Employee Engagement and Public Service Excellence

"Develop your employees for their career and for the future of the organization; have trust in them and make them trust you as well."

- Sunil Budhiraja quoted in The Employee Engagement Network

Most individuals want to do more than go through the motions. People aspire to do work that is meaningful. When they have the opportunity to be working with a leader who challenges, inspires, and appreciates them, they can perform far above their expectations.

Team Building: Energizing your Organization

Most leaders encourage and/or require their staff to work as a team but give their staff little guidance as to how they should do so.

A team is usually defined as a "group of people who are mutually dependent on one another to achieve a common goal". Little emphasis is placed, however, on how well the team is functioning.

In assessing team performance, consulting psychologists go beyond its' productivity and also pay attention to the team's wellness. The well-being of each team member is taken into consideration while trying to improve a team's performance. In fact, a highly performing team is considered to be one that is able to surpass its organizational goals, in addition to helping its members maintain both job satisfaction and healthy work-life balance.

Les défis que posent la prévention et la résolution des situations de harcèlement

S'il existe un consensus à propos du harcèlement, c'est que la prévention et la résolution des situations de harcèlement représentent un défi important pour les organisations. En effet, plusieurs éléments contribuent à rendre le harcèlement difficile à gérer.

Premièrement, le harcèlement est subjectif et est souvent basé sur des perceptions. Un même comportement peut être perçu différemment par différentes personnes. Il interpelle davantage les émotions que la raison notamment parce qu'il constitue une menace pour l'intégrité psychologique et l'identité de la personne. Pour ces raisons, le harcèlement est difficile à saisir et à définir. Comment peut-on en effet s'entendre sur une définition commune du harcèlement si un même comportement est perçu différemment par différentes personnes ? Parce qu'il est difficile à définir, le harcèlement est aussi difficile à prouver juridiquement.

The "Active" Leader: Using Willpower to Move from Knowing to Doing

With our constant stream of emails, voicemails, meetings, conference calls, pages, faxes and so on, it is a minor miracle that any of us can accomplish anything. With our Blackberrys surgically implanted into our hands, our time is sliced so thinly that we never have the focused time to develop the big-picture perspective required for an action plan, let alone the time to execute it.

"Daily routines, superficial behaviors, poorly prioritized or unfocused tasks leech managers' capacities—making unproductive busyness perhaps the most critical behavioral problem" in business today, contend Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal in their book A Bias for Action.

For so many of us—whether CEOs for major corporations, small business owners or soloentrepreneurs – there is a fundamental disconnection between knowing what should be done and actually doing it. Calling this disconnection the "knowing-doing gap," Stanford University researchers Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton pose the question: "Why does knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fail to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge?"

Don't Miss a Step: Take Time to Celebrate!

The path of a goal, whether a goal set for your personal life or in the course of business, is generally seen as having four steps:

1. Assess the situation
2. Set goals for how you want it to be
3. Take steps to achieve the goals, and
4. Achieve the goals (completion).

Tele-work and the Fridge Factor? It Doesn't Have to be That Way

Tele-work is becoming more in demand both in the private and public sector.

We know that one of the greatest challenges for employers is the hiring and retention of talented employees and managers.

What can organizations do to attract the right people for the right jobs, and keep them?

There are a number of solutions, some workable and some not so workable. However, because tele-work is so attractive, it is heading to the top of the current list of recruitment tools.

As we know, tele-work can take many forms but it mostly allows selected employees to work from home, or a location closer to home, one or more days a week.

Ten tips on how to succeed on your next interview with the GOC

The coaches of Y2 Consulting Psychologists have conducted hundreds of interview simulations to help GOC employees and managers move up the corporate ladder. Using the services of specialised coaches who can lead you through a selection board simulation and provide you with developmental feedback is often regarded as the most efficient strategy in helping individuals get a promotion. Below are some tips from Y2CP's coaches on how to better perform on your next interview with the GOC:

1. Carefully read the work description and the statement of merit criteria (SOMC) for the position you are considering, paying particular attention to the essential and asset qualifications (e.g. experience, knowledge, abilities and personal suitability) required.
2. Inquire about how the board interviews will proceed (e.g. will you be getting the interview questions in advance to prepare? If so, how much prep time will you have? How long will the interview be? How many board members will be present?).

[...] Read more on y2cp.com

Dr. Yaniv Benzimra, Consulting Psychologist
L.Long, HRM Consultant
Y2 Consulting Psychologists

Merci ! / Thank you!

Y2CP aimerait remercier ses clients !

L'équipe de Y2CP aimerait remercier tous ses clients pour leur confiance et engagement envers nos services en psychologie clinique et organisationnelle au cours des dernières années.

C'est avec plaisir que notre groupe accueillera des nouveaux clients, ainsi que nos clients actuels, au cours de l'année qui suit. Notre mission continue d'être : « Offrir à nos clients des services professionnels de qualité afin de favoriser leur épanouissement personnel, professionnel et organisationnel. »

Meilleurs vœux pour l'année 2010 de la part des Psychologues consultants Y2 – Santé et bien-être !

Y2CP's team wants to thank its clients!

The Y2CP team wishes to thank its clients for the trust they have placed in its services – both HRM and psychological – over the past several years.

It will be our pleasure in the coming year to welcome new clients and to continue serving returning ones. Our Mission continues to be: "to support the personal, professional and organizational development of our clients through quality professional services."

Best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year from Y2 Consulting Psychologists!

Managing talent in turbulent waters

You've heard it many times: public service leaders are accountable for leading and managing people to achieve results aligned with strategic directions.

This is a tall order at any time in a dynamic political environment marked by evolving priorities, shifting resources, changing employee expectations, and ongoing public scrutiny. However, people remain at the heart of it all – people who take on the challenges of leadership, and the people they lead.

Many pieces of the puzzle need to be in place for leaders to achieve results in the short and longer term. Talent management is one key piece. Leaders need to strategically manage the flow of talent through their organizations so that the right people are in the right place at the right time.

Critical to managing the talent flow is recruiting the right people and developing them. In the hurly burly of daily activity, however, leaders often focus less on developing people after they are on board.

For some, that talent flow is now becoming a sea of white water as the reality of baby boom departures sinks in and new generations are being recruited to fill their shoes. The timely development of the right people to fill those shoes is a major challenge for many managers.

[...] Read more on y2cp.com

The ABCs of Coaching

Do I really need a coach?

You could go at it on your own. Many have. After all, there's lots of self-help literature and coaching techniques. However, it's been shown that some of these help, and some don't.

There are the times, however, when most of us could use a little, or a lot, of extra help – the kind that only trained professionals can provide — like those with a background in coaching psychology.

Coaching is based on the needs of individuals and reputable coaching uses constructive methods to support those individuals in meeting those needs and to identify others that may be required to achieve goals.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is meant to help individuals or groups strive for and reach particular goals, or develop certain competencies. It can take any number of forms (lifestyle, executive, etc).

Over the years, coaching has evolved by incorporating elements from other disciplines — psychology (e.g. clinical, counselling and industrial) chief among them.

While coaching isn't new, it is being used increasingly, both in the private and the public sectors. And who better than trained psychologists and HR specialists to provide the expert coaching you or your organization may require?

[...] Read more on y2cp.com