The number of people in the group you lead or the size of your organization doesn't matter. The book is organized around the qualities and abilities that enable a leader to effectively lead a few people--a large organization--or even a nation.

 

 

 

Sterile Holidays Are Not Merry. If there is one lesson recent years have taught us about handling diversity, it’s that sterility does not engender warmth and camaraderie at the holidays. It’s okay for all of us to have different religions, traditions and rituals. The tossed salad approach to managing diverse groups is much more effective than the melting pot; the differences within your team or department only serve to enrich the organization.

 

Know Your Audience. Make sure that you and everyone on your team are inclusive in their language surrounding the holidays. This doesn’t mean taking away meaning from a Christmas tree, if you happen to celebrate Christmas, but inviting people who have their own traditions to contribute something will create an inviting atmosphere. 

 

Emphasize Common Values. Choose a worthy cause that most people can relate to, such as food pantries or safe shelters, and make it an organizational project for the holidays.  For example, instead of exchanging gifts, ask everyone to bring a donation from home to the office party, and the group can assemble food baskets or boxes, children’s coats, instead of opening another scented candle.This takes the focus off of which holiday each of your employees is celebrating and aligns it with the core values of generosity and kindness.

 

As we dive headlong into a new year, there are plenty of unknowns related to the business and economic climates. As a leader, you have an investment in the training and development of staff, and are always looking for ways to be more effective, successful and (of course) cost-conscious.

 

What can you focus on this year, to accomplish your organization's training goals? 

 

In the past, corporate training programs were often seen as an optional component to the human resources budget.  We all have learned that training initiatives are vital to the organization, but only if they are focused on results and their objectives are clearly mapped to organizational goals Would you like to see a better ROI on your training efforts in 2010?

 

Take the advice of Stephen Covey, leadership guru of our times: "It is always vital to connect training programs and leadership development to the company's initiatives and strategies.  And the struggle you face is making that connection clear and explicit."

 

Our situation this time focuses on an international auto company that was able to keep profits fairly stable during the economically volatile time of the last two years. The executive board is now looking back at its investments and assessing where they experienced successes and challenges.  

 

One specific challenge that has come up is in the ROI from employee training.  Although the organization fared much better overall than its counterparts, the executive team does not see any positive return on its training programs.

 

As a matter of fact, the executives are just now finding out exactly what kinds of training programs were offered last year!  They are skeptical about continuing the current training budget in 2012.  In order to find out more, they have called in Bruce, the training manager, to plead his case for continued training programs at the same level. He can't understand why they would think of cutting the critical training programs that helped the company weather the tough economy.