Marty Jordan

The paradox of productivity is: In order to be a better, more productive leader, you must take time to quiet your mind and be still.

I was recently coaching a leader who had the potential to do great things. I’m sure you know this type of person—smart, quick, articulate and out to prove he is the smartest person in the room. All that was missing was a little thing called emotional intelligence. And that “little” thing was holding him back.

If all managers in your organization employed these simple yet effective strategies for engaging employees, your organization would be seeing the business results that the Gallup organization has found when employees are highly engaged.

You don’t need a training budget or a formal training program to help employees gain new knowledge and learn new skills. Some of the most engaged and successful employees are those who are encouraged to grow and are involved in key decisions.

Engaged employees have tremendous pride and job ownership, they put forth more discretionary effort in terms of time and energy and, on average, demonstrate significantly higher levels of performance and productivity than those who are not engaged.

We are all familiar with the change statistic that says 70% of change efforts fail…or to put it the other way around, only 30% succeed. Those are pretty dismal numbers indeed. So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this article in the Ivey School of Business Journal highlighting one of those “30% succeed” stories.

Resistance to change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.