The engagement survey came back better than last year. People like their jobs, they like their managers, and they say they'd recommend the company to a friend. Six months later, the numbers that run the business haven't moved. Quality is flat, the same problems keep coming back, and leaders are still the ones solving them. The survey is a valid measurement tool. It just isn't the thing that drives results, and what the consultants call engagement has drifted a long way from i

Every leader we work with says some version of the same thing: "I need people who take ownership and initiative instead of waiting to be told what to do." Then someone on the team takes a swing. They make a call without checking first, and it doesn't work out. The whole team is watching to see what happens next. That moment teaches more about ownership than any values poster, offsite, or engagement survey. How the leader reacts to failure communicates everything the team need

We thought we had the trust formula figured out. Then we ran across two statistics that stopped us cold. Only 19% of employees strongly agree they trust their leadership. Ask leaders the same question and you get a different answer. 86% believe their employees' trust in them is high. Let that sink in. A 67-point gap between what leaders believe and what employees experience. That is not a rounding error. It is a blind spot. Something is wrong in the workplace, and it is costi

In our 35 years working with leaders at every level, we have discovered there are many ways for a team to fail, but all successful teams have one thing in common. What is that one thing? Successful teams respond to failure in a way that builds trust and ownership. This mindset toward failure creates the conditions for transformational trust, which ultimately translates into long-term performance. Ownership is built or broken every time someone on your team takes initiative —

Any time I create a boundary it is because I either do not trust myself, or I do not trust the other person. Why is it then that clear...

Amy Edmondson came across a surprising discovery when researching the relationship between teamwork and error rates in hospital settings....

We’re getting trust all wrong. Too often we embrace a pessimistic view of trust, and we’re reaping low trust as a result. The view that...

According to a recent poll by accounting and consulting firm PwC, nearly 2000 CEOs say their companies won’t be “economically viable”...

The most reliable predictor of how a team will perform in the future is the drive to continuously improve on how they’re working...

As a society it seems we are in love with overnight success stories. The problem is they do not exist, or they are so rare we would be...

I count Thomas as one of the top ten most impactful people in my life. When I say impactful, I mean he changed the direction of my life...

We’re living in interesting times. It seems chaos and rapid change are the new normal, and each day brings a unique challenge and a new...

The other day a friend of mine told me about a fast-food sign he saw. The sign read, “Start today. Get paid tomorrow.” We both had a good...

I love this quote by Maya Angelou because it so succinctly summarizes the path to success—be a work in progress. That’s it. As human...

The warriors in the elite U.S. Special Forces are as close to superheroes as you are likely to find. Only the finest and toughest are...

We are what we think; our actions simply follow. The problem is that too often our beliefs are based on lies. One of the biggest lie of...

Organizations get stuck because the individuals who make up the organization get stuck. In an ever-changing world, an organization cannot...

Who is responsible for the organizational culture? I have asked this question many times, and answers vary. However, what I usually hear...

It is all too common for people to have damaged and broken relationships. A telltale sign you are suffering from one of these...

One of the great impediments to personal growth and leadership is perfectionism. Perfectionism is an extreme, obsessive dependence on...