Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

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CreditHarry Truman once said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

And while there’s a lot of truth in that statement, the reality is, most people like to be recognized for the hard work they do.

We’ve all faced experiences at one point or another in our careers where someone else took credit for our work. Perhaps your manager got the public recognition for a project you did 75 percent of the leg work on. Or, you were part of team effort to accomplish a major task, and somehow, one team member ended up being congratulated just a little more heartily than the rest.

When employees are regularly over-looked, and not given credit where it is due, eventually they’ll stop working as hard. They will have learned that giving 110 percent isn’t really worth the effort. At best you’ll end up with sub-standard output. At worst, you will lose good employees as they look elsewhere to be rewarded for their knowledge and experience.

And you don’t want either of those thing happening in your organization.

Sachin H. Jain wrote about this issue in a recent post for Harvard Business Review. He has led teams in in government, academia, clinical medicine, and the private sector, and as such has devised his own set of rules to help manage ‘giving credit where credit is due’.

Here are his top three: Read more

Six Fundamentals for Great Conversations

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great conversationsWhat is one of the biggest challenges each of us has in our lives? It is the ability to hear and be heard in a conversation. Done right, it can lead to great relationships and done poorly it can cause a relationship to blow up when you least expect it.

Here are six fundamentals to enable great conversations whether in business or in our personal lives. Read more

What People Look for in Great Leaders

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great leadersLeadership is a popular topic of discussion and analysis in business books, and at seminars, and conferences. As a business owner, focusing on improving your leadership style and delivery is important, but it’s helpful to look first at what people are actually looking for in great leaders.

In a recent post on LinkedInToday, Marillyn Hewson, chairman and CEO at Lockheed Martin, does just that, looking at the leadership classroom of the U.S. Military to see what characteristics of leadership they find most important, especially during times of change and uncertainty.

Quoting Tom Rath and Barry Conchie’s 2008 book “Strengths Based Leadership,” Hewson calls out four things that individuals expect from great leaders: Stability, trust, compassion, and hope. Read more

The Key to Success: Three Ways to Provide Value to Your Network

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key to successAs business leaders and their staff become increasingly active on social media for professional networking or personal connections, providing value to those in your network is as important a key to success as making the initial contact.

Social media provides us with opportunities to connect with future business partners, visionaries in their industry, and prospective customers, but building a supportive and beneficial network takes time and effort.

In a recent post on entrepreneur.com, Lewis Howes, co-author of LinkedWorking and the creator of the LinkedInfluence training program, lays out three ways business leaders can provide value to their personal and professional networks. In time, those personal and professional connections will recognize you as a resource and connector. Read more

Four Ideas to Stay Focused and Productive

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focused and productiveDo you have challenges with having focused periods to accomplish your goals?

Many of us have faced that issue, and all of us must be diligent in order to stay focused and maximize our productivity.

Here are four ideas to help you stay focused and productive. Read more

Productivity: Nine Things Productive People Don’t Do

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productivityProductivity seems to always be on the minds of business leaders. Our days are filled with appointments, deadlines — and often, distractions come knocking.

In a recent post on inc.com, Bill Murphy, Jr., co-author of Breakthrough Entrepreneurship, says what you DON’T do, is just as important was what you DO do, when it comes to increasing your daily productivity. Read more