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When trust isn't present at work, employees spend more time watching their backs than doing any useful work. This creates a downward spiral of lost productivity, abysmal employee engagement and, eventually, increased attrition. This new article by Impact Achievement Group explains why trust is so vital, the mistakes companies make trying to instill trust, and how to create trust with a consistent, values-based plan.

Today’s work world is in continual flux and requires constant adaptation and an unprecedented acceptance of change. Yet many more change efforts fail than succeed — even when those efforts are critical for an organization’s future success. This new article by Impact Achievement Group explains why this occurs and how to successfully steward an organization through times of change.

Dependent relationships keep people from achieving their potential. The dependent person has low expectations of himself, often the result of a supervisor’s inability to foster self initiative, and his performance then begins to reflect this lack of confidence. Appropriate management behaviors can develop initiative, trust, and personal responsibility and play a large part in ensuring that performance-hindering “dependency DNA” doesn’t take hold in an organization. Managers and supervisors will learn how they contribute to a cycle of dependency in their organizations and how to re-educate themselves and their employees to operate in a performance culture.

While decision making is critical to effectiveness and success, few people ever receive any training on how to make wise, thoughtful choices. Research has shown that success is highly dependent on the process people use to arrive at decisions. Raising the odds of making good decisions requires learning and applying a valid, repeatable decision-making process—Impact Achievement Group addresses this situation with its latest article, “Becoming an Agile Decision Maker and Avoiding Common Decision-Making Traps.” Readers will learn about the various factors that influence human decision making and how this awareness improves the ability to make effective decisions.

For over 40 years the tenet that “happy employees are productive employees” has been the driving force for employee motivation practices and management training—despite clinical evidence to the contrary. The latest research article from Impact Achievement Group, “The Morale and Motivation Myth … No Strings Attached!” provides insight into why, with the best intentions, reward and recognition programs are often doomed to fail; why productivity leads to happiness, not vice versa and; the critical role managers play in engaging workers, with no strings attached.

Employee satisfaction, attitude and engagement surveys are intended to produce useable data that improves employee work-life experience and impact business results. But when a huge disparity exists between how senior-level personnel and everyone else views the value and usefulness of these surveys, disenfranchisement and disengagement loom on the horizon. The latest research article from Impact Achievement Group, “The Hypocrisy of Employee Surveys: A Closer Look at the True Impact,” provides recommendations for improving employee surveys.

While performance review serves an important business purpose, the reality of the review experience—for both managers and employees—delivers disappointing results. That disappointment can spell disaster for your organization. The latest article from Impact Achievement Group, “The Dark Side of Performance Reviews – Why People Hate Them and Why They Fail,” explains 1) what the essential purpose of a performance review process is, 2) how to establish a fair and consistent process so that employees can know where they stand, and 3) how to evaluate results rather than activity and effort.

Without a consistent and fair performance reviews process, top performers become discouraged and look for new opportunities while low performers aren’t challenged to rise above mediocrity. Unwanted turnover and decreased productivity result. A new study by Impact Achievement Group, “The Performance Review Process: Facts and Fiction,” reveals how 1) Managers and supervisors tend to group performance marks for employees toward the middle of the rating scale... 2) at least half the time, poor performance marks don’t translate to appropriate corrective action.... and 3) how a significant disparity exists between how CEOs and VPs view the performance review process and how everyone else does.

The ultimate purpose of coaching in an organization is to engage employees and capture their discretionary performance. Engaged, talented workers are prime drivers of overall productivity. When managers and supervisors rely on cookie-cutter coaching that does not consider individual performance levels in context, under-management results. Impact Achievement Group’s latest study reveals how managers and supervisors measure up to the vital coaching task.

Learning to effectively delegate appropriate tasks and prevent upward delegation are critical components of successful management. New managers or supervisors who fail to develop these skills can easily find themselves in the trap of doing for employees what employees can and should be doing for themselves. The article, Initiative, Personal Responsibility, and Delegation, gives managers actionable tips for successfully assigning work tasks.

Among the many responsibilities required to effectively manage others, coaching is at the top of the list. A leader must recognize the performance needs of the direct reports and give them the confidence that they can accomplish their task responsibilities through their own skills. The article, Performance Coaching Flexibility: Every Great Manager Has It, discusses how managers must break an employee's performance down into specific tasks in order to diagnose what the specific performance issue actually is.

Leadership is the process of influence. Social power is a person's influence potential - it is the resource that enables a person to induce compliance, or gain commitment from others. This article, A New Manager's Guide to Understanding Influence and Power, is based on Module #10 from the popular Supervisory Basics training series from Impact Achievement Group. It offers tips and guidance for new supervisor's to understand how to build effective power bases and the appropriate use of those power bases is a critical skill for effective supervision and management.

