Nic spent most of her childhood avoiding people. She was raised by a volatile father and a mother who transferred much of the trauma she’d experienced onto her daughter. The combination left Nic fearful and isolated. “My primitive brain was programmed to be afraid of everybody, because everybody’s evil and they’re gonna hurt you,” she told me. (Nic asked to be referred to by only her first name to protect her privacy.)

How is the issue of personal accountability viewed in your organization? Seasoned workers have undoubtedly seen their share of finger-pointing, dishonesty, and “CYOA.” However, personal accountability is a critical step toward improving leadership. When people are accountable for their own decisions, work, and results, the effectiveness of an organization can greatly increase.

Nic spent most of her childhood avoiding people. She was raised by a volatile father and a mother who transferred much of the trauma she’d experienced onto her daughter. The combination left Nic fearful and isolated. “My primitive brain was programmed to be afraid of everybody, because everybody’s evil and they’re gonna hurt you,” she told me. (Nic asked to be referred to by only her first name to protect her privacy.)

We are often asked into organizations to present workshops on “building resilience” — giving managers the tools to help their employees manage anxiety and improve their ability to respond to change and recover from challenges. Perhaps, as a learning and development (L&D) professional, you have been tasked with developing a similar program for your organization or clients.

What makes a great customer experience? For some brands, it’s a frictionless journey. For others, it’s a memorable experience. But few brands are successful being both frictionless and memorable. Research shows companies can choose among four strategies when deciding whether to focus on being frictionless or memorable.

Sales is the lifeblood of any business. Beating the plan yields optimism. Missing the number could mean a scramble for survival. Without sales, your business literally has nothing.

If you’re skeptical about whether you need to prepare for a new era, consider the story of Michael. Michael exemplified a veteran B2B salesperson. As a perennial top performer for twenty-five years in the pre-pandemic, in-person selling era, Michael was skeptical about whether he should embrace the concept of virtual selling when his company announced a work- from-home policy in March 2020.

The TTI SI research team is always hard at work to uncover the industry insights and patterns of behavior that you need to know. Our latest Research Cliffnotes is called What Assessments Revealed About Gender & Skills Development in University Students.

The people who come to you for training have many reasons for doing so, but there is one thing they all need, and that is for you to be grounded, clear and fully present. When you are, that gives them the emotional and energetic space to tap into their own sense of psychological safety and truly absorb the lessons and learning you make available to them.

Over the course of my five-year “Rich Habits” study, I got to know 233 millionaires, who had an average net worth of $4.3 million, and learned about their origin stories, their value systems, their career trajectories, and how they approach their money.

Sales must help B2B buyers overcome the complexity of buying today by enabling buyers to complete each of the required jobs.

What is buyer enablement? Buyer enablement is the provisioning of information that supports the completion of critical buying jobs.

The most important aspect of making a sale is also a major weakness of every salesperson: Asking Questions.

It’s an enigma to me. Questions are so critical, you’d think it would be the topic of training every week. Yet salespeople are odds on favorites to have never taken one training program in the science of asking a question.

How critical? The first personal (rapport) question sets the tone for the meeting, and the first business question sets the tone for the sale. That’s critical.

Effective coaching sometimes requires us to shift our focus to igniting a coachee’s intrinsic motivation to change, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. This is not always easy to do, and some say it borders on the impossible. The good news is, there is an incredibly powerful tool one can use that has been proven by years of rigorous scientific study.