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Operational Leadership

By Madison Hanscom, PhD Recovery and downtime are important for a happy and productive workforce. As a leader, you should consider your role in this process. Reflect on how you contribute to the climate surrounding recovery in your workplace. A study from the American Psychological Association recently showed when companies encourage people to take their vacation time to disconnect, employees come back feeling more refreshed, motivated, and productive than companies that do not encourage taking time off (1). This shows the value of building a culture that allows people to disconnect without feeling guilty or mentally tethered to work at all times.

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD There are a great deal of conflicting perspectives when it comes to leadership training. Many individuals do not think it is worth the time because they believe leaders are born and not made – that genetics and personality are more influential in determining a great leader than the knowledge, skills, and abilities someone can build and sharpen during training. Others think training is a valuable tool that leads to a better workforce. But what does the research say? A group of researchers (1) decided to dig deep into questions about leadership training by conducting a meta analysis on

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Leaders are in a unique position where they can make positive changes that influence the lives of their employees. Consider the following strategies: Continually take a pulse. If you don’t check in with employees regularly about their workload and experience, you won’t have any idea about stress levels. When things are overwhelming and more stressful than usual — listen and understand why. This way you can isolate the factors that cause a negative experience. When things are less stressful than usual — also understand why! Particularly in times when workload is high, but stress is low. Those are

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Take care of your own stress and work with employees to build a “stress management toolbox”. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, the right solutions are going to depend on the source of stress, and the best solutions are primary solutions that address the root of the problem. As a leader, you often have more power than employees to make changes that reduce stressors, so consider what you can do first to create a healthier work environment (see the second blog in this series). Sometimes we have to use secondary solutions for things we cannot change. This is

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Whether it is wrapping up a deliverable, venting about a hard day, or preparing for the next day ahead, many of us bring work home. But has research been conducted to examine the effects of leadership characteristics spilling over into the home domain of their followers? A recent study was conducted to examine the impact that empowering leaders have on their employees’ home lives. Empowering leaders were defined as those that give employees autonomy, meaning to their work, opportunities for self-leadership, participation in decision-making, and support for employee development through coaching and modeling. The result of the study showed

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD When times get tough, we often rely on our communities to help us prevail. Our communities are composed of everyone around us — neighbors, friends, those who work at the grocery store, the people who run the local brewery. 2020 has been a hard year. When people are suffering, the community suffers. There are things business leaders can do to support the community. In the research literature we study something called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) — this is when companies do good for society, and this goes above and beyond what is required by the law or regulations. This might be directed

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