Performance problem situations are a supervisor or manager’s defining moments The way these defining moments are dealt with can either trap you in a cycle of limitations, decreasing the quality of your work life, or enable you to manage performance effectively. This article, Handling Performance Problems, is based on Module #8 from the popular Supervisory Basics training series from Impact Achievement Group. It offers tips and guidance for new confronting and addressing performance problem situations.

Performance problem situations are a supervisor or manager’s defining moments The way these defining moments are dealt with can either trap you in a cycle of limitations, decreasing the quality of your work life, or enable you to manage performance effectively. This article, Handling Performance Problems, is based on Module #8 from the popular Supervisory Basics training series from Impact Achievement Group. It offers tips and guidance for new confronting and addressing performance problem situations.

Not all situations that come before the new manager will be easy to deal with. A main responsibility and obligation in a managerial capacity is to address and, many times, confront difficult and uncomfortable issues. This article offers insights into the important skills necessary for handling workplace complaints, employee conflicts, and personal requests. Topics covered include addressing workplace complaints, tactics for handling employee conflicts, and handling personal requests.

New managers must handle an important new area of responsibility — conducting performance reviews. Training is critical to help them provide fair and meaningful employee appraisals, according to Impact Achievement Group. Providing great reviews, whether informal or formal, is a challenge for most managers. Those new to management can excel by recognizing three critical areas to a great employee performance review: clear expectations; well-defined standards, and clearly defined performance measures. This article teaches new managers important theories and tactics to conduct quality performance reviews.

Little can cause new managers as much difficulty as misunderstanding labor laws. Legal concerns can and will vary by organization, location, and state or province or country. But every manager must know the basics. Part 5 in a 12-Part Series on Helping Individual Contributors and Seasoned, But Untrained, Supervisors Transition to Effective Leaders, this article “The Law: Compliance Basics” presents a handy reference for new managers regarding key employment legal issues and pitfalls.

The boss is the person with the greatest control over a new manager's success. How well the new manager manages the relationship will, to a great degree, have a critical impact on the new manager’s career aspirations and success at that job. Part 4 in a 12-Part Series on Helping Individual Contributors and Seasoned, But Untrained, Supervisors Transition to Effective Leaders, this article “Working With the Boss” discusses the importance for new managers to develop a relationship with their boss, how to go about doing that, and how to effectively use that relationship to eliminate obstacles in their growth as a supervisor. We also show how Human resources can assist newly promoted managers by pointing out specific things a new supervisor or manager can do – at first and then routinely – to become a valued resource to the boss.

Performance problem situations are a supervisor or manager’s defining moments The way these defining moments are dealt with can either trap you in a cycle of limitations, decreasing the quality of your work life, or enable you to manage performance effectively. This article, Handling Performance Problems, is based on Module #8 from the popular Supervisory Basics training series from Impact Achievement Group. It offers tips and guidance for new confronting and addressing performance problem situations.

Based on Module #2 from The Supervisory Basics Series, this article gives first-time managers an appreciation for “business acumen”’ – an understanding of how a business creates value and makes money. Topics covered include business acumen (a basic understanding of how an organization makes money), the principles of customer loyalty and creating a culture that focuses on the customer.

Based on Module #1 from The Supervisory Basics Series, this article provides a framework for starting out in a new supervisory or management position. Topics covered include overcoming common mistake new supervisors make and the importance of people skills and initial team meetings.

For a limited time, Impact Achievement Group is offering Chapter One of our best selling book for free -- online. Read this chapter (Motivation at Work) to learn about the critical role of managers -- and how they need to learn to adapts to the performance needs of employees.

For a limited time, Impact Achievement Group is offering Chapter Two of our best selling book for free -- online. Read this chapter (Motivation at Work) to learn about how to turn organizations around... particularly ones that often show lack of employee morale, extremely low productivity, or disrespect for authority.

The idea that people leave managers, not organizations, is hardly new. Still, many organizations are so engrossed in the daily details of doing business, they merely pay lip service to the idea of leadership development. But to get the upper hand in the war for talent, senior managers need to do more than give verbal validation to leadership training — they need to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. When leaders send managers to development courses but then complain these activities take individuals away from their work, it sends the message that learning isn’t really a part of a manager’s job, said Julie White and Rick Tate, senior managing partners at Impact Achievement Group, a leadership development training company. And without active senior leadership involvement, it can be difficult to align what the business says with the things that are actually happening on the ground.

Published in Workforce Performance Solutions Magazine. By 1980, “Star Wars” had taken the movie-going public by storm—and in the business world, the “Quality Wars” had begun. Successful businesses learned a major lesson: When you compete in an arena where customers no longer tolerate poor-quality products, it’s essential to get employees actively involved and improve their ability to deliver quality products. If only we had truly learned that lesson. Today, good product and competitive pricing have become the bare minimum required just to get into the game. Winning and losing have become functions of the “human factor” that sets the tone for the customer.