Building leaders is on almost every organization's agenda.

Hiring good people can be a costly process.

Losing employees--regardless of cause--can be equally expensive.

Wisdom, Discernment, and Integrity in Business created a lot of buzz, especially on Twitter.

And whether the long-time, ongoing issues are How One Bad Apple Can Create a Toxic Team, Crazy Co-workers , Bad Bosses, or the rule of No Assholes, people in the workplace are apparently driving other people in the workplace crazy.

From cell phones and texting to religion and manners, almost 8 in 10 people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger and older Americans, according to a new study released Monday  This is the highest spread since 1969, when 74 percent respondents to a Gallup Poll reported generational differences over the Vietnam War and equal rights for women and minorities.  In contrast, just 60 percent in 1979 saw a generation gap.

The study by the Pew Research Center found Americans of different ages increasingly at odds over a range of issues.  It also confirms the shift in generational power that helped catapult Barack Obama into the White House, when 18- to 29-year-olds supported the Democratic candidate by a 2-to-1 ratio.

• Attitude and motivation (34%)
• Communication skills (29%)
• Managing tasks (20%)
• Customer service (18%)
• Teamwork (17%)
• Performance management (14%)
• Change management (13%).

"These are the skills that managers feel they need from their teams, to get through the downturn," said Martin Addison, managing drector of Video Arts. "Organisations may need to realign their learning strategy to take account of any new requirements for training and to ensure that their strategy still links to the corporate objectives."

Now, call me a grumpy old cynic, but this is hardly rocket science. Surely these are the skills needed in any member of staff, regardless of the economic climate.
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I never get tired of these cases.  Last week, an Idaho Federal District Court recently denied summary judgment to an employer in an age discrimination case.  In Wold v. El Centro Fin., Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50958 (D. Idaho June 16, 2009), the plaintiff argued that he had been rejected for a position because of his age, 46. 

As is common these days, much of the hiring process was electronic.  Wold emailed his resume to El Centro, expressing his interest in a job opening.  The resume made its way around the company, and ended up in the inbox of the company CEO.  The CEO, apparently thinking that he was responding to his own HR staff, actually sent an email to the plaintiff which stated, in part:  "Damn. I'm here late trying to get through emails -- I just saw this one I missed somehow and it is a week old. Check it out -- I don't know what I think. He must be old -- and just looking for something to do."

Do I even need to tell you how the story ends?  Wold doesn’t get the job, and sues for age discrimination.  The employer moves for summary judgment, and loses, primarily because the court concluded that the email from the CEO was evidence of discriminatory intent.  No kidding.

Likewise, do I even need to discuss what might be “lessons learned” from this case?  1) Don’t refer to protected characteristics when making employment decisions, especially not in writing; and 2) Check that TO: field before you hit send.  

This year we travel down to the Big Easy for some crawdads, hurricanes (the drinks, not the weather), jazz and zydeco. I am very fortunate to be covering the SHRM ‘09 event as a press blogger. Perhaps more important, I’ll be part of a wonderful group of HR pros that have decided to pull a Lance Armstrong and abandon Sheryl Crow for an

Much is said and written about diversity, but when it comes to people with disabilities, the focus tends to be on what they can and can't do. But a former worker is suing posh preppy clothes chain Abercrombie & Fitch over their reaction to how she looks.

Law student Riam Dean claims that she was sent to work in the stock room of the chain's Savile Row branch in London because wearing a cardigan (as suggested by a colleague) to cover a prosthetic arm was breaking the company's 'look policy'. Dean also claims that staff are issued with a guidebook outlining how they should look at work, from how they wear their hair to the length of their fingernails.  A spokeswoman for Abercrombie & Fitch has stated that Dean's version of events is inaccurate.

A tribunal is due to begin this week, and regardless of the rights and wrongs of the parties involved, the thought of someone being discriminated against because of any aspect of their appearance is a sobering one. Not only for the workplace, but for society.

Only 15% of the 1,005 respondents said they totally trusted their manager. One of the knock-on results of this mistrust is a ramping up of the office rumour-mill. One in four workers reported an increase in company gossip since the recession has taken hold - a figure that goes up to 49% amongst banking and finance professionals.

