Blog | The Shuler Group LLC

Your people desperately need training to develop crucial skills

December 28, 2020 | No Comments

I’ve talked before about the crucial need for skills, not technical skills or coding skills or even trade labor skills. Those can all be taught and learned through courses and programs. The training I’m talking about is what we traditionally label “soft skills.” Jeff Wiener, CEO of LinkedIn, continuously talks about the need for those soft skills, and how they’re critical in our ever-changing landscape. These skills include oral communication, written communication, team building, leadership, and time management. 92% of employers say that skill shortages is negatively affecting productivity, employee satisfaction, and turnover. In addition, less than 40% of Millennials
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Creating a Strengths-Based Culture

November 25, 2020 | No Comments

To be successful, you need to play to your strengths, and the people in your organization need to play to their strengths as well. All this as opposed to boosting your weaknesses because of the traditional “weaknesses are your biggest area of growth and opportunity” drivel that shows up in old-style employee evaluations. Your biggest area of growth and opportunity is really to focus and maximize your strengths. It’s about creating a strengths-based workplace, creating a strengths-based culture. When you do that, you create a winning culture because when you have that strengths-based workplace, it’s transformational. That type of culture
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We’re not selling shovels

October 29, 2020 | No Comments

Last I checked, I did not see anyone selling shovels on LinkedIn. Why not? Don’t shovels have just as much right to be sold as a $20,000 re-vamp-your-company’s-entire-marketing-strategy package? The answer is, yes, shovels get sold as much (actually lots more) as a $20,000 headhunting “Get exactly the right person in the right seat” campaign. Most of us do not plunk down $20K just because someone else says, “You should do this… it’s a really good deal…. take my word for it.” We would like a little more information and… oh, yes, perhaps get to know the person selling/delivering the
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Managing Working at Home with Children – Egad!

September 30, 2020 | No Comments

As many organizations continue to work remotely, and now many school districts are doing remote learning as well, the challenge of managing bodies at home, all with different needs, agendas, goals, and emotions, continues to grow. One of our corporate clients asked us to put together some techniques and tips they could share with their employees who have young children at home. My husband and business partner Mark has a master’s in clinical psychology and had a private marriage and family therapy practice for 28 years. I have certifications in English, business, and secondary education, as well as having run
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Don’t Just Say Something…Stand There!

June 8, 2020 | No Comments

I call it therapist mode. In therapist school we called it “active listening,” meaning listen to understand, not necessarily to comment. And, if necessary, in an opportune moment repeat what they said back to them so they KNOW you were listening. One of the credos that stuck with me when I was involved with the Red Cross Disaster Mental health Division was, “Don’t just say something…..stand there!” In other words: don’t talk, just be present and listen. In any crisis people want to be heard, not given advice, sympathetic prose, or anecdotal stories about how the same
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9 Questions You Must Be Asking Your Employees

April 6, 2020 | No Comments

The Coronavirus pandemic is affecting our lives in every aspect, and we are experiencing a “new normal.” At some point things will get back to normal, whatever that is, but it will look different from what normal was a few weeks ago. This pandemic is an intensifier and an accelerant, so that means we’re getting a “new normal” every week, if not every day. Because of the rapidly shifting world, we don’t know how everything is going to shake out in the next two to six months, or a year. Some financial experts are predicting that if we’re not already
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The survey is over… now what?

February 3, 2020 | No Comments

Organizations who are innovative enough to know the value of conducting surveys and assessments are one step ahead of other organizations who are mired in the here and now. Organizations who are all about status quo, not rocking the boat, “we’ve always done it this way” just aren’t willing to engage in this kind of assessment. They don’t want to know; they’re afraid of the information, if they’re even conscious of potential issues. To be sustainable – and successful – into the future, an organization must look outside and beyond today, or even the past. Setting goals and objectives and
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10 Traits of an Effective Leader

January 23, 2020 | No Comments

These top 10 traits are according to us here at The Shuler Group, and that work has come from decades of working with companies, businesses, organizations, associations, executives, managing our own teams, team building, leadership development, and really seeing what works and what doesn’t. Four of these traits are internal, and six are external. See the graphic at the bottom to see how these ten relate to each other. Deeper Why – As far as being an effective leader, the Deeper Why is crucial because people are wired for meaning. They want to feel they’re part of a larger purpose.
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What if you knew how exactly how to talk to someone, within nanoseconds?

August 14, 2019 | No Comments

The successful future of our community, even our globe, will be determined by our ability to connect, communicate, and create. One of the tools we use to do those very things (connect, communicate, and create) is BANKCODE, a scientifically validated personality assessment that uncovers someone values personality… vital information so that you can talk to them in their language of what’s important to them (not just what’s important to you). I along, with 3 other award-winning B.A.N.K. certified trainers, will share our knowledge and experience through our decades of business, training, consulting, and therapizing (is that even a word?) on
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Internal and External Service – Part 2

August 7, 2019 | No Comments

This is Part 2 of Internal and External Customer Service. In Part 1, I challenged you to think about how you can up your game with your internal and external customer service. Even though one of our core values is extreme service (not just excellent service, but extreme service), I don’t want to become complacent and say, “We already do such a good job that we don’t really need to do anything to improve. Let’s just keep doing what we do. If we keep doing what we do, and our customers and clients are satisfied, where’s the harm in that?”
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