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Nomophobia. Should leaders be concerned?

Nomophobia

Nomophobia.  Ever had that moment when you’ve left the house and are on your way to your destination when you suddenly realize you left your mobile device on the hallway table, or plugged in and charging on the kitchen counter?  Yeah, that moment when your palms and brow break out in a sweat, or your heart starts to beat faster, or your anxiety level goes up (or all of the above!).  I mean, what if someone tries to call you while you’re out, or if you need to look up something on Google, or an important email comes in?  How will you cope?!

Okay, sure, I write this a little tongue-in-cheek, but also because it’s not that unusual, it’s happened to the best of us.  What may surprise you though is that this is actually a thing – it has a name – nomophobia (no mo-bile phobia).  It is a real condition, described as the irrational fear of being without your mobile phone or being unable to use your phone for some reason, such as the absence of a signal or running out of minutes or battery power.  And recent research out of HEC Montreal indicates that nomophobia can lead to chronic stress and reduced job performance.

So what should leaders do?

So what should a leader do to mitigate the negative effects of nomophobia?  Well, I can think of two directions to pursue.  Continue reading →

The lobster as a metaphor for continuous learning

Several times in its life, a lobster casts off its shell. When the shell begins to inhibit the lobster’s growth and development, the lobster has no choice but to discard its old shell and grow a new one. It is the same with humans.  And it offers an important lesson to leaders – in order to stay relevant, both for us and the people we lead, continuous learning is paramount.

In my latest column in The Globe and Mail, published in this morning’s print edition, I offer three specific ideas to embrace continuous learning, to grow your mind and develop your abilities, so that you won’t become stagnant, so that you will always be relevant, no matter what the changes are in your working environment.

continuous learning

You need to cast off your shell if you want to continue to grow

If you get the print version of The Globe, you’ll find it on page B11.

Note: if you are a subscriber to The Globe and Mail, you can also read the column directly at their website at this link: https://tgam.ca/2XhyBzl

So what are you doing?

As always, I’d love to hear from you.  What are specific things you do to ensure that you are continuously learning?  What are you doing to be a lobster?  Please share your perspectives by adding your comments below.

If you’ve been a reader of the blog for a while, you probably already know that I have a book titled Why Does the Lobster Cast Off Its Shell? which published in its third edition in 2017.  In the book, I offer three more strategies to grow your mind and develop your abilities, as well as 171 Ways to Be a Lobster! Scroll down the page once you click on the link.

Create employee engagement by monitoring performance metrics

Today’s blog post takes us to Strategy #14 in my ongoing series of video tips outlining specific ideas to develop and grow your employees.  Employee growth is a natural outcome of employee engagement, and a sure-fire way to create employee engagement is to establish and monitor performance metrics.

Establish and monitor performance targets

We’ve all heard the saying, “What gets measured gets done.” It simply means that regular measurement and reporting keeps people attentive and focused.  And when people know how they’re doing, they are deliberate and thoughtful about making decisions to improve their results.

So establish metrics.  What are those vital few indicators that tell you things in your department are working as intended?  Make sure that this is information that can be collected easily. Because if it’s too difficult, it won’t happen. Continue reading →

A leadership lesson from monarch butterflies

monarch butterfliesEvery fall, millions of monarch butterflies leave their summer homes in Canada and the northern United States and travel over 3,000 miles south to their winter home in the mountains of central Mexico.

Even though the journey is long and arduous, instinctively, the butterflies know that they need to find a safe place to spend the winter.  This makes sense.  But what is very unusual is how the butterflies make their spring return trip to their breeding and feeding territories in Canada.

You see, the individual butterflies that leave the north are not the ones that will return.  While favourable air currents permit the monarchs to make their way south to Mexico relatively quickly, the return trip to northern climes takes much longer.  In fact, because the life cycle of a butterfly is just 5-7 weeks, individual monarchs stop for breeding and feeding cycles, and eventually they die before completing the journey.

However, their offspring continue the journey. Eventually, it takes the monarchs four to five generations to actually make the entire trip back up to Canada.

We still don’t know why …

Science is still deciphering how an individual monarch knows to return to the summer breeding and feeding grounds from several generations ago.  Is it Continue reading →

How you admit your mistakes matters

ibdLast month, Morey Stettner from Investor’s Business Daily reached out to me as an expert source for a story he was writing for their “Leaders and Success” page.  He was interested in the best way for leaders to admit their mistakes, whether it was to their peers, their employees, their Board of Directors, or others.  This is the article that was published in their print edition last week on May 28:

Admit mistakes clearly to reassure others, not make matters worse

In addition to yours truly, Morey interviewed three other individuals, all of who provided excellent advice.

