In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the impact that senior leadership teams have on employee engagement, productivity, and retention. And, I made it very clear that the behaviors that originate at the executive team level ripple through the organization. Just like a wave that gets larger as it nears the shore, those behaviors get magnified and repeated - regardless of whether they have a positive or negative impact.

Well, I am back after taking a few weeks off from my normal blogging routine. I hope you have enjoyed the summer as much as I have.

So, I thought I would jump back in with a concept I introduced in a webinar I conducted last week on The 4 Costliest Mistakes Senior Leadership Teams Make. It's a concept I call "getting stuck in always having to be right."

"The conduct of a company's leadership team is directly correlated with the organization's long-term performance."

In her article Lessons from Team Fumbles, Susan Lucia Annunzio goes on to say "Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate price for the behaviors of their leadership teams."

Some of the behaviors Annunzio is referring to includes:

One of the most frustrating experiences people can have in the workplace is when there are unspoken expectations between a team member and a manager.

In a typical employment situation, certain expectations, such as salary, hours, and job duties, are clearly understood by both employer and employee. Other expectations, however, are so intimately linked to an individual’s concept of work that they often go unspoken or unacknowledged.