Gina Marcel – 9P Online

How to Identify Aspiring Leaders

Plan For Tomorrow

Dr. Robin Largue explains why you should be looking for aspiring leaders in your organization and some tips to make it easy to identify your aspiring leaders.

Leadership Reflection on Hardwiring

Where do you stand?

To continuously improve we must reflect on our growth over the past year and assess where we currently stand. Hardwiring the following 9 leadership strategies paves the way for a healthy culture and high-performance organization.

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Identifying Aspiring Leaders

Who Has Leadership Potential?

Proactively identifying people in your organization that have leadership qualities helps the organization stay agile in the event that some leaders will retire, give notice, or abruptly leave. Chances are some of the high performers on your team are also aspiring leaders waiting for the right opportunity.

Leader having a high solid performance conversation

High Solid Performer Conversation in Action

Coaching High Solid Performers

Dr. Melissa Matarazzo and Dr. Robin Largue engage in a performance coaching conversation focused on developing high solid performers.

Group of business people working as a team in office developing their high performers

High Solid Performer Support

Development Wanted

These aren't your high performers, but they could be. Are you supporting high solid performers with the right professional development?

Handover

"How can I help you?"

When it comes to customer service, the interactions that can count are often those we see as passing moments. The way we handle cross-interactions with customers can impact our future relationship and the customer's future decision to use your services.

Think Like a Customer

World Class Service Requires a Plan

To be a successful organization and ensure customers have the best experience, it can be useful to view your organization from a customer’s point of view. The quality of service received while interacting with an organization is what brings customers back to organizations.

The 5′ – 10′ Rule in Practice

Hallway Interactions 101

This video demonstrates how an interaction can becomes extremely awkward when there is only one participant and guides you towards putting your best foot forward.

Responding to a Difficult Coworker

Problematic coworkers initiate conflict

While working with other people it’s not uncommon to encounter a difficult colleague. The better prepared we are to handle situations with difficult coworkers, the happier and more productive we will be at work. Use this video clip to practice responding to a difficult coworker.

Colleagues in an office meeting and all interacting

Managing Voices in the Room

Balance the contributions

When we seek input from our teams, it's important to honor and manage all voices in the room. In this video, Dr. Pat Greco explains how to build a healthy team culture with ground rules and strategies for getting the perspective from each person at the table.

How Can We Help Our Colleagues?

Manage strong work relationships

It takes intentional effort to maintain great relationships with our teammates. Dr. Janet Pilcher shares tips to help us become better, more helpful employees.

Difficult business conversations with colleagues.

Stub Your Toe

Call It How You See It

Values and standards of behavior are essential to high performing organizations. They only work when respected by all team members. Having conversations with a colleague you feel has violated your organization's values is one way to assure everyone stays on course and their is continuous respect of standards.

Don’t Keep Your Customers in the Dark

How can you inspire customer loyalty?

More and more organizations have been making it a priority to increase connection and invite customers to take an inside look. Why? Because increasing transparency between an organization and its customers build trust and credibility increasing customer loyalty.

business woman communicating through a microphone

People Value Information

Let Them in on the Secret

What does it look like to be transparent with your community and your employees? In this video, Dr. Pat Greco explains what it means to be transparent and examples of what transparency sounds like.

Questioning for the Positive

Build positive and productive thinking

The way leaders construct questions will either open or narrow minds. To get more of what we want out of our teams and increase positive outcomes, it is important for leaders to ask questions that encourage high levels of reflection and creative thinking.

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Do People Really Want Feedback?

People Want to Improve

There’s a fine line between giving feedback for improvements and leaving an employee feeling criticized and deflated. Few of us respond well to someone telling us what to do or how to fix ourselves. Reshape your feedback conversations to focus on achieving a positive outcome.

Feedback is a Gift…or is it?

Provide Specific and Simple Feedback

Reflect on the last time someone gave you constructive feedback... did it feel like a gift? That likely depends on the intent of the person providing the feedback. Listen as Dr. Janet Pilcher describes how to provide feedback as a gift, instead of an insult.

Offer Productive Feedback

Motivate Colleagues to Grow & Improve

Moments to provide feedback aren't limited to leader-employee interactions, oftentimes it's necessary to deliver feedback to colleagues while working together. In this video, Mandy and Tatiana meet to discuss a project and engage in a collaborative feedback conversation with a positive outcome.

