Posts by Dr. Jack Wiley
Reflections on Horseback: Five Days in the Bradshaw Mountains with Gentleman Jack
For several years now I have been involved in a springtime horseback trail ride in the Bradshaw Mountains of Arizona. This annual ride includes about 140 to 150 riders, all male, and about 25 to 30 wranglers and other employees. The ride lasts five days, starting with a noon-time parade out of Wickenburg, Arizona, on…
Read MoreGoals That Make Employee-Centric Managers Out-Perform All Others
In the field of organizational psychology today, the dominant theory of employee motivation is goal-setting theory. It’s a powerful theory explaining what activates people to perform at increasingly higher levels. Research shows that those who set goals clearly outperform those who don’t. And further, that those who set specific, difficult goals outperform those who set…
Read MoreEight Keys to Managerial Success
I asked 80,000 workers worldwide what they most wanted from their immediate manager. They told me there were eight managerial attributes important to them. Five are behaviors – that is, actions managers use to adjust to or influence the behavior of others. One is a skill – a behavior performed with elevated competence. And two…
Read MoreNine Reasons You Should Read The Employee-Centric Manager
Reason 1: You want to understand what employees most want from you. This applies to all managers, even the most experienced, but especially to first timers. The truth is that many managers lack a solid understanding of what their employees want – and this can lead to a laundry list of headaches. Reason 2: You want to…
Read MoreThe Three Reasons I Conducted the Research Summarized in This Book
I wanted to know what employees most wanted from their managers – plainly and simply, in their own words. This idea is known as employee voice. In the academic sense, employee voice is about employees being able to contribute to decision-making in a way that leads to improvements in the organization of work and in the…
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