communication

5 skills

In: Culture, Effective Communication, Leadership

A recent US survey has identified the most important skills for managers as: communication, ability to train, time management, building culture and managing performance. In 2019 the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released a study  The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture which identified 1 in 4 American workers dreaded going to work and that US companies had lost $223 billion due to culture caused turn-over. In 2020 they updated the study with further research finding that 84% of US workers blame bad managers for creating unnecessary stress. This article unpacks the more recent study and finds that there are five skills that employees wish their managers have. Effective Communication The mostly highly regarded skill is effective communications (41% of those surveyed stated their manager could improve in this area). It is important to remember that effective communication is not just about talking it is also about listeningContinue Reading

In: Career, Effective Communication, Resilience, Time Management

There are lots of reasons where a meeting or group session that once might have been important and highly relevant stops being your top priority. When that happens you have to choose to be fully engaged or to break up with your commitments! It could be a regular social engagement, or a working group where you were included for ‘your perspective’, or maybe it is a voluntary activity that is no longer top of your list of priorities. We all have them, those meetings or events in our diaries that we are not really engaged in anymore, maybe you show up, but don’t really engage, other times we ghost the meeting by not showing up but not dropping off the invite list or admitting we were no longer attending. In this article Saunders explains why you should make a formal break and provides you with four steps to go aboutContinue Reading

gravitas

In: Lead

Article by Crispin Blackall, Image Credit August de Richelieu (Pexels) The word gravitas goes back to the ancient Romans and derives from the Latin gravitas, meaning weight, and from gravis heavy. It implies sound judgement, clarity of purpose, ability to yield influence and having organisational power. “In the world of corporate advancement, headhunters, talent managers, and HR professionals always ask themselves whether a person has the gravitas required of a role? Does the person have the necessary presence, speaking skills, and the ability to read an audience or situation? Does he or she have the emotional intelligence that enables him or her to easily influence others? ‘Finding Gravitas’ Kets de Vries 2015, INSEAD Knowledge What do you think of when you hear the term ‘gravitas’ personally my first thought is often of (the TV show) Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Captain Holt when he says “do you know what gravitas sounds like…” (and if youContinue Reading