How About A Little Respect for Women’s Professional Sports?
During the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, my father was well-known as a sportswriter, radio, and TV commentator who was very comfortable expressing his heartfelt opinions in public. In general, he stayed positive; waxing poetic on the powerful beauty of a well-executed football or hockey play, the importance of the Olympic movement to global cooperation, and how tennis was rapidly changing for the...
The Magic Bullet For Retention Isn’t Higher Wages
My latest article in Forbes is about letting go of the false notion that we can keep good people just by paying them more. In January, MIT Sloan School of Business released the results of an exhaustive study of the reasons why a record number of people quit their jobs in 2021, a time often referred to as the Great Resignation—or as I like to call it, the Great Reconsideration. Despite the...
Wait, You’ve Done What?
Recently, the same week I turned 62, a colleague of mine commented on an article I’d published saying, “I had no idea you had such a fun background!”. The birthday, and that comment, caused me to reminisce a bit. Yup, I feel like I’ve led one heck of a life! So, I decided to try to sum it up briefly, in a nutshell. (OK, sorry, it’s a little bit bigger than a nutshell): 1. I grew up the...
Interviewing Lori George Billingsley, Cheif DEI Officer Coca-Cola
I have lived a privileged life. I am the son of a famous sportswriter, Gene Ward, who wrote for the NY Daily News and was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune and on TV and radio. So, as a kid, because my dad was interviewing famous sports stars, I got to meet some of my cherished childhood heroes including Arthur Ashe, the Stanley-Cup-Winning team members of the New York Islanders hockey team...
On “Curmudgeons” and “Sweeties”
By Cynthia Burnham, MBA You’re watching an old movie. The white actors have put on blackface with white, painted, oversized lips, and eyes wide. They dance around in a goofy way, wear strange clothes, and tell bad jokes in an exaggerated “uneducated” accent. The audience in the movie laugh hysterically throughout. Bad, right? I hear many of you saying, “Absolutely! I hope we have gone way...
5 Ways Disrespect in Your Company is Costing You
Conflict in the workplace has far-reaching consequences that go far beyond transient misunderstandings. My 20+ years of counseling executives from some of the world’s largest organizations on how respect affects the bottom line informed a lot of our work at The Center for Respectful Leadership. I work in the business ecosystem using two very distinct models – fix it or build it. I...
The Politics of Respect: Pandemic Edition
Last year, shortly after the pandemic began and the US became politically divided on how to respond, we began hearing from fearful, angry, and upset people who were asking – and, in some cases, demanding – that their opinions on the virus, it’s causes, and the steps that individuals and the country should take in response, be “respected.” This trend of people wanting their opinions to be...
The Respectful High Performance Virtual Organization Can Be Yours if….
It was February of 2020 and we were on a roll. I had just founded my latest organization, The Center for Respectful Leadership, a few months before and we were in high energy, rapid growth mode. I was huddling daily with my team of part-time marketing/biz dev folks in our leased offices in downtown San Diego; breaking bread with and enrolling major coaches and thought leaders into our Advisory...
Managing Bad Behavior, People Problems & Sticky Situations Like A Pro
Recently featured on the Service Business Mastery podcast, Gregg Ward speaks with Tersh Blissett about managing bad behavior, people problems and sticky situations like a pro. Click here to listen to the podcast.