Tips on Coaching Employees

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant

Leaders must be determined to focus on their goal and to coach their employees to do the same.

Here are some tips on coaching employees to persevere in the attainment of their goals:

• Build rapport with your employees so that you have a good relationship from the start
• Begin with praise and honest appreciation
• Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly
• Reassure employees and give the other person a fine reputation to live up to

Giving Positive Feedback

“Praise and attention may easily have a profound effect on an individual's entire life.”
- Dale Carnegie

Good professional behavior deserves to receive attention as much as bad behavior does. Both cases provide an opportunity for your company to foster progression. It is unfortunate that people often only take advantage of the latter scenario to better their company. Appealing to one's pride is actually much easier than trying to lead someone to change. People want to be recognized for the good work they've done. Positive feedback and appreciation will foster not only the personal bonds had between you and your coworkers, but between those people and the very work they are there to do. It is then made nearly inevitable that the worker's progressive measures will not only continue, but likely increase in their rate of implementation.

Remember to:

• Offer encouragement
• Reassure people in their progress
• Provide a feeling of victory
• Be enthusiastic
• Be grateful for all effort being put forth.

The Impending Leadership Crisis

More than ever, organizations require strong leadership. Without clear direction, people cannot move the business forward. Current research is clear; most employees are disconnected or unclear about their specific roles in creating the business future.

Traditional job descriptions are not enough. It is also critical to establish each person's right to make decisions and how those decisions will be communicated upward.

We have cell phones, text messaging, e-mail, express packaging, and high-speed internet video conferencing - tools unheard of in previous decades, yet communication is one of our most pressing issues. In most businesses, people wander around looking for the right path when what's required is a clear picture of where they are in relation to where they're headed.

If you're going to build a second floor on a building and put a lot of weight on it, the smart thing to do is to go downstairs and look at the beams to see if they can hold that kind of weight. What you are doing is standing under the foundation to get under-standing. That's where the word understanding comes from. Careful and objective scrutiny of current reality is necessary in order to effectively lead the organization.

For example, in excellent companies, succession planning is not a theoretical exercise nor is it left to individual managers or employees. According to the Aberdeen Group, best-of-class organizations are 2.5 times more likely to integrate succession planning with the overall corporate strategy.

In a strong structure, no building block stands alone. Moving blocks around in isolation often creates more harm than good. Ad hoc development processes and weak hiring decisions can be devastating to future development. Don't sacrifice your long term vital future for the temporary present.

Do your best to clearly see what is really going on in your organization and in your marketplace. For example, do your strategic planning efforts result in apparent consensus, but bog down in implementation? Do people appear to say one thing and do another? What's going on here? Be careful of reacting by trying to "sell" others or accusing them of resisting change. Above all, do NOT implement a change initiative or appoint a "change management" committee, executive, or task force. These "solutions" create deeper, entrenched resistance. When "change" becomes the focus, the first thing you sacrifice is clarity of the desired end result.

Change is not the target. If you change the organization but miss your targets, is that okay?

Enough said.

You may be stuck in an enterprise that grew like the traditional Canadian farm house. As the family grew, it became necessary to add extra bedrooms and extensions. Outdated and rambling, many of today's businesses are confusing places in which people wander around expressing their latest ideas to anyone who will listen while lamenting management's failure to act decisively.

In some command and control organizations, fear of making mistakes drives people underground to CYA behaviours keeping management in the dark. People in these organizations often say, "It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission." Dale Carnegie's advice is, "If you lay an egg, step back and admire it." Put another way, "Smart people learn from their mistakes; a wise person learns from other's mistakes."

A myth, often perpetuated by consultants, contends that Michelangelo simply "chipped away the extraneous rock revealing his cherished statue of David." Nothing could be further from the truth, and every genuine artist knows it. Michelangelo created innumerable sketches, made at least two smaller versions of his masterpiece, and then turned the vision in his head into a priceless sculpture admired by generations of art lovers. The statue of David began as a picture in the mind of the artist and was declared finished by that same artist. The process he followed is one that is sadly misunderstood or missing in most of today's business models. Instead, owners, managers and consultants often unwittingly apply faddish or benchmark processes that fail to create their desired end result.

