Leadership & Development
Why Manager Engagement Is the Key to Team Performance
Managers are leading in a work environment that looks nothing like it did even five years ago. Distributed teams. Digital overload. Economic pressure. AI transformation. Constant change. Through it all, one truth remains: managers have an outsized influence on employee engagement and team performance. Gallup estimates they influence roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement1, not because they create it alone, but because their daily behaviours inform the environment. Setting expectations, building trust, responding under pressure, and connecting people to purpose all influence how work gets done. Yet many are navigating this complexity without the support or structure required… Read More »Why Manager Engagement Is the Key to Team Performance
How to Support Your Managers at Scale (and Stop the Burnout)
For years, companies have tried to boost employee engagement from the bottom up. They survey workers, invest in wellness programs, and encourage leaders to check in more often. But engagement rarely rises or falls because of initiatives aimed at frontline employees. It rises and falls with managers. Today’s managers are carrying a level of strain that looks very different from even a decade ago. Their role no longer centers on supervising work. They are expected to translate shifting priorities, navigate uncertainty, coach employees through stress, and keep teams aligned even as demands change around them. The problem is not simply… Read More »How to Support Your Managers at Scale (and Stop the Burnout)
How the WorkPlace Big Five Profile® Unlocks Performance at Every Stage of the Employee Lifecycle
HR teams today are being asked to do the impossible: increase engagement, improve retention, support development, and strengthen culture, all without adding more programs, more people, or more hours in the day. That’s why we created The WorkPlace Big Five Profile®. Built on the gold-standard Five-Factor Model and grounded in over 40 years of behavioral science, the WorkPlace Big Five Profile® is a personality-based development tool built specifically for the modern workplace. It reveals how people naturally work best—how they communicate, lead, collaborate, adapt, and grow—and helps align their natural tendencies with the demands of their specific roles. And because… Read More »How the WorkPlace Big Five Profile® Unlocks Performance at Every Stage of the Employee Lifecycle
How Self-Led Personality Insights Boost Engagement and Retention at Scale—Without Adding to HR’s Workload
Employee engagement is one of today’s biggest business challenges. Turnover is costly. Burnout is widespread. And people are craving more meaningful work. Managers and HR leaders want to support employees better, but launching yet another program is an unlikely solution. What often gets overlooked is that disengagement doesn’t start with workload or lack of recognition. More often, it begins when employees don’t understand how they naturally work best, or how to apply that knowledge in their roles. Engagement Starts with Employees Knowing Themselves When personality differences go unrecognized, friction builds. People get placed in roles that do battle with their… Read More »How Self-Led Personality Insights Boost Engagement and Retention at Scale—Without Adding to HR’s Workload
Why Aligning Employee Strengths to Roles Unlocks More Than Training Alone
Every year, organizations spend billions on training and development programs hoping to fix “people problems.” But if someone’s role works against their natural strengths, all the workshops and coaching in the world won’t change the outcome. Instead of unlocking engagement, you get: Short-lived performance spikes that fade within weeks. Frustrated employees who feel like they’re swimming against the current. Burned-out managers still searching for solutions. It’s not that your training isn’t working, it’s that you may be missing the piece that makes it truly transformative: starting with people’s natural strengths. Let me give you a common example. The Story You… Read More »Why Aligning Employee Strengths to Roles Unlocks More Than Training Alone
Why Managers Struggle to Coach—and How Personality Insights Help Fix That
Managers hear it all the time: You need to coach more. You need to coach better. But while many try, their efforts often fall flat. They either default to advice-giving, get stuck in surface-level conversations, or avoid it altogether, saying they don’t have the time, the skill, or the confidence to do it right. The problem isn’t that managers don’t care. It’s that most were never set up to succeed. They were promoted for being strong individual contributors and given tools for performance tracking. But tools for people development? Nothing. And they’re navigating all of this in environments that demand… Read More »Why Managers Struggle to Coach—and How Personality Insights Help Fix That
Why Self-Directed Development Works at Every Level, Not Just for Executives
In many organizations, development is still treated as a privilege for the few. Executives get leadership coaching, personality assessments, and bespoke training. Meanwhile, the rest of the workforce, the 80% who actually power your culture and customer experience, are left to figure it out on their own. That’s where disengagement, turnover, and stalled performance take root. Consider this: research from Gallup shows that 70% of team engagement is influenced by the manager. Yet today, managers are among the most disengaged employees in the workforce. When development stops at the leadership tier, you create a vacuum—managers without tools to lead effectively, employees… Read More »Why Self-Directed Development Works at Every Level, Not Just for Executives
How to Strengthen Your Team through Personality Insights: Lessons from the Five Dysfunctions & the WorkPlace Big Five Profile®
This was the team that was supposed to turn things around. The struggling business had restructured the organization to unite several talented individuals to lead the transformation as a team. Each member brought an impressive résumé and a wealth of experience. They also had a history of working well cross-functionally. Objectives of their new project were clearly stated, and everyone seemed to be on board with the same vision. But as their work began, something wasn’t working. Meetings ran long. Progress was slow. People hesitated to speak up or to speak directly. Difficult topics were punted to the next week… Read More »How to Strengthen Your Team through Personality Insights: Lessons from the Five Dysfunctions & the WorkPlace Big Five Profile®
Escaping The Bear Mentality: How Self-Directed Learning Boosts Career Growth & Helps to Prevent Burnout
Like so many people over the last few years, I recently enjoyed binge-watching the television series The Bear, a fictional dramedy that follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (played brilliantly by Jeremy Allen White), a fine-dining chef who returns home to Chicago to run his family’s Italian beef sandwich shop after a personal tragedy. It has all the ingredients (pun intended) you would expect from a series that explores the artistry, pressure, culture, and personal entanglements of those building a life—and a business—inside the kitchen. Watching The Bear, I was both entertained—and a bit rattled. The heat, the chaos, the nonstop demands—those… Read More »Escaping The Bear Mentality: How Self-Directed Learning Boosts Career Growth & Helps to Prevent Burnout