Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates discusses, in a recent article in Parade, was asked what he thinks of today’s young people in the military.

“They are the most amazing young people. They’re out there building roads, fighting the enemy, conducting tribal councils, figuring out how to get kids to school. Their willingness to accept responsibility, to put their lives on the line – their courage, their resilience – is just extraordinary. These kids are the next generation”.  Read the full article...

Now listen up for these thoughts! This applies whether you are an experienced leader or in your first supervisory role.

The position you hold automatically comes with a certain amount of respect. You don’t. You may have been respected in your last position. That’s in the past now.

The fact is that you will now have to earn that respect all over again with a new team, whether they are subordinates, peers or superiors. They may have heard of you, but that does not mean they will respect you the minute you take over.  Read the full article...

My guess is that if I polled a bunch of HR people, I would find a vast majority of them hate doing periodic performance reviews and hate having to insist that the supervisors in their organizations conduct them. Am I right? Of course I am. My thinking?

I question the wisdom of insisting on a process with so little apparent value!  Read the full article...

The age old tradition is to use discipline as a means of changing behavior. The term “discipline” is typically associated with union contracts and has the usual verbal warning, written warning, suspension, and finally termination. There are many variations of this method such as paid suspensions, or two written warnings, but most pretty much follow this method.

I challenge that traditional method. The further you go into that progression, the less chance there is of changing the behavior.  Read the full article...

Sitting here reading the 11-22-2009 Sunday Seattle Times, I ran across an article in the NWJobs section. A reader wrote that he wants to know how to respond to questions about why he has had 10 jobs in 12 years (because of the description of the jobs he held, I assume it’s a he) . He wants to deflect those questions and stress what he can do for the company and he wants advice on how to do that.  Read the full article...