Lead by picturing your desired end-result in concrete terms and communicate that picture often. Commit to serving the business community by providing goods and services built on a platform of genuine interest in others, value for money, sustaining a healthy environment for future generations, while willingly sharing the organization's talents with those less fortunate. Lead your industry, lead your organization and provide leadership to your community.

For example, a real estate firm conducts seminars in selling skills for any agent in their community wanting to attend. In a sense, they are training their competition. They strictly enforce a "no recruiting" rule at these seminars that are eagerly attended by agents looking for ways to improve their performance.

Action Steps

Engage others in conversations around what is important to them. Where do they see changes/challenges and opportunities? Rather than trying to secure agreement or consensus, get alignment through hearing key stakeholder's connection to what is important to their future and the future of the enterprise.

Make it clear to each level of your organization what they are responsible for, and the level of decision-making power they possess. Hold them accountable to making decisions assigned to them. Provide support and guidance but do not decide for them.

Ensure hiring practices support recruiting people that align with the firm's business values. Don't put future development on the shoulders of individuals whims or personal motivation. Instead, design and implement development plans with roadmaps for advancement and relevant skills enhancement.

Do not allow people to default to courses they are naturally attracted towards. In appraisals and performance conversations, insist that people pursue learning paths that support the direction of the enterprise.

Focus on metrics that reflect the organization's ability to groom future leaders. For example, scrutinize current practices and determine what percentage of key vacancies are filled from internal resources.

Find ways to recognize and reward managers who produce candidates for advancement. Few organizations do this. Most companies reward current performance while ignoring or paying lip-service to the all-important impact actions taken have on the future success of the enterprise.

Stop guessing at other's motives or intent. Leaders know the motivation of their players. You get this knowledge from listening and observing, not from short-lived pep talks. Your job is to achieve results through the willing cooperation of others. Any manager can do this - almost none do. The good news is, when you step up, you separate yourself from the crowd.

Resist the temptation of fad-based "team-building" exercises. Rock climbing, paint-ball battles and other outdoor activities may be fun, but they rarely produce lasting culture change. This is not a mystery. Each of these exercises clearly put people in environments where the path of least resistance moves them towards a desired end result, including a structure that depends on developing collaborative relationships. It is a leader's responsibility to construct a similar design in the workplace where the path of least resistance leads to desired results.

Know The Purpose of Your Presentation

“Proper planning prevents poor performance.”
- Anonymous

Know the purpose of your presentation.

Most Accepted Purposes:

• Convince/Persuade to get action
• Inform
• Motivate
• Entertain

Relieve Personal Frustrations

“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
- Dale Carnegie

Often fatigue at the end of a work day cannot be attributed simply to the hard work we've done. Our own negative reactions to the stressful, daily grind drain our energy and stifle our potential for success.

Here are a few tips on how to relieve some personal frustrations so as to increase productivity without resentment:

• Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope
• Count your blessings instead of your troubles
• Cooperate with that which is inevitable

How to Convey Your Message

“We must have a deep and abiding desire to communicate our convictions and transfer our feelings to our listeners.”
- Dale Carnegie

To achieve success in today's world, you need to be able to communicate your ideas concisely and clearly.

Here are some guidelines on how to convey your message to your audience.

• Earn the right to speak on your topic by showing the audience that you are qualified to do so
• Express your message positively and with enthusiasm
• Provide the audience with the action you want them to take
• State the benefits that will be achieved from that action

Attain Better Leadership Opportunities

“Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.”
- Dale Carnegie

Leaders are expected to own higher levels of confidence than those who are not in positions of leadership. Here are some tips on how to build self-confidence so as to attain better leadership opportunities:

• Surround yourself with a supportive environment
• Be resolved to succeed
• Be receptive to constructive criticism
• Set attainable goals

Being a More Invested Friend

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In order to make friends, you have to treat others the way you would want to be treated. Here are a few tips on being a more invested friend:

• Don't criticize, condemn, or complain
• Become genuinely interested in other people
• Be generous with your smiles
• Be a good listener
• Make the other person feel important

Minimize fear and anxiety

“One may walk over the highest mountain-one step at a time.”
- John Wanamaker

Steps to minimize fear and anxiety:

1. Know the audience - do your homework
2. Don't memorize your presentation - know it so well, you own it
3. Practice with visuals and equipment
4. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
5. Remember to have fun

Using Visuals

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
- Anonymous

Using visuals can enhance a presentation, but they introduce one more hurdle that must be crossed to deliver an excellent presentation. For that reason the heart of the presentation must always remain the presenter, not the media.

