged employees perform better, which differentiates you from your competitors and allows you to keep your best people.

Because managers are so critical to engagement especially now, here is a tool to build their capacity to keep engagement high. The Everything DiSC Management profile and related facilitation can develop your managers to make the most of your organization’s employee engagement.

#employeeengagement #everythingdisc #management

Develop strong leadership and increase retention in your organization using this tool

Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® lays out a clear path for helping leaders at all levels make the connection between their DiSC® style and leadership. With one unified model of leadership—vision, alignment, and execution—it focuses on helping leaders understand their own leadership styles and how their tendencies influence their effectiveness in specific leadership situations.
 

Participants Take-Aways

•  Recognize the priorities and tendencies, based on their own DiSC style, that shape their approach to the fundamental work of leaders: creating a vision, building alignment around that vision, and championing execution of the vision

• Explore in detail how to play to their strengths and overcome challenges to improve their leadership effectiveness

• Identify strategies to develop preferred behaviors based on context-specific best practices 

Program Components

Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® Profile 

• Research-validated, online assessment. 23-page leader-specific profile report provides detailed context-specific feedback based on the three-step Vision, Alignment, and Execution Model and the three drivers associated with each step. Strong visuals and illustrations, including 18 behavioral continua, delve deep into what steps leaders can take to increase the behaviors linked to the essential best practices of leadership.

• Easily customizable. Remove or rearrange pages, customize the profile title, or print selected sections. The profile may be used on its own or with the companion facilitation (sold separately).

Facilitation Toolkit   

• Five 60-90-minute modules, including fully-scripted facilitation dialogue to use with experiential learning activities and thought-provoking group discussions.

• Easily customizable. Create an end-to-end leadership development program or concentrate on specific areas. Switch out video clips. Modify the PowerPoint presentation, Leader’s Guide, and handouts. Add or delete sections to fit any timeframe.

• Engaging 17 video segments of contemporary leadership examples. Use as stand-alone clips or integrate with the facilitation PowerPoint or your custom PowerPoint presentation.

• 36 dynamic podcast segments specific to one of the three components of the Work of Leaders model—vision, alignment, and execution. Learn first-hand how to interpret Work of Leaders continua to answer participant questions. Insightful information not available anywhere else.

Make Learning part of your Everyday Organizational Culture

Everything DiSC® offers a suite of personal development learning experiences that measure our preferences and tendencies based on the DiSC® model. This simple yet powerful model describes four basic styles: D, i, S, and C, and serves as the foundation for the Everything DiSC® Application Suite.

Every Application: Participants receive personalized insights that deepen their understanding of self and others, making workplace interactions more enjoyable and effective. The result is a more engaged and collaborative workforce that can spark meaningful culture improvement in your organization. Each profile is powered by 40+ years of research, uses adaptive testing and sophisticated algorithms to generate precise and personalized insights for each participant. Participants receive this personalized content using the DiSC model and gain insights on their personal preferences and tendencies as well as relating to and working with others. They leave with actionable strategies for improving interactions and, ultimately, performance.

The Follow-Up Tools: Each profile has follow-up tools to allow participants to go deeper into their DiSC style, provide real-world tips for connecting with colleagues, and help them gain insight into their team or department’s DiSC culture. This makes learning ongoing and useful, and not just a training session.

The Everything DiSC® Application Suite:

• WORKPLACE: Engage every individual in building more effective relationships at work

• AGILE EQ™: Develop the emotional intelligence necessary to build a thriving agile culture

• MANAGEMENT: Teach managers to successfully engage, motivate, and develop their people

• PRODUCTIVE CONFLICT: Harness the power of conflict by transforming destructive behavior into productive responses

• WORK OF LEADERS® Create impactful leaders through the process of Vision, Alignment, and Execution

• SALES Provide salespeople with the skills to adapt to customers’ preferences and expectations.

Interested in building an engaged culture with high retention? Get DiSC Certified!

Everything DiSC® Certification offers you a proven way to create a lasting impact on individual and organizational performance.

In this two-week course combining live, instructor-led sessions with self-guided online learning, you will build your confidence and expertise in delivering impactful DiSC learning experiences that help people work better together. Upon successful completion of the course work (including a score of 80% or above on the final Certification exam), you will earn the credential of Everything DiSC Certified Practitioner—signaling proven competence in shaping a high-performing, collaborative culture, knowledgeable in the language of DiSC.

Just click on “Certifications for You” at the top of this site, then “New! Everything DiSC Certification” and you will see the dates in 2022-23 that are still available. Spots go fast so let me know asap. Then after I confirm a spot is available you can purchase your registration by clicking on Products, then Facilitator Certification and choose the one led by Wiley. If you have 5+ people wanting to get certified, I can lead it at a time convenient to you, so just let me know that.

Leading with Confidence: Top Ten Tips Managers Need to Drive Success

Managers are key to engagement and retention - as the adage says, people don’t leave their job, they leave their manager. So what can managers do to attract and retain their best talent now? This is a summary of an ebook published by Wiley - email me if you want a copy!

1. Develop yourself. If you understand who you are, what your strengths are, and how to lead yourself (self-management), then you set yourself up to lead effectively.

2. Set an example people can’t resist following. The global workforce has changed, which means a paycheck every 2 weeks isn’t enough to get the best effort out of increasingly detached employees. People want to know their work matters - they want a vision that compels them to give their effort to achieve a seemingly insurmountable goal.

3. Understand that communication is key. If you want to engage the people you lead, then make yourself available to them. Even in the age of social distancing and remote work, find ways to connect with your employees one-on-one on a more emotional level in a group setting. It’s during stressful times that people need the support of their managers the most.

4. Help the team see the big picture. It’s easy to get lost in the work we do as individuals and forget what we’re accomplishing in the larger world. To reconnect your team with the purpose behind their actions, take time to explain how their assignments and projects fit into the company’s larger goals, reputation, success, and bottom line.

5. Encourage feedback. Research shows that inspiring, charismatic leaders regularly gather ideas, opinions, and suggestions from the individuals they work with. Make it a point to seek input from people who hold back in group meetings, and after you hear feedback, reiterate one of their points and thank them for their contribution.

6. Don’t underestimate the power of recognition. Giving out regular recognition provides an effective way to motivate employees. Make it direct, specific, sincere, and simple. Accompany recognition with a benefit or reward, personalize it, and make recognizing achievement everyone’s responsibility.

7. Act with decisiveness. Employees will gain more respect for you if you confidently and consistently assert your influence and then stand by your decisions as long as they remain within reason.

8. Create an environment of constant learning and development. Learning incentivizes people to stay with an organization. If they are learning and sharpening skills that can help them earn more, get their dream job or get promoted; they’re going to want to make the most of that opportunity which means staying with your organization.

9. Provide the professional guidance that your team wants. Be the manager who’s also the leader and mentor people want to be around so they find more incentive to work harder for you and stay with your company.

10. Exercise patience with yourself. Developing strong managerial skills takes time - seek guidance from colleagues, your own manager, and your professional network when you need it. In the same way you give your employees the benefit of the doubt with the mistakes they make, do the same for yourself. And remember, you’ve got this.

The PXT Select assessment helps you as a manger by gathering accurate, objective, and reliable data so you can confidently hire, manager, develop and retain productive employees and effective leaders. Contact me for a demo!

Learning in the 21st Century

This is a short point made by one of my favorite Antioch professors Dr. Jon Wergin about how to resist “drive-by learning” and allow your mind to consider new ways of thinking. This is how we can rebuild our communities, our society and our country.