NextGen Know-How: Our new family ritual for a great year
Happy New Year! I love the beginning of a fresh, new year. On New Year’s Eve 2021, I started a new ritual for letting go of what didn’t serve me that year so [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Laurie Maddalena’
One powerful tool for a purposeful 2023
It was July, and I was exhausted. About five years after I started my leadership business, I was busy with clients and traveling locally and nationally for speaking events. By that summer, I was feeling [...]
NextGen Know-How: Facilitating A meaningful, conversational evaluation meeting (that you and the employee don’t dread!)
In my last column, I shared best practices for writing an effective annual performance review. In this post, I will provide strategies for making the evaluation meeting more comfortable, conversational, and meaningful. Most performance evaluation [...]
NextGen Know-How: How to write an effective, meaningful performance evaluation
Performance evaluations are one of the most dreaded practices in any organization. Employees fear them because they don’t know what to expect, and managers often avoid them because they feel ill-prepared. Evaluations take time, [...]
NextGen Know-How: ‘Quiet quitting’ isn’t all that it seems
More than 20 years ago, I moved from my small hometown in upstate New York to Maryland. I was excited to start a new chapter in my life, and I was hired by a small [...]
How to increase assertiveness
In a recent workshop I was facilitating on emotional intelligence, several of the participants identified assertiveness as the element they wanted to develop most. Assertiveness is an interpersonal skill in which you productively communicate your [...]
NextGen Know-How: Everyone has a story
The past month has been challenging for my family. My nine-year-old son has been sick since early August, and we have been visiting many doctors. He has had several medical procedures to determine what is [...]
NextGen Know-How: Focus and leadership
Have you ever worked a long day only to feel frustrated that you didn’t get any real work done? Perhaps you dealt with constant interruptions, emergencies and issues, so you didn’t have time [...]
Well-being: The key to an exceptional culture
In our constantly evolving workplaces, there is one area that employers should prioritize as a strategic focus to attract and retain the best talent: Well-being. If you’ve been in the workforce for over 10 [...]
NextGen Know-How: How to turn your inner critic into your inner coach
The first professional presentation I ever gave was as the assistant director of human resources. My vice president asked me to prepare a presentation for the board of directors. I had very little experience presenting—[...]
NextGen Know-How: Why you shouldn’t promote the superstar employee to leadership
As a young professional just out of college, I decided I wanted to manage people. Leadership seemed so glamorous—having the authority to make decisions, being in charge of a department and making more money. [...]
NextGen Know-How: How to become indispensable to your boss
I’ve worked for many managers in my career, and each of them had their own leadership style and set of expectations. Some were supportive and available; others were distant and hands-off. As a leader, [...]
How lack of boundaries is killing engagement and productivity
In most parts of the country, some elements of normal life are starting to improve, and many organizations have moved to a hybrid approach of remote and in office work. While life may be edging [...]
NextGen Know-How: How to manage a high-performing employee
During my tenure as VP/human resources for a credit union in Maryland, I worked with two human resources generalists. Both were good at their jobs; they each had completed training and certifications in HR. [...]
NextGen Know-How: How having too many choices ruins your productivity
You’d think having a lot of choices would be the optimal situation. In the Washington, D.C., area, there are hundreds of restaurants to choose from. My husband and I struggled to narrow down [...]