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Leadership Challenge: Dissecting Feedback Delivery

"Here's what you should do..."

On the surface giving feedback seems simple; just tell someone what they did wrong and how to fix it. The problem is this type of constructive criticism rarely inspires improvement. The way we provide feedback makes a difference in how people receive and act on the feedback.

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Using Social Media to Increase Transparency

Does your organization open up on social media?

People use social media to connect with others and stimulate conversations. In time, organizations have recognized the many benefits of using social media to humanize their brand and connect with their communities. Why should your organization consider using social media to increase transparency?

changing landscape from dead low performing to vibrant high performing

Low Performer Conversation

It's time for a change

Approaching a conversation with a low performer is probably not your favorite task. However, ignoring bad behavior or performance will negatively impact others in the organization. Address the situation quickly and effectively using this guide to keep the rest of your team focused on achieving results.

Anticipating a Difficult Conversation

Refocus the Conversation

As leaders conduct monthly meetings and regular check-ins with the employees that report to them, it may become apparent that some individuals are more difficult than others. If you find yourself dealing with an employee who frequently guides meetings to an unproductive place, anticipate this behavior and develop a plan to refocus the conversation.

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Improve Performance with Leader Led Conversations

Leaders set the right example for everyone

A leader's commitment to their team involves a commitment to be in the spotlight and model the right way to act always. Leaders can improve performance by practicing self-awareness during conversations with employees.

Communication & Connection: Forces for Greatness

Working toward greatness

In this video, Dr. Lisa Herring describes the key strategies her team is using to communicate and connect with all stakeholders.

Businessman on a hill holding umbrella underneath a single cloud themes of protection shelter out of context

Anticipating Change

Why wait for change to happen to you?

Leading change involves an element of anticipation. Anticipating change means leaders have enough foresight and information to know what is likely to happen, strategize, and guide the larger team to success, in preparation for the pending shifts.

Cultivating a Culture of Resilience

How Do Organizations Succeed Through Difficult Times?

Resilient organizations are able to improve faster because they place emphasis on and build disciplined routines around people, service, and alignment. To cultivate a culture of resilience leaders align people to goals, take time to routinely reflect, and communicate transparently with all stakeholders.

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It’s All About Relationships

Communicate & Connect

We don’t get very far in life without positive relationships. When team members connect and transparently communicate about priorities, they stand a far greater chance of achieving the most important goals.

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Decision-Making Confidence

Make a Decision

Avoid the trap of analysis paralysis and feel confident about your decisions. A few practical tips can keep us from getting stuck in the decision-making process.

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Tips for Effective Listening with Teams

Do more than hear

Often group discussions and meetings are places where ideas are generated and decisions are made. Having effective listening skills can be significant if you want to contribute to the ideas and decisions that are being discussed.

Listen Intently

Are You Really Listening?

Did you know, humans spend 70% of their time communicating, in which 45% is spent listening? In other words, effective listening skills are vital for interpersonal communication and, consequently, for successful leaders and aspiring leaders within our organizations.

messaging, communication, effective communication, send a message

Send the Right Message

Tactful and Impactful

It's all about the "how" when it comes to communication. Be mindful of the non-verbal cues you are sending to really getting your message across.

Feedback that Inspires

Positively Improve Performance

Think about the last time you received constructive criticism. Did it actually prompt you to change your behavior? Maybe not. Yet we know learning new skills and improving performance is something our peers and direct reports desire. The key is to reshape your feedback conversations to focus on achieving a positive outcome together.

Am I a Perfectionist Leader?

Reflect to avoid perfectionism

Regular self-reflection can be a valuable practice for leaders who struggle with perfectionism. The goal for growth is to become more self-aware so we can make changes that will help us lead at our best.

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Manage Perfectionism

Is your perfectionism impacting others?

Do you often find yourself noticing what’s wrong? Do you get stuck on the details? If you’re great with details and often notice what’s bad, you may have perfectionist tendencies. If not managed, these can impact relationships.

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Improvement & Innovation

Make way for innovation

As systems get better at getting better, cycles of improvement increasingly include innovations.

Continuous Improvement: Where Do You Start?