What have been your experiences?

But I’d like to know what you think?  Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve either had to admit an error in judgment or report a problem and you handled it appropriately?  What about the opposite, when the outcome wasn’t what you’d hoped?  Or have you observed a senior leader in your organization admit mistakes well or poorly?  Please share by adding your comments below.

P.S. Morey found me as a result of this column I wrote for The Globe & Mail a year ago in May 2018: Why good leaders make grave mistakes − and still thrive.  If you haven’t seen it before, you may find this helpful as well.

Formal mentoring is one of the most powerful ways to develop employees

I’m back again with another instalment in our continuing video series on specific ways to develop employees.  Today’s idea is to set up a formal mentoring program in your organization.

Establish a formal mentoring program

Pairing your employees with a seasoned senior employees who can offer advice and perspectives on the career skills and knowledge they need to grow in your organization is a very powerful, and one of the most inexpensive ways to develop employees.  But in order to for mentoring to work, you need to structure it thoughtfully and deliberately.  In particular, consider three things.

Three key considerations

Continue reading →

Teamwork: Lessons from the Meerkat

teamwork lessons from a meerkat

This article was originally published on March 13, 2014 and has been updated

When you think of teamwork, the last thing you probably think about is meerkats, those strange little denizens of the Kalahari Desert.

By rights these cute, squirrel-sized members of the mongoose family shouldn’t be able to survive in such an inhospitable, dry and scorching environment.

They’re defenseless—surrounded by predators.

To add insult to injury, they have to dig for food—not just a little digging, but up to several times their body weight, just to get at one small morsel of caterpillar or beetle larvae.

Yet—cute, frenzied, tough and tenacious, survive they do, and quite successfully.

Their secret? Teamwork.

That’s right.

Meerkats are one of the few animals on Earth that can work together as a team—almost as well as humans. Continue reading →

Develop and grow your people by investing in training

My blog post today also happens to be Strategy #12 in our ongoing video series on specific practical ideas to develop and grow your people.  And today’s tip goes back to one of the basics – employee training.  The specific strategy: jointly create a professional development plan, tailored to the individual employee.

Jointly create a tailored plan for professional development

There are two important words here – jointly and tailored.

Do it together

Jointly, because it should be an effort by both you and your employee.  Encourage your employees to take an active role in identifying what job competencies they feel they’re lacking.  Competencies are the skills, abilities, and knowledge needed to be successful in a particular or future role, and they can encompass technical knowledge and interpersonal skills. Continue reading →

A problem employee must be dealt with promptly

problem employeeIf you don’t deal with a problem employee swiftly and firmly, you run the risk that a few rotting leaves will ruin the whole salad.  Let me explain.

Bagged salad from the grocery store is simple and convenient, so I often purchase it as an easy way to add more greens to our meals.  But every so often, despite the “Best before” date, I see a few leaves beginning to brown through the cellophane wrap.  When I notice some of the edges browning, I have learned that it is wise to open the bag, remove the offending pieces, and store the remaining greens in an airtight container for the next couple of days.  Experience has taught me that if I leave the bag unopened, the few darkening bits turn the entire contents into one big slimy mess, and then nothing is salvageable.

If you don’t deal with your problem employee …

This everyday situation offers a lesson in how important it is for leaders to manage, without delay, the problem employee on their team.  If you observe any of your employees exhibiting poor performance or inappropriate workplace behaviour, it’s essential that you deal with them promptly and firmly.  Because if you leave these individuals unchecked, they will most certainly spread discord and negativity throughout your team simply by being present.  Even worse, your lack of decisive action with a problem employee will actually be demoralizing for the rest of your team.  The few rotting leaves will quickly turn the entire bag into a horrid place to work. Continue reading →

Regular one-on-one conversations support employee growth

In our last video tip in our ongoing series on developing and growing employees, I said that it was critical to offer constructive feedback to your people.  Key to continued employee growth though is that this constructive feedback be frequent and consistent.  So today’s strategy for employee growth builds on the last tip.  It is to schedule regular one-on-one conversations with each of your staff members.

Schedule regular one-on-one conversations with your staff

When thinking about regular one-on-one conversations with each of your direct reports, there are two things you need to consider – frequency and content.  So let me address each one separately.

How often?

Continue reading →