Basic Presentation Structure

“If your own mind is muddled, much more will the minds of your hearers be confused.”
- Dale Carnegie

The effective speaker should have a clearly organized and purposeful presentation.

Here is the basic structure of a successful presentation:

Opening - Favorably attract immediate interest from the audience
Message - Clearly state your message or theme
Evidence - Establish credibility and inspire respect and confidence by using convincing evidence
Closing - Leave the audience with a favorable, memorable impression

Reduce Nervousness.

“The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts to work the minute you're born, and never stops until you get up to speak in public.”
- John Mason Brown

To significantly reduce nervousness follow the three E's:

1. Earned the right to speak on the topic through experience or research
2. Excited to talk about the topic
3. Eager to share your experience or research with the audience

Name Memory Techniques

“Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
- Dale Carnegie

No single action conveys the message "you're important" as effectively as remembering another person's name.

Here are some steps you might take to help ensure name recollection:

1. Hear and understand the name
2. Create a mind picture linking the name with the person
3. Add details about the person to the mind picture
4. Repeat the name in conversation

Learning to Produce

Big-picture Goals Boost Company's Bottom Line

Derek Sankey
For the Calgary Herald
Saturday, January 19, 2008

Companies have embraced the notion of "learning organizations" in recent years by offering more learning and development opportunities in a tight labour market to boost productivity and enhance recruitment.

But if Canada's productivity gains are any indication, much of that investment in learning seems to be making little difference to the bottom line.

Canada's bleak record on labour productivity continues, despite efforts by businesses to invest in a wider range of training and development programs. Productivity growth in Canada was 2.5 per cent from 2001 to 2005, compared with 15.9 per cent in the U.S. It slowed to 0.1 per cent in 2004 and 1.1 per cent in 2006.

The "learning organization" became a buzz word when companies started to focus on complex "learning goals" to build the knowledge, skills and strategies that lead to increased performance.
Performance goals, meanwhile, focus on the end result and are most effective for simpler tasks.

Research over the past 30 years has shown learning goals are more effective at attaining objectives, but companies aren't embracing them enough because they're targeting the quarterly bottom line instead of the bigger picture, according to one researcher.

"Oftentimes in organizations, it is very tempting to be in performance mode all the time, not learning what is going on outside an organization," says Gerard Seijts, a professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business at London's University of Western Ontario.

He recently completed research that backs up previous findings showing learning goals lead to better performance, even if the process takes longer and is more complex.

Working with Masters of Business Administration and graduate students, he developed a simulated telecommunications company in a laboratory setting where students were asked to perform the complex task of increasing market share.

People in the learning goal condition took more time to access information and spent longer in the simulation, but at the end they had outperformed individuals that had a performance goal.
"With a performance goal, (students) often develop some kind of tunnel vision with results at all costs," says Seijts.

Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business agrees the trick is finding the right balance between the two types of goals.

"If you completely focus on outcomes, what you're going to have is people covering their asses and refusing to take risks," says Steel.

Perhaps one of the reasons that U.S. industries have outperformed Canadian businesses in recent years may be related to the differing business and social cultures.

"Sometimes in the U.S., they set these outrageous goals and then they do a phenomenal job of attaining them," says Seijts.

Companies need to carefully evaluate how they are specifically building learning goals into the daily job functions of employees, as opposed to offering only professional development courses that may not be related to the corporation's objectives.

Coaching and mentoring programs are one way to enhance learning objectives because the concepts generally establish longer-term relationships and performance can be measured more accurately than via a quarterly sales chart.

