founders reflections Archives | Turknett Leadership Group

Five Reasons Mental Health is a Challenge Now – and Five Possible Solutions

By Lyn Turknett Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG I’ve thought about mental health – how to help everyone thrive, how to combat anxiety and depression, what might work for our adolescents, and how to improve mental health in the workplace – since I was very young. As an adult I’ve been in fields that supported mental […]

May 22, 2024 View Article

Managing Volunteers

Lyn Turknett Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG What’s the biggest problem you’ve ever had managing volunteers? If you’ve ever been a volunteer and have let a volunteer commitment slip to meet a “real work” deadline, you likely know what most people answer: holding people accountable when you have no authority over them. Interestingly, though, that […]

April 30, 2024 View Article

The Age Question: Examining a Generational Workforce

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG Just from personal observation, it’s hard to tell if there are greater similarities or differences between the various workforce generations, but generally, researchers have found it hard to confirm real differences in attitudes toward work and think that most of the differences we experience are due to age, not […]

January 31, 2024 View Article

A Contrarian View: What if Generational Differences are Small? And What if Focusing on Them Could Be Harmful?

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG I can remember my first personal experience of “generational prejudice.” I was about twenty-five and a graduate student. The civil rights movement was in full swing and “my generation” had fought hard for change. I can remember clearly thinking that the “younger generation,” born about 1950, was very focused […]

January 31, 2024 View Article

Why Positive Psychology Works

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG I remember reading, perhaps thirty years ago, an observation by a consultant that had a profound effect on me. I am not sure of the writer – it could have been Marvin Weisbord – but I remember the story vividly. He said that he was helping facilitate a planning […]

December 13, 2023 View Article

How Coaching Can Help Foster Strong Retention

How Coaching Improves Retention Rates

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG People don’t leave companies – people leave their boss. That’s forever true, and anyone who has consulted in multiple organizations sees that borne out every day. One of the most fascinating things about doing organization engagement surveys is seeing tiny “pockets of engagement” – and loyalty – in an […]

October 26, 2023 View Article

Navigating Change: A How-to and a How to-not

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG The same qualities that help all of us expect, navigate, and even enjoy change – being curious, open, questioning, collaborative, agile and adaptable – help us whether we are managing change or navigating unexpected change. We were consulting in large organizations when the first waves of downsizing occurred […]

August 24, 2023 View Article

Ron Johnson, Paulette Corbin, and the Three Levels of Change Leadership

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG This article was originally posted in April of 2014. I’ve followed the sad decline of JC Penney over the past few years – it’s a classic story of how NOT to lead change. Ron Johnson, fresh from overwhelming success in creating Apple’s retail stores, came in on a […]

August 24, 2023 View Article

Organizational Culture: The True Story and Legacy of NCR

Anne Quiello, Sr. Consultant & Host of Women in Leadership, TLG I had the honor of interviewing Julie Untener, Vice President and Chief of Staff to the President and COO of National Cash Register (NCR), Corp. during this month’s Women in Leadership Signature Series event. Especially interesting was our dialogue about NCR’s culture. I grew […]

July 27