*Leadership

Employee engagement looms large as a challenge facing all organizations, big or small. For the past two years, “keeping employees engaged” was rated as the most significant workplace challenge by nearly 800 global business leaders in a major industry study.

Thank you to everyone who attended the Engage Employees to Give Their Best webinar!

We would like to provide you with a complimentary consulting session on creating a Specator-Free Workplace where employees will go above and beyond. If you are interested in the complimentary session, or have any questions about the topics covered in the webinar, please contact Roger Gibboni at rgibboni@dulye.com / 845-987-7744.

As an avid Syracuse University athletics fan, I’m still smarting over the loss of our men’s basketball team in the NCAA Elite 8 tournament. There were many missed opportunities in rebounding and shooting that snarled players’ performance.  In the end, those missed opportunities cost the team a big game.

Even if you’re not a sports fan – it’s hard not to know about Jeremy Lin. The New York Knicks point guard has spawned a fanatical following dubbed “Linsanity” that has taken over The Big Apple, the country and points well beyond.

Click on the buttons below to view the results from the “Are You An Engaged Manager? Rate Yourself” poll.

With only two weeks left to go before ringing in 2012, I have been thinking a lot about the past year–about the milestones my company set forth back in January and the opportunities that team members need to seize to make 2012 successful.

Goals grab people. Yet few companies nail them succinctly.

Just last week, I lead a focus group at a client business. During the session, I asked a group of front-line employees two specific questions: What’s the No. 1 goal the business had to achieve in 2011? What’s the vision this goal supports?

People really struggled to answer the questions, and this reaction is far from unusual. The thing is – these two questions should trigger an instant and consistent response from any company’s employees. If they can’t, it’s an indicator the company’s goals are too complicated, too obscure, or, worse – unknown.

Reverse mentoring unites 20-something employees with senior executives for a skills and knowledge swap. These days, the Gen Ys teach their Boomer big bosses how to maneuver around iPads, Facebook, and social media trends. In exchange, the junior employee gets face-time with their firm’s top brass and a view from the top (location of many C-suites).

I was in the aerospace division of GE back in the early 90s when Jack Welch introduced reverse mentoring – and it was brilliant. Top execs were assigned 20-something coaches – which gave these newly-minted professionals real access! They could dial them directly – dodging the secretary interference, they could walk into their offices, they had regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings, and they even had lunch together. Rarely had this happened before.

As an organizational leader, you are expected to provide advice and coaching to your team to improve productivity and achieve team goals, but also to help develop team members for more challenging work. That’s part of the job. 

But what about you? Who’s coaching you to elevate your game at work? 

For any business, whether it's a small firm or a large enterprise, tough economic times can either make or break a company – and Dulye & Co. is no different. 

The change management consultancy specializing in communication and collaboration solutions was facing one of its worst years since it was founded in 1998, but instead of giving up, the company took the opportunity to reinvent itself. 

The result was a program that earned a 2011 Silver Quill Award of Excellence from the International Association of Business Communicators (Heritage Region).