A review of internal processes such as HR practices that reinforce learning goals, as well as an analysis of how a company's research and development budget aligns with those goals, might be necessary for business leaders to fully capture the gains that learning goals offer.

For employees, it means using every opportunity available to build on the knowledge and skills that enhance your productivity.

"You need to invest a bit of time in your learning . . . and you will rapidly outperform other individuals," says Seijts.

Steel says that when new employees are hired, it presents a good opportunity to adopt the learning organization philosophy right from the start.

"If somebody's new to a job, for example, you would get better results in the long run if you evaluate them and help them focus on how much they're learning over time," he says.
"Performance is just focusing on the easy gains and they're not willing to take any risks," says Steel. "Focusing on learning is focusing on what you can control."

Dale Carnegie Training has been in the business of training people for over 96 years. During that period, we have trained over 8 million people. That shows our programs have stood the test of time, because they work!

People like Warren Buffet, Annette Benning, Lee Iacocca, Lanny and Ardelle McDonald have taken the program. Our programs are designed to help people tap into their potential and maximize their opportunities.

We use time-phased learning, which means our programs run over a number of weeks. It is not so much what you know, but what you do with what you know. Most psychologists suggest it takes a minimum of two months to affect behavioral changes.

In our programs we encourage the next opportunity. Our coaches build the next level of growth, by working with our clients to experience success. Mr. Lee Iacocca was a young engineer and an up-and-coming-executive with Ford, when he took a Dale Carnegie Program. When he was asked why he was taking the program, he said, “I want to become more confident.” When questioned as to what he meant, he said, “When I increase my confidence, two things accrue; number one, I increase my income and secondly, I enhance my marketability.”

For lasting results from your training call Dale Carnegie Training in Calgary at 265-5344. We have training programs offered all over the province.

How To Win Friends - For Half A Century

Nation's Business
December, 1986
by Sharon Nelton

In January, 1937, humorist James Thurber reviewed Dale Carnegie's how To Win Friends and Influence People for the Saturday Review of Literature and found the book wanting.

"Mr Carnegie," Thurber complained, "loudly protests that one can be sincere and at the same time versed in the tricks of influencing people. Unfortunately, the disengenuities in his set of rules and in his case histories stand out like ghosts at a banquet."

But never mind. Though Carnegie died in 1955 and Thurber joined him in the great beyond six years later, The Book lives on. First published in October, 1936, by Simon & Schuster with a printing of 5,000 copies and a hardcover price of $1.98 (now $16.95), How To Win Friends, aimed at helping readers achieve success through self-confidence, made publishing history.

Soon 5,000 copies were being sold a day, revealing the tremendous hunger in America for self-help books and setting sales records for nonfiction. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, The Book has been translated into more than 30 languages, and more than 15 million hardcover copies have been sold.

Leon Shimkin, then a junior executive and later board chairman at Simon & Schuster, was responsible for acquiring The Book for his company. Shimkin first heard Carnegie in Larchmont, N.Y., when Carnegie gave an introduction to his famous course in public speaking and human relations. Shimkin was impressed enough to take the course.

Then he was impressed enough to suggest that Carnegie do a book based on his lectures. Carnegie wasn't interested. But he finally agreed to let his secretary gather notes, and between the secretary, Shimkin and Carnegie, a book came into being two years later.

"It became more successful than his course ever was," says Shimkin, now 79 and retired.
The son of a Maryville, Mo., farmer, Carnegie was born Nov. 24, 1888. His mother reared Dale as a strict Methodist and, given to making speeches on sin, liquor and the salvation of souls, she was his first oratorical role model. Perhaps the earliest hint of his destiny came one morning in 1900 when the skinny farm boy stood up in Sunday school and gave a talk entitled, "The Saloon, Offspring of Hell."

As a student at the State Teachers College (now Central Missouri state University) at Warrensburg, Mo., he couldn't afford to board in town, and he had to ride to and from school on horseback.

"This had its compensations, however," observed a droll Current Biography 1941, "because Carnegie could try out his recitations on the horse."

