• Social Constructionism and the power of engagement (by Marvin Faure)

    Saturday May 5th, 2012 0 comments

    I’d like to take the opportunity to build on Michael’s post “The US 7th Cavalry and the Quantum Zeno Effect” and introduce explicitly an idea that has been hinted at a few times here without ever being directly addressed. Michael’s main point was that, very often, top management unwittingly undermines employee engagement by an inappropriate choice of words, by being…

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  • “No fancy title this time… Just FEEDBACK” by Michael Newman

    Friday April 27th, 2012 2 comments

    One of the main tools of our trade is feedback. We habitually offer it to our clients and to our colleagues and use it to continuously improve our own performance. In fact, this Enablers Network blog exists because of feedback. After the publication of our Engaging Leadership book in 2009, we were told; “We like it a lot, when is…

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  • “Tell me: How will Pathos improve our R.O.I.?”

    Friday April 20th, 2012 2 comments

    This is the friendly “punch in the stomach” I received one day from one of my favorite C.E.O. and client. I can not think of a leader who wouldn’t wonder, each day, how she could improve the level of motivation and engagement of her troops. We all want it. We all know that motivation is increasingly critical in a fast…

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  • Engagement also works upward

    Saturday March 31st, 2012 1 comment

    Whenever invited to design and run a leadership program, I avoid “punishing the participants” by adding an extra project to it. They have already enough work on their plate so that, if every development course ends up by bringing more work to their heavy daily routine, they will not want to join in the future. Sometimes however, there may be…

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  • The Last of the Kodak Moments by Alan Moore

    Friday March 23rd, 2012 0 comments

    Alan Moore is one of Gerd Leonhard’s partners in the Futures Agency, author of the very recent “No straight lines” book. He recently published an article in the Huffington Post, which I thought was worth sharing with you and that Alan, kindly agreed for us to republish here. “I am little sad of the passing of Kodak. Some of us,…

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  • Bonding vs bridging: One of the biggest cause of value destruction

    Saturday March 17th, 2012 1 comment

    “Bonding vs Bridging”: the words come from the work of Lynda Gratton, a Professor of Management at London Business School. Bonding seems to be the most natural and instinctive reflex in humans, when confronted to uncertainty or time of harshness. History is full of examples of leaders using this human reaction to reinforce their position by focusing the energy of…

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  • “The US 7th Cavalry and the Quantum Zeno Effect” by Michael Newman

    Saturday March 10th, 2012 1 comment

    One of the joys of working in a Network of curious people with widely varying interests is the breadth of ideas that we are exposed to. This provides the environment for the creative collision of ideas2. Regular readers of the Enablers blog will be used to such collisions and enjoy adding their own connections and insights. The theme of this…

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  • “Flow”: the elusive peak state of motivation and productivity by Marvin Faure

    Tuesday February 28th, 2012 2 comments

    Our partner, Marvin Faure, runs Mindstore Europe. He has recently completed a study on motivation. It is his first publication on our blog. “The unusual feature of this study was that the participants were all known to be highly motivated amateur cyclists in their private lives: the sort of people that cycle 8000 – 10,000 km per year and think…

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  • Why “Somatic Markers” are critical to a business leader?

    Saturday February 4th, 2012 4 comments

    Michael Newman and I have mentioned Professor Antonio Damasio several times on this blog. Besides being one of the leading neuroscientists of the XXIst century, his work is compelling for leaders of today. One aspect, in particular, touches the topic of decision making. More concretely, to us business leaders, how do we “move our people from intention to action”? In…

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  • When you let your people go, who takes care of those who stay?

    Friday January 27th, 2012 0 comments

    As I recently mentioned, my professional “Deep Intent” comes from the sad memory, of seeing brave and respectable men begging my grandfather for work, because of a sudden closing of their coal mines in Southern Belgium. Laying people off, no matter how economically justified and how much courage it takes from the leader to do so, should always be considered…

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