Jump All-In to Improve

After implementing improvement science, many leaders find themselves wondering if they are, in fact, making any improvements and find it difficult to define and sustain progress. In this podcast episode, Superintendent Ryan Carpenter discusses why his team made a commitment to adopt a continuous improvement mindset and tips for implementing an Evidence-Based Leadership℠ framework across the school system.

Innovation is Easier Than Changing the World

Innovation Can Be Small

We often get paralyzed by thinking innovation needs to change the world. In this podcast episode, listen as Quint Studer shares his perspective on playing small ball and the innovative thinking that leads to the creation of a sense of place and a vibrant community.

Deal with Problems

Who is Causing Problems?

Have you identified the problem people in your organization? This video reveals the hard truth around why leaders avoid dealing with low performers and the consequences of tolerating their behavior.

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Building Trust in the Workplace

Prioritize Building Trust in the Workplace

Thriving workplaces depend on trust to continue to grow and excel. When leaders start prioritizing trust in the workplace, their teams will follow.

Building a Bank Account of Trust

Increase Your Contribution

Master how you can provide feedback for improvement without damaging your relationships and discover 7 ways to nurture an emotional bank account with your team.

A Team’s Standards of Service Excellence

Keep standards at the forefront

While the ultimate goal is for standards of service excellence to walk the halls and not just live on the walls, visually displaying standards builds awareness of what is expected. This example from the School District of Menomonee Falls is a visual representation found in every building and office. The image is also incorporated in slide decks for training sessions, district updates, and on the website.

Stop ‘Listening’ and Start Anticipating Your Customers’ Needs

What Are Your Customers NOT Saying?

By studying brands that excel in customer service, this expert found that what customers don't say is often more important than what they do say.

Colleague support showing vulnerability and care.

Vulnerability is at the Heart of Service Excellence

Cooperate on a higher level

To deliver exceptional service we need to embrace vulnerability and courage. When leaders model this behavior in organizations, employees are encouraged to take risks and know that it's okay to fail.

Standard: Teamwork and Collaboration

How do I help my team learn our standards?

Once standards of service excellence are created, it is important to share them with all employees. In this video, Waukesha County Executive, Paul Farrow takes a chunked approach to introducing the standards.

Cascading the Building Blocks of Service Excellence

Define What Excellent Service Means

When we ask our teams to deliver excellent service, it’s important to explain what “excellent service” means for your organization. To build on the explanation and increase the understanding and delivery of service that goes above and beyond, employees benefit from ongoing communication about standards of service.

Excellent Service From the Inside Out

Give People a Reason to Return

Excellent service doesn’t happen by accident. Service excellence is deeply rooted in the culture and values of organizations that outperform their competitors. When organization’s prioritize service excellence as a core value, they ensure it’s infused in everything they do.

Focus on Service Excellence

People Come First

Service excellence is more than just being polite or being ready to offer the unsatisfied customer a discount. During this podcast episode, Donna Kirby joins Janet Pilcher to reveal her top 3 tactics for applying customer service excellence.

30-Day and 90-Day Conversation Guidelines

Reduce turn-over by asking the right questions.

Learning the culture of the organization and how to be a successful member of the culture can be a difficult path to navigate for new employees. The 30-Day and 90-Day Conversations help us build trust and develop a strong relationship with our new hires. Create consistency by following these general implementation guidelines.

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Welcome New Team Members

What Makes a Good First Day?

An employee’s decision to stay in or leave a new job is largely influenced by first impressions. Does your team welcome new hires so they want to stay?

Employee Forums

There is no such thing as over-communication

One tool for delivering a common message to the entire organization is an employee forum. The purpose of the employee forum is to provide all employees the opportunity to hear from the senior leader of the organization.

Busting Through Barriers

Stop Protecting, Start Sharing

We often hear that people are an organization’s greatest assets, and it’s true. Our colleagues and employees have unlimited potential to solve problems, adapt to challenges, and work collaboratively to achieve positive organizational results.

Laptop displaying data analytics from a quick dashboard perspective.

Increasing Transparency & Accountability with Scorecards

A Dashboard for Everyone

Michael Crafton, Provost at the University of West Georgia, explains how using scorecards increases transparency and accountability throughout their organization.

Conversation between leader and employee to provide feedback on performance.