After college, he tried brief stints at selling and acting, and in 1912 he found himself in New York without a job. He decided to teach public speaking and approached the YMCA on 125th Street.

"The Y had so little faith in my public speaking course that it refused to risk $2 a night--a teacher's salary in those days," said Carnegie. He offered to work on a profit-sharing basis: From the first money that came in, the Y could pay for printed matter and postage for the course. If there was any profit, it could be divided.

Within a few months, Carnegie was teaching classes in YMCAs in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Willington and making $30 to $40 a night in commissions.

People came, he said, because "they wanted to solve their problems. They wanted to be able to stand up on their feet and say a few words at a business meeting without fainting from fright. Salesmen wanted to be able to call on a tough customer without having to walk around the block three times to get up courage. They wanted to develop poise and self-confidence. They wanted to get ahead in business. They wanted to have more money for their families."

His first marriage ended in divorce, but a dozen years later he met stenographer Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who had taken a Carnegie course in her native Tulsa. Smitten, he asked her to come to New york as his secretary. According to William Longgood, author of a book about Carnegie, Dale and Dorothy were married in November, 1944, after a tempestuous courtship during which she quit her job and was packing to go home "only to have him turn on the how-to-win-friends charm and influence her into staying."

Though his upbringing was strict and his message tinged with a religious fervor, Dale Carnegie was not without a sense of fund. He enjoyed collecting examples of humor drubbing him, including a book called How To Lose Friends and Alienate People. The New Yorker once reported that he had turned up as a supernumerary in a performance of the ballet "Scheherazade" at the City Center with his friend Homer Croy (to whom The Book is dedicated).
They were paid a reported $1 apiece. One of the professional dancers was asked if she felt influenced by Carnegie. "If Nijinsky was a super," she responded, "he wouldn't influence me.

Carnegie began licensing the Dale Carnegie course in 1944 and in 1945 set up a private stock company with himself as president and dorothy as vice president. Dorothy Carnegie, who was born the year her husband began working for the Y, has carried on his work for the last three decades and is now chairman of the parent company, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., in Garden City, N.Y. President is another Carnegie devotee, J. Oliver Crom, whose wife, Rosemary, is Dorothy Carnegie's daughter by a previous marriage. The Croms' three children also work in the 300-employee company, two as managers and one as a course instructor.

The courses--prices range from $300 to $900--have grown from the original instruction in public speaking to such topics as sales, customer relations and professional development. Crom expects them to reach about 140,000 students this year through more than 100 licensed offices.

Although students have included virtually everyone from housewives to engineers, the names of some of the graduates add a special luster: Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca; Labor Secretary William E. Brock; Mary Kay Ashe, chairman of Mary Kay Cosmetics; and chicken magnate Frank Perdue.

Even two squads of Dallas Cowboys Cheerladers have been through Carnegie training. The courses teach the cheerleaders communication skills they need for public appearances and help them cope with instant celebrity, explains Debbie Bond, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' assistant director and a Carnegie graduate herself.

Why has the How To Win Friends message enjoyed such longevity?

"Because it has been very effective; it works," answers Bond, who says the biggest impact on her has been in giving her self-motivation. "I tel people about Dale Carnegie all the time because it changed my life."

Oliver Crom believes the Book's success is based on the fact that his father-in-law turned to principles that have stood the test of time. "The ideas I stand for are not mine," Carnegie once said. "I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?" In an article in American heritage not long ago, business writer Peter Baida was discussing another acclaimed book, In Search of Excellence. "It is an interesting book that deserves to be widely read," he said. "But at bottom it has little to add to the lessons that Dale Carnegie taught to a whole generation of Americans half a century ago."

Employee Engagement

Widespread failure to get workers to care about their roles within a company hurts productivity and the bottom line

Derek Sankey
Calgary Herald
Saturday, November 10, 2007

Employee engagement -- the desire by workers to go the extra mile to help their employer succeed and who deem their work meaning and satisfying -- is so low that in strong economies like Canada's, it's having a big financial impact on companies and is seriously hindering recruitment and retention efforts, a new study shows.

