Workplace 101: A Profiles Global Business Blog

Sometimes it feels like we live in a world of bigger is better. It’s tempting to want to bolster your company or yourself by naming off as many accomplishments as possible. The desire to highlight your success naturally leads you to think about it in concrete terms of how much and how many, but performance management rests on more than a numbers game. Tracking employee performance can be a test of quality, not quantity.

Effective leadership development enables companies to react quickly to change and endure difficult times. Developing leadership capabilities is essential to ensure focus on the short-term and long-term health of any organization.

This webinar will focus on actions you can take to “Develop Leadership Capability” throughout your organization. A Fortune 500 company and global provider of professional, technical, and management services, AECOM serves clients in over 100 countries. In recent years, AECOM integrated 28 operating companies into their single worldwide organization, it was a challenge coordinating numerous stand-alone units into a single matrix organization.

With the new integration strategy in place, AECOM began experiencing rapid growth, and a need for leaders to operate beyond their individual business units.

You have concerns about something at work. Who would you be more inclined to speak to about it, your supervisor, manager, vice-president or CEO?

The topic of giving feedback can be quite a sensitive one, as the issue may be about how your boss is conducting himself. No one likes to tell the person that pays their salary that they are doing something wrong. However, a true leader and fair boss will appreciate your feedback considering it is fair and true.

Leaders receive less feedback the higher they go in an organization. By giving feedback to your boss, you are giving a powerful gift. However, because he may not receive much feedback, he may not know how to react. Even if he does not react (or reacts negatively) he needs to hear it and will most likely come to appreciate it once he has had time to reflect!

Feedback from employees is priceless. Do you think companies like Facebook and Google would have had such outstanding success without feedback from their staff? Giving feedback to your boss in an appropriate manner is beneficial for all parties involved.

Here are some dos and don'ts for giving feedback to your boss:

You have a new management position opening up in your organization and you are responsible for selecting someone to fill that position. On your team, you have a pool of determined hard working candidates that have been working hard for years to deserve such a position. They are high performers and you have assessed that they would fit such a position. Clearly it’s a win-win, right? Wrong!

If a stranger asks you to rank your management team on a scale of one to ten in areas such as communication, delegation, etc, what would you say? Most people would rank them unrealistically high for fear that their answers would get back to their boss. How many of you can say that you would answer 100 percent truthfully in your own opinion?

Despite all the trainings and coaching that management personnel can put employees through, a true manager also knows that they themselves are not perfect and they can always improve their management skills. Most of us work with a variety of people, and all people require different levels and amounts of coaching and mentoring from their superiors. 

Everybody cares about what others think of them, it's human nature. But what if you could find out exactly how you were perceived as a manager in your organization? Think how you could use that information to motivate and engage your employees better.

Who Is the Employee Behind the Mask?

I’m sure you’ve overheard a coworker on the phone using a pleasant, sugary sweet tone but then mutter a few expletives the moment the call ended. What if you were the person on the other end of the phone? What are your employees’ real attitudes towards you, your company, and their work?

Branch managers of Loomis seemed to have mastered all aspects of the business: technical, logistical, and operational. The company was making money. So no issue, right? Wrong!

Good Planning Ensures Bank's Annual Report on Track for Ontime Release

To many organizations, the sudden departure of a CFO at year-end and tax time would spell disaster. Fortunately for Wells Fargo, good executive succession planning has minimized the impact of this untimely event. Howard I. Atkins, Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer and senior executive vice president, abruptly retired last Tuesday, citing personal reasons.