Courageous Conversations

Correct because you care

Initiating conversations to provide one another feedback is uncomfortable for many. In reality, we provide others with feedback because we care about them and there success. Learn more about these three models for conducting courageous conversations.

Is It Really Urgent?

What comes first: what's urgent or what's important?

Effectively balancing what's urgent with what's important shows everyone in your company where to focus. Use this tool to determine what's really urgent and make the most of each day.

Courageous conversations to support team strength.

Courageous Conversations: Dos and Don’ts

Complete. Not Compete.

The following tips are the best practices for conducting compassionate courageous conversations with anyone in your organization.

Meet 5 Critical Employee Needs with Leader Connection Questions

Set your employees up to thrive

For leaders who have ever thought, "What more can my team possibly want from me?," it's possible these 5 critical employee needs are not being met.

Hitting the Wall

Tighten the Performance Curve

How do the varying human performance levels affect the overall organizational results? What happens when leaders avoid managing employee performance levels?

Motivate with Recognition

How do you move an elephant?

Building connections with the work and people in an organization inspires team members to achieve the mission. An effective approach to guiding behavior and building meaningful connections is to recognize individuals for displaying the characteristics and actions that will move the team to success.

Career Development Plan Template

Shape Your Future

Using this template, create a guide to continuously grow your career.

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Professional Development Plan Template

The Right Skills At The Right Time

Using this template, design a plan to support aspiring leaders in the areas identified for leadership skills development.

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Track Your Achievements

Do You Know How Far You've Come?

It's likely over the course of your career you've learned new skills and taken responsibility for important projects. It's a good idea to keep track those achievements, recognize how far you've come, and keep others in the know.

Sad smiley face made from medicine pills.

Receiving Results

Side effects include...

We can’t get better, if we don’t even know what’s wrong. Collecting feedback is critical for those determined to improve and excel. No matter how seasoned we are in our careers, receiving results is an emotional experience.

young business woman corporate executive relaxing sitting on a chair in the open air outdoors

Pause, Perspective, Process

Reacting too fast?

Have you ever found yourself regretting an answer, reaction, or outburst? Have you ever sent an email you wished you could get back? Learning to pause, gain a new perspective, and learn about the process can help leaders regulate their emotions, make better decisions, and respond to difficult situations in a positive way.

The Power of Perspective

What Can Positivity Do For You?

We know about the benefits of positive thinking. Sometimes it seems like thinking positively is easier said than done. How can you break your patterns of negative thinking and start positive thinking?

Becoming an Authentic Leader

What Does it Mean to be Authentic?

As a leader, authenticity increases the likelihood that those we lead will believe us and follow our requests. Becoming an authentic leader is not necessarily easy, but the concept is simple. During this episode, Janet connects to the foundation of authenticity: self-awareness. She offers 6 actions to practice if you want to become an authentic leader.

What Gets Recognized Gets Repeated

What do employees want from a leader?

Employees are humans and humans are emotional beings. Leaders across organizations know the importance of prioritizing employee recognition. The possibilities for recognition are limited only by the imagination.

Busy Young Smiling Businesswoman With Six Arms Doing Different Type Of Work In Office

Time Management Grid

Not another emergency

It is easy to get caught up in responding to emails, answering the phone, and putting out the small fires that arise throughout the day. Before we let too much time get away from us, we can prioritize what's important using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.

Victim Thinking

Only You Can Stop It

We will have days when we face challenges, obstacles, and we may even choose to feel like the world is against us or we don't control what's happening to us. Facing up and down moments in our career is inevitable. How you choose to deal with those moments will affect your relationships, productivity, and future opportunities.

Keep Those Emotions in Check

3 Things to Consider About Giving and Receiving Feedback

Receiving feedback is an emotional experience. It’s often difficult to take in. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, we humans are quick to respond emotionally, sometimes overreacting, even to the point of denying the accuracy of our data. How can we strengthen the use of feedback to help us improve?

Stressed from Stress?

Check Your Burnout Level

Many successful, hardworking Americans experience burnout more than once during their careers, even people who are passionate about what they do. High performers can be obsessed with achieving excellence and exceeding results to the point of exhaustion. Begin reducing stress by taking small steps to prevent overload burnout.