"Engagement matters in retention and in organizational success, so it's real clear (that) senior leadership is still not doing the job that employees expect in terms of changing their minds about engagement," says Mark Dahlman, a managing principal in Calgary with global consulting firm Towers Perrin.

The workforce study of 90,000 workers worldwide, including 5,000 in Canada, found that only 23 per cent of workers currently feel engaged at work, while 32 per cent of Canadian employees are partly or fully "disengaged."

"There's a misperception that employees leave companies because of their managers alone," says Dahlman. "We're finding that the organization plays a much greater role in an employee's decision to stay or go."

Things such as office politics, having adequate resources to do the job, an organization's commitment to social responsibility, open lines of communication with senior leaders, opportunities for advancement, challenging work and training all contribute to an employee's perception of engagement in the workplace.

"There has been no real increase in engagement levels among workers," says Byrne Luft, regional vice-president of Manpower in Calgary. "That just goes to show the lack of awareness around engagement, which starts out at a very, very early time in your working career."
He says some organizations don't fully understand the concept -- or how to improve it -- so it falls to the bottom of the priority list.

However, that doesn't mean it's not having a significant financial impact on the company's profitability.

The Towers Perrin study found that firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income by 19 per cent and earnings per share by 28 per cent year-over-year.

In contrast, the companies with the lowest percentage of engagement showed declines of 33 per cent in operating income and 11 per cent in earnings per share.

The study is published at a landmark time in Canadian history with the country's unemployment rate dipping below six per cent for the first time in 33 years, giving people more options about where to work than they've seen in decades.

Add to that picture the stark demographic reality facing companies and the situation will intensify in coming years.

Human resource experts say failure to address engagement could translate into financial failure sooner than later.

Figuring out strategies to improve employee engagement starts with researching your employees thoroughly, knowing who they are and what they value, and then segmenting those employees in whatever way matters to them, says Dahlman.

For example, the number one factor affecting engagement for workers over the age of 35 is the reputation of the company and how that translates into the daily workplace versus workers between 18 to 35 who value opportunities for advancement and challenging new work projects.
"But what drives engagement depends on what kind of organization you have," Dahlman says, explaining that the industry, structure and culture of a company have a big impact on what measures can be taken to improve engagement.

"If you're in a customer service or retail business, employee engagement is impacted by their autonomy to meet the customers' demands," he says.

"The kinds of companies where operational efficiency is highly important, like the pipeline and oilfield services business, will improve engagement with better training and development."

Adding to the challenge of engaging workers is the fact that a growing percentage of a company's human capital is now considered part of the "contingent" workforce -- consultants, independent contractors and temporary workers.

The number is expected to grow dramatically as baby boomers retire and return as consultants in the next few years, particularly in industries such as the oilpatch.

"Even though they're contractors, they still have career aspirations and those are all real drivers of engagement," says Dahlman. "They still make decisions as to whether or not to stay."

Dale Carnegie Training works with over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies, and has graduated over 8 million people in 95 years, strengtheneing the people skills of their leaders to create strong teams and positively influence morale, leading to an increase in productivity.

Most workers blame their boss for quitting

Eric Beauchesne
CanWest News Service
Calgary Herald
Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Blame the boss. That's what most Canadian workers do when they quit their job, according to survey released yesterday by an online employment agency.

With shortages of skilled workers on the rise and with the tight labor market expected to get even tighter as baby boomers hit retirement age, companies cannot afford to lose employees. As a result, firms and their managers may want to review what workers like and don't like in a boss, results of the survey by Monster Canada suggests.

And what they like, according to the survey, is a boss who is fair, who respects the rights of workers and is not a bully.

Of the 2,687 Canadians who responded to the online poll, as many as 80 per cent of quitters blamed their boss for their decision. Thirty-two per cent claimed their boss "did not treat people fairly," another 28 per cent said their manager "ruled by intimidation and fear," and 24 per cent said the boss "did not respect the rights of employees."

Only 16 per cent claimed to have quit a job for reasons unrelated to the boss.

