In our final episode Laura and I talk about the overarching theme of her book, It's Not Them, It's You: Why Employees "Breakup" With Their Managers and What To Do About It.

Good positive relationships between managers and employees are the key to any organization's success in meeting their goals, serving their customers, and making sustainable profits. An important foundation to those relationships are regular 1:1 meetings between individual employees and their manager.

These meeting are not merely a "check-in" to see how things are going with specific tasks, goals, or projects. Of course those are important to discuss. But effective 1:1s go much deeper than that. These meeting should be seen as almost "sacred" time between people and distractions and interruptions should be minimized. Managers will need to practice supportive attending skills which includes active listening, proper sitting arrangements, and enough time to build better trusting relationships. Laura's book offers many great questions that a manager can use to help them in having rich, effective, and meaningful 1:1s. 1:1s are NOT meeting for meetings sake. Rather they are the means to build strong partnerships and mutual satisfaction and engagement between a manager and a team member.

We discuss the overarching theme of the book, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, which coincide with the seven leadership traits that Laura's book emphasizes - Relationships, Empathy, Support, Promotion, Empowerment, Consideration, and Trust. Laura explains that the first trait, respect, is woven through all the others traits.   

Many thanks to Laura Sukorokoff for giving of her time and leadership expertise to me and the listeners of the D.FINED Engagement BookCast.

Here's a link to Laura's book. It will greatly benefit a manager / leader at any stage of their career. We think it would be a great addition to a management library. https://tinyurl.com/y3fe2k2c

Laura can help you personally or bring her expertise to your workplace.  

Her Website: https://www.cchangelearning.com/

Her LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/laurasukorokoff 

Her email: [email protected]