Leading Change with Empathy

Communicate Decisions by Connecting the Mind and the Heart

Nothing stays the same. In fact, if we keep doing things the same way we’ve always done them, it’s likely our performance will decline. Change is the only constant in our organizations and in life, and for most, change is uncomfortable. Here are 3 leadership characteristics necessary for managing continuously changing organizations.

Be the Model

Set a consistent example

Our teams want to know what to expect and that they can trust the organization and its leaders to provide a stable environment where they can grow and excel. When leaders model standards of practice, they establish stable expectations for everyone in the organization.

Follow the leader. Role model behavior as a leader.

Tips for Modeling the Right Way

How should you be acting?

Leaders are responsible for modeling the right way always. Here are quick tips to implement in your daily actions.

Compass with mountain at sunset sky background.

Celebrate Wins that Matter

Stay the Course

Why do we end up abandoning our big goals? When we celebrate small steps of progress, we stay motivated to achieve what matters most.

multiple paths of Old stone steps and stainless steel guardrail on the steps

Reflection T-Chart

Take the best next steps

Organizing ideas and details during reflection supports informed decision-making about future actions. Use this tool for individual or team reflection about a specific outcome or progress toward a goal.

Reflective Practice

Do more of what's working

No one gets out of bed hoping to perform worse today than yesterday. Improvement occurs as we engage in reflective practice.

Behind the scenes look from a two-way mirror during an interrogation.

Transparency

What's Going on Behind the Scenes?

Many companies are inviting consumers to take an inside look into what goes on behind the scenes. Why are organizations making this a priority?
Because increasing transparency between an organization and its community or its employees builds trust and credibility.

Stub Your Toe Demonstration

Live Your Values

KK Owen and Ted Kirchharr demonstrate how leaders can handle a "stub your toe" moment most effectively.

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Accountability

Want success?

No one does accountability to us. We embrace it with full awareness of what’s at stake.

Close up of a woman hand picking garbage of the sidewalk on the street

That’s Not My Job

Take Pride in Your Organization

Encourage an office environment where employees have pride in their workplace and are willing to do whatever it takes to make the organization successful. This is the difference between an owner and a renter.

Team leader shaking hand employee congratulating with rewarding, appreciating for good work result while business team applauding, recognition concept

Reward & Recognize

Do your employees feel appreciated?

It’s important for people to know that their hard work is noticed, and they’re valued for their contributions to the organization’s success. Rewarding employees creates a positive company culture of engaged people.

Accelerate Your Communication

Better communication, not more communication

Communication doesn't have to be a chore. There are many ways to reach your organization with the tools they prefer and are already using. What are the best ways to propel your organizational messaging?

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Overwhelmed employee stuck in the daily grind

Celebrate Results

Does your team get lost in the daily grind?

In this video, Dr. Pat Greco explains how celebrating results helps teams focus on what matters most and connects them to purpose.

What Action Can I Take?

Address Employee Needs & Ideas

When an employee reveals a needed resource, barrier to a process, or an idea for improvement, leaders have the responsibility to act on that information. Following-up and following-through after conversations or receiving feedback from employees builds trust and increases engagement and productivity. For this leadership challenge, determine follow-up actions to take as the leader after each leader connection scenario.

Connect Because You Care

Engage Teams While Improving Processes

One of a leader’s greatest responsibilities is to ensure teams are engaged and productive. People are motivated to increase productivity when leaders take time to get to know them personally, make them feel comfortable, and help remove barriers in the workplace.

Aligning Hiring and Evaluations to Service Excellence

Let Service Standards Lead the Way

In this video, Dan explains how his human resources and leadership teams use their standards of service in their hiring and evaluations. When we use the standards of service excellence to evaluate potential candidates, we are more likely to hire a person aligned with our culture and committed to our values.

Always Be Recruiting

Attract Top Talent

Finding talented and engaged candidates for job openings has increasingly become a challenge due to changes in the workforce. Leaders can lessen this challenge by creating positive cultures, supporting employees, and managing their reputation.

Man sitting on light bulb rocket while working on a laptop

Boost the Employee Experience

Are Your Employees Excited to Get to Work?

Disengaged employees cost the American economy billions per year in lost productivity. Employees can become disengaged when they're made to feel like they're not listened too, valued, or appreciated. To keep people engaged, leaders must remind them of the meaningful outcomes they help to create.