My phone rang while I was in the queue to pay at the supermarket. It was my husband, and I thought I'd just say hi. It would be quick. But maybe not quick enough. When I got to the front I felt the pangs of guilt when I finally looked up and noticed the check-out...
The day the River Thames was flooding my home, I was at a birthday party. Perhaps unsurprisingly I was not my positive, social self. In fact, I believe I was probably pretty miserable. An hour into being terrible company, someone approached to ask what was wrong. "The...
I was honored to be asked to speak recently at the Happy Workplaces conference in London, where I shared my thoughts on social leadership and ways leaders can embrace the Social Era.
If you read most any employee engagement survey out there today, you'll get the same message: Employees are not engaged at the level companies need them to be. A commonly referenced Gallop study found 70% of US employees are not engaged at work. A similar UK study...
How many questions do you ask in a day? Questions are the foundation of conversation. Most of us ask them without even thinking about it; they are a fundamental part of human connection. Without them, there is monologue, an endless stream of thoughts. Or,...
How often are we asking the wrong questions? We ask questions to achieve greater understanding, more insight, better results. We ask questions to solve problems. But what if the problems we are trying to solve are the wrong ones? What if the real problems are sitting...
I heard recently that the hierarchical structure in place in most corporations is a post-war phenomenon. Organization design immediately after World War II tended to follow a highly militaristic, tiered model, which has largely remained in place throughout the 20th...
Let's face it, we all like to hear our own voices. From quite a young age, we are taught to be experts. We learn how to tell stories, give advice, make decisions, give presentations. This starts in school and is reinforced as we join the workplace and become leaders....
What does social mean to you? Last summer, I was with work colleagues at a conference in Atlanta and I used it as an opportunity to get some views on this. I asked a whole range of people - Microsoft employees, hotel staff, my 8-year-old daughter - what words came to...
