Cues Podcast

Laurie Maddalena’s vision is to create a place where people love to come to work. Gallup has found in its most recent workforce study, she says, that only about 34% of American employees feel engaged at work.“Most people don’t enjoy their work and I think a lot of that has to do with leadership, the quality of leadership we have in our organizations,” says Maddalena, CEO of Envision Excellence, a leadership consulting firm that provides leadership development programs for managers and executives, keynote speeches, team building and leadership assessments.As antidote, Maddalena recommends leaders look to be “modern” leaders, focused on facilitating people doing the work, not fixing problems themselves. Modern leaders get to know their employees and place high value on the people side of the business, she says. New leaders sometimes struggle with taking a modern leadership approach because they have been promoted because they are technically adept—not because they have leadership skills. So instead of leading i