"There is no doubt that bosses typically are seen as the primary reason for people either loving or leaving their jobs and in today's tight labour market, it's more important than ever for companies to realize this as they compete for the best people,"said Gabriel Bouchard, Monster Canada's vice-president and general manager.

Another survey of 2,636 workers by the employment agency -- which asked: "What should your boss do to be a better leader?" --found that 35 per cent said their current boss should "set clearer expectations and provide constructive feedback." Twenty-seven per cent said their boss needs to "admit when a mistake is made instead of blaming others," 22 per cent that their boss needs to become "more accessible and open to communicating," and 16 per cent that their boss should "listen to employees more" on the job.

"It's a job-seeker's market and it's just going to get better for job candidates moving forward, which means that they are going to be a lot less patient with bad bosses," Bouchard said.
However, bosses are more challenged than ever, Bouchard added, explaining that they are having to deal with multiple generations and multiple cultures in the workplace.

Dale Carnegie offers programs to give managers the tools to be able to become effective leaders. We all have the opportunity to be leaders whether or not we are in a management position. We can all be leaders in our own teams.

Call 265-5344 to speak with one of our associates and find out more about how Dale Carnegie Training can help you become a better boss.

Be yourself.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that although the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
- Ralphn Waldo Emerson

Dale Carnegie wanted us all to be the best we can be... "to cultivate our own garden and make the most of our own individuality.... Be yourself. Don't imitate others! You are an original. Be glad of it."

Dale Carnegie biography

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (originally Carnegey) (November 24, 1888–November 1, 1955) was an American writer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln, titled Lincoln the Unknown, as well as several other books.

Carnegie was an early proponent of what is now called responsibility assumption, although this only appears minutely in his written work. One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people's behavior by changing one's reaction to them.

Biography

Born in 1888 in Buffalo, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer's boy, the second son of James William Carnagey and Amanda Elizabeth Harbison.

In his teens, though still having to get up at 4a.m. every day to milk his parents' cows, he managed to get educated at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg.

His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers; then he moved on to selling bacon, soap and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory, southern Omaha, the national leader for the firm.

After saving $500, Carnegie quit sales in 1911 in order to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a Chautauqua lecturer. He ended up instead attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, but found little success as an actor, though it is written that he played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly of the Circus. When the production ended, he returned to New York, unemployed, nearly broke, and living at the YMCA on 125th Street. It was there that he got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the "Y" manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds.

In his first session, he had run out of material; improvising, he suggested that students speak about "something that made them angry", and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience.

From this 1912 debut, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved. Carnegie had tapped into the average American's desire to have more self-confidence, and by 1914, he was earning $500 - the equivalent of nearly $10,000 now - every week.
Perhaps one of Carnegie’s most successful marketing moves was to change the spelling of his last name from “Carnegey” to Carnegie, at a time when Andrew Carnegie was a widely revered and recognized name.

By 1916, Dale was able to rent Carnegie Hall itself for a lecture to a packed house.

Carnegie's first collection of his writings was Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men (1926), later entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1932).

His crowning achievement, however, was when Simon & Schuster published How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was a bestseller from its debut in 1937, in its 17th printing within a few months. By the time of Carnegie's death, the book had sold five million copies in 31 languages, and there had been 450,000 graduates of his Dale Carnegie Institute.

His first marriage ended in divorce in 1931. On November 5, 1944, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he married Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who also had been divorced. Vanderpool had two daughters; Rosemary, from her first marriage, and Donna Dale from their marriage together.

Dale Carnegie died of Hodgkin's disease on November 1, 1955. He was buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri cemetery.

From http://www.wikipedia.org/

Welcome

Welcome to the Dale Carnegie blog for southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan. This Dale Carnegie franchise has been in operation for over thirty years and is one of the most successful Dale Carnegie franchises in the world.

This blog will attempt to add value to your day. Give you something to think about, and learn from some of the examples we come across every single day. It may even inspire you to take a Dale Carnegie program.

Though Dale Carnegie has been dad now for over fifty years, his legacy lives on, and shows that he was truly a genius and far ahead of his time.

Enjoy!