In today’s unpredictable business world, the quest for effective leadership has never been more critical. Imagine a leader who can inspire hope (vision for the future), build trust, show compassion, and provide stability. Sounds like a dream, right?

Well, Gallup’s Global Leadership Report reveals that these are not just lofty ideals but essential traits that followers seek in their leaders. Based on surveys conducted in 52 countries, the report identifies four primary needs of followers: hope, trust, compassion, and stability. The report reminded me a story from some years ago.

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You want to be known as a fantastic employer, so you offer a great salary, an attractive benefits package, continuous training, and dazzling advancement opportunities. Sounds perfect, right? But here’s the catch – you can’t always tick all these boxes.

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In December 2024, Gallup published a summary article highlighting what their recent research identifies as the most pressing workplace challenges for the coming year.
Below, I’ve added my own thoughts to each point in italics.

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“Finding” is a sneaky word, isn’t it? It suggests that the goal is out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. Unfortunately, work isn’t something that suddenly appears to us in an epiphanic moment.

Recently, I had a conversation with a young friend about his job that he described pretty poorly.

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There’s a ton of research out there about how sustainable success comes from creating a workplace that attracts and retains top talent. You’ve probably heard the phrase “Our company’s most valuable asset is its people” more times than you can count. But what exactly are companies doing to protect and grow this “asset”?

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Over the past decades, numerous approaches have been tested in the world of training folklore to enhance collaboration in organizations. Perhaps the most widespread approach involves the leadership team attending a “team-building training,” where they engage in various playful exercises to experience the difference between collaboration and competition or work together in training activities that are supposed to foster “aha” moments. Examples include trust falls, helping each other through spiderweb-like structures made of ropes, building rafts from plastic bottles or bridges from spaghetti, walking on fire, or participating in fun games in a forest clearing. The experiences gathered “then and there” are discussed afterwards, and everyone hopes that once back at work, all friction or siloing will be resolved for good. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.

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