Jason's Blog
A Secret to Changing Manager Behavior
What’s your go-to cure for the hiccups? Growing up, my family was convinced that the best cure was a good “scare.” I can still remember my parents (and grandparents) trying to startle me out of a case of hiccups. I don’t know if this actually works, but I...
In Search of Connection
Connection, or more specifically, the lack of connection, has been a topic of concern for nearly everyone I've met with lately. How do we keep remote employees feeling connected? When we bring people together in the office, how do we encourage them to actually connect...
How your Stories Shape your Relationships
Stories are powerful. They entertain us. They help us communicate. They invite us to connect with others. But the stories we tell ourselves as we try to make sense of the world around us might be the most powerful. My teenage son recently ran...
People are Disconnecting. Could Work reconnect us?
A few weeks ago, I read an article in The Atlantic titled "Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out" and I can't stop thinking about it. (FYI: The article requires a subscription to read it, unfortunately.) The gist of the article is that there is overwhelming...
How to Clean Up the Mess of Hybrid Work
Change can be messy. And the change to hybrid schedules has proven to be pretty messy for a lot of organizations. Many of the leaders I’m speaking with are struggling to make sense of this messiness. In one case, a leader was puzzled over why less than half of his...
Why Hybrid Work Policies are a BAD Idea
Despite what we’d all hoped would unfold this year, we are nowhere near the emergence of a “new normal” regarding where and how we work. Don’t believe me? All you have to do is a quick Google search to discover that there are just as many articles espousing the “death...
The Burnout Lesson I Hadn’t Learned Yet
I’ve been struggling for the past few months. Honestly, I’ve probably been struggling for much longer than that. I just finally became aware of how bad it was recently. To start with, I was exhausted all the time. Regardless of how much I slept, I never seemed to find...
Is it time to abandon the idea of “culture” at work?
As companies are requiring employees back into the office, one of the most common reasons cited is culture. CEO’s will argue that their culture requires being together in the office. Others suggest that remote work is degrading or ruining their culture. The first...
How to Have Effective Check-in Conversations
It was my birthday and I was craving some time with my kids. In a brazen attempt to pry my kids away from their technology, I offered a trip to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. My hope was, once they were a captive audience in the car, we’d be able to chat a bit. But...
What Baggage are you Carrying into 2023?
Like so many others, I decided to take some time off between Christmas and New Years. My goal was to largely put work aside to rest up, spend time with my family, and reconnect with some friends. The first few days went pretty well due to all of the great...
Performance Management Isn’t Only About Results
I recently finished binge-watching the FX show, Welcome to Wrexham. It’s a documentary made about the team and community surrounding a Welsh Football (Soccer, for us Americans) Club that was purchased by two Hollywood stars, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2019....
Why we need to kill the dress code
Perhaps the simplest and most potent management advice I have to offer is this. Treat people like responsible adults. Sadly, the legacy of traditional management practices we inherited doesn't always do this. Case in point: the dress code....
How to Make Work Suck Less
My recent video about Quiet Quitting generated a lot of reaction. Reading through the comments, I was reminded of a sad reality. Work still sucks for a lot of people. If you look at any article or video online about...
Why You Should Ask Employees What Would Make Them Quit
It’s the conversations we are most afraid of that are the most important to have. This is true in all areas of our lives. And it’s particularly true at work right now. As you worry about retention and losing our best...
Quiet Quitting is NOT the Problem
Is it just me or does it seem like references to “quiet quitting” are everywhere all of a sudden? Thanks, TikTok. Last year, it was people posting their resignations to TikTok (also known as “for real quitting''). Now...
How to Fix Employee Performance Issues without Breaking the Employee
One of the biggest mistakes I see from managers and organizations is how they address performance issues with employees. They treat the performance issue as if it's some flaw in the employee to be fixed. Or worse, like...
Performance Is Always First
As I was scrolling through LinkedIn this week, I stumbled across this post from the prolific Adam Grant. The post was promoting an interview he had done with Prince Harry about mental health at work. Given the amount of writing and speaking I do about well-being...
Management Shouldn’t Be So *Bleep*ing Complicated
Why do we make management so hard? I’ve got an entire bookshelf that is full of management and leadership books, many filled with contradictory advice about what really matters or the most effective approaches. Why have we made it so complicated? Spending years as...
Managing = Caring
The longer I study and teach management, the simpler things become. For example, this week, I was again asked how managing a hybrid team is different than managing a team that is in the office full-time. When someone asks this question, they are expecting me to share...
What will the future of work look like?
Over the past week, I’ve been asked twice what I think the future of work will look like. And while it’s always fun to speculate, here’s the truth. There is no way to know with any precision what’s coming in the...
How to Stay Grounded when Facing a Storm of Change
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been wrestling with something internally, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but knew I’ve not quite felt like myself. There’s an unsettled feeling that I can’t shake. It’s not unlike that moment when you lose your balance...
Heartbroken
We said our final goodbyes earlier this week to my grandma. After 93 years of life, her health had been failing recently, and she left us last week. I was very close with my grandma and the loss hit me pretty hard. I actually wrote about my grandparents on my blog...
Embracing Discomfort
A few weeks ago, I took my youngest son on a ski weekend to Colorado. Skiing is one of my favorite things to do and being able to share it with my son is purely joyful. But that’s not the point of sharing this story. My son is new to skiing. This was only his...
3 Overlooked Skills Managers Need Right Now
For years, the Gallup Organization has told us that managers are the lynchpin in employee engagement. Based on their data, managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. That is an astonishing number. And it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it...
My Parenting Fail (and why sometimes, trying to help makes things worse)
The most important job I have is being a parent. I love and adore my kids. And I want them to find success in whatever they do. Like most parents, I find it excruciating to watch my kids struggle. This brings me to the story I’m going to share with you today. ...
Compassion: A New Management Imperative – Part 3
This content was originally posted on the Workhuman blog. You can find the orginal post here. This is part three of a three part series. In part one we explored why employee well-being is vital to performance at work. We discovered that the skill managers need to...
Compassion: A New Management Imperative – Part 2
This content was originally posted on the Workhuman blog. You can find the orginal post here. This is part two of a three part series. In the first post, we explored why employee well-being is vital to performance at work. And we discovered that the skill managers...