Tag Archives: Human Resources

Sustaining a Global Life

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linda brimm.jpgby Linda Brimm

Global Cosmopolitans are often pigeon-holed by organizations as mobile and adaptable people, standing ready to be parachuted into the next market. But they should push back when they want to go “home” or stay put for a while and companies should listen.

Luisa, a former South American student of mine got yet another international assignment. This time, her company wanted to send her from the head office in the UK to Australia. She had been pegged as someone who could move anywhere. She’d done it before, many times. But this time was different; she wanted to stay in one place and settle for a while. Right after the birth of her second child, HR offered her a promotion in Australia. She tried to explain that she had gained many skills that she could use as a result of her mobility in the head office, but she felt tagged as easily mobile. They had given her a promotion and set up the new position, but this time, she didn’t bite.  She used this as an opportunity to decide what would be best for her. She changed companies. Continue reading →

A First-Time Manager’s Guide to Leading Virtual Teams

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by Mark Mortensen

In the past, new managers often had the luxury of cutting their teeth on traditional collocated teams: groups of people, sitting down the hall from one another, who met up in conference rooms to hash out what they were trying to achieve and how to get there. Unfortunately, today’s increasingly global work environment does not always afford that luxury. Many first-time managers find themselves assigned to a team of subordinates scattered far and wide.

Managing a distributed team can feel overwhelming as it requires you to navigate many different types of distance: geographic, temporal, cultural, linguistic, and configurational (the relative number of members in each location). Every one of these dimensions affects team dynamics and, therefore, has an impact on effectiveness and performance as well. Daunting as that may seem, there is good news in the form of a large and ever-increasing body of research and best practices on how to increase your odds of success. But first, it’s important to understand which aspects of team dynamics are, and are not, affected by distance. Continue reading →

3 Things Managers Should Be Doing Every Day

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by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

“When are we supposed to do all that?” That’s the question we constantly get from new managers, only weeks or months into their new positions, when we describe the three key activities they should be focusing on to be successful as leaders: building trust, building a team, and building a broader network. To their dismay, most of them have found they rarely end a day in their new positions having done what they planned to do. They spend most of their time solving unexpected problems and making sure their groups do their work on time, on budget, and up to standard. They feel desperately out of control because what’s urgent–the daily work–always seems to highjack what’s important–their ongoing work as managers and leaders. Continue reading →

7 Things That Make Great Bosses Unforgettable

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by Travis Bradberry

Some bosses are harder to forget than others. While bosses can be unforgettable because they make life miserable, the most memorable bosses stick with us because they change us for the better.

When I ask audiences to describe the best and worst boss they ever worked for, people inevitably ignore innate characteristics (intelligence, extraversion, attractiveness, and so on) and instead focus on qualities that are completely under the boss’s control, such as passion, insight, and honesty. Continue reading →

Treat Promises to Yourself as Seriously as Promises to Others

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by Michael E. Kibler

Successful leaders keep their promises. They take their responsibilities to others seriously, and, when necessary, they put aside their own needs for the good of the organization. As Simon Sinek put it in his bestselling book, Leaders Eat Last: “Leaders are the ones willing to give up something of their own for us—their time, their energy, their money, maybe even the food off their plate…Unless someone is willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of others to earn their place in the hierarchy, they aren’t really ‘alpha material.’”

In my firm’s work with and analysis of more than 1,000 senior executives around the world, we’ve found that this description is only half right. Of course leaders sacrifice aspects of their personal lives at times; that’s the price of admission in today’s competitive work environment. But those who subjugate their own personal needs for healthful diet and exercise, sleep and recreation, personal connections, professional development, cultural enrichment, and community engagement over five, ten or 20 years eventually succumb to a phenomenon we refer to as brownout—the graduated loss of energy, focus, and passion, which ultimately diminishes their success. Continue reading →