SigmaU Blog

My mentor Bob told me, “Hire slowly and fire quickly Nikki”. While I’d love to stand here and tell you that I took his advice and acted accordingly every single time, I didn’t! There were times that I waited WAY too long to pull the trigger. Perhaps you can relate.  Few leaders have ever thought to themselves after firing someone, “Man, I wish I kept him/her around longer.” When we know, we know.

The role of values in your hiring process

What brings an extra level of clarity to the decision is when you base the decision on culture and core values.  They become your compass and North Star and there’s total clarity which happens very quickly when you’re basing decisions on this type of alignment.

We recently did a “Core Values in Action” workshop for a small team. They have never sprinkled core value questions into their interview process. We mapped out exactly how core values would show up in how people would respond in the interview process and she emailed me to let me know that the...

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t wake up every morning with a spring in my step and an eagerness to serve others. In fact, there are some mornings that I want to roll over, pull up the sheets, snuggle my basenji and let someone else be the boss for the day!

I’ve experienced some of my darkest times as a leader during COVID. Battling negative conversations in my mind about the future of the economy, will our savings run dry if this continues for years, will I have to lay people off if there’s a second wave, will it just be Friday already! Anyone else relate? Bueller, Bueller?

Gratitude: a powerful remedy

All that said, I will share with you a powerful way to remedy a funk and that is by practicing gratitude and setting intentions. I started doing a gratitude journal about four years ago and it is a fantastic way to rebalance and reframe your thinking. At the end of the day, while this year has been a rollercoaster ride, there is still SO much to be grateful for. To start, I won the f...

According to Wikipedia, “Work engagement is the ‘harnessing of organization member's selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances.’"^[1]:694 Three aspects of work motivation are cognitive, emotional and physical engagement.^[2]

When I read this definition, a few things come up for me. I’m reminded of the importance of seeing the “whole” person not just the worker bee on my team. I love that this definition includes the emotional and mental expressiveness of importance. Better yet, it seems that equal value is given to each area of the employee’s self. As leaders, we can often forget that optimal performance can only be met when team members are actively engaged in all areas.

Sadly, for many organizations, engagement to them means recognizing a birthday with a digital card, or a work anniversary with a letter from the president. Or worse, they may feel that a team member is enga...

When I was growing my business and added support staff, I didn’t have a clue about leadership. I was too caught up in the day-to-day selling in order to keep the business going to even stop and be intentional about my role as a leader.

As I started shifting my focus to learning about how to become a better leader, I uncovered 5 myths about leadership. 

Myth #1 – Leaders are born that way!

While some of us do have leadership abilities which we display as children they are typically linked to old-school thinking of what a leader is. Meaning that, we display behaviours of taking charge, being the loudest or being the biggest risk-taker. Becoming an effective leader takes time and discipline. For me, it was listening to podcasts, reading books and attending courses and workshops to learn how to effectively communicate with my team. What I discovered was it wasn’t at all about how loud or in charge you were but how to serve your people and have difficult conversations, give feedback and ...