And there'a an interesting geographical split - almost a third (32%) of workers in the Midlands don't believe what their manager has to say.

Neil Wilson, managing director at Badenoch & Clark, says: "These figures should come as a wake up call to employers and managers throughout the country. There's currently significant effort being put in by many organisations to carefully control what is told to employees about business performance, but all of that is for nought unless there's an element of trust between employer and employee".

Many people thrive on this. They confuse simplicity with a lack of refinement, and presume that only great, imposingly labyrinthine conceptual structures reflect true sophistication.

This problem can appear in two forms. The most common is to toss intellectual fairy dust over a topic, creating delightfully ornate and energetic edifices all around it. They blink and shine and amaze, but fade away, essentially a transitory distraction from that which they falsely embellish.

The other is to probe with conspicuous eruditeness into the origins of the subject. With respect to leadership, though, this is usually done – as are so many things in this area – with the desired result in mind. Consequently, the foundation either seems dangerously adulterated with distantly tangential components, or precariously unsuited to the structure erected on it.

Occam’s Razor teaches us to select the theory that answers all our questions while making the fewest assumptions, and positing the smallest number of constructs from them. Those that are devoted to complexity for its own sake, on the mistaken belief that concepts, in order to be valid, must be impenetrable, usually make one or both of those errors while missing the overall point altogether.

But there’s another aspect to the problem that is more mystifyingly persistent, yet. We will take a look at that tomorrow, before turning to some of the more pernicious implications of all of this. Looking forward to seeing you then!

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Today’s tips: Yesterday’s post was about the peculiar relationship often asserted to exist between individual

Lucy works as a salesperson for a machine-parts company in the Pacific Northwest. She has to travel a lot to make sales calls; often out of state. Because she's on the road so much, she has to eat out all the time. She's not crazy about this, because she finds it difficult to eat healthily at fast-food and quick-service restaurants.

Her company appears to understand that she and her fellow salespeople have no choice but to eat out frequently. So it allows them to expense their meals on the road. But like too many companies, this one doesn't trust Lucy or her coworkers. It's apparently concerned that they will run up obscene meal expenses at luxury restaurants (at airports and rest areas — right!). So it came up with a policy.

Under this company's meal policy, Lucy and her colleagues can expense meals under the following restrictions:

1. they have to be traveling for work
2. they have to be 75 miles from home, and
3. they can't spend more than $17.50 per meal.

OK, now the first restriction makes sense: this is supposed to ameliorate the hassles of eating while traveling on company business.

The second restriction also seems to make sense; the

'For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.'

If both men and women were biased against women, as there are numerous studies that show that negative stereotypes against women, minorities, and are often held just as strongly by members of those groups as outsiders -- notably by John Jost at NYU.  I also want to emphasize that plenty of other research

On the front page of today's Greenville, SC newspaper, down below the cover story of home-town boy Lucas Glover winning the PGA US Open, is an article entitled "Homebuyers may get $15,000 tax break."  I tried to find it on line to provide the link but #fail on that. 

The article is about how our brilliant lawmakers are trying to expand the tax credit from $8,000 to $15,000 for those that buy a home in this depressed market.  The real money quotes in the article are from Donald Schunk, research economist with Coastal Carolina University.  Here's the quote:

UWS researchers looked at five different characteristics:

• openness to experience
• conscientiousness
• extroversion
• agreeableness
• emotional stability

They found that specific personality types were more prevalent in certain jobs. For instance, clerical workers tend to be conscientious but neurotic and prey to stress, while office workers are stable but less conscientious.

Managers, however. while especially conscientious and open to experience. are more antagonistic and suffer from 'lower agreeableness'. I'm not sure we needed a research project to unearth that little gem ....

While there's a certain amount of sense behind recruiting by personality, most jobs do still require a degree of skill and some relevant academic background. The dangers in ignoring this are twofold - first, that successful candidates have the attitude but not the skills needed. And second, that recruiters recruit in their own like, hiring people that they get on with. However nice it is to become friends with colleagues, it's very much the case that there need to be a few people in any team prepared to disagree with the majority, and to be happy to stand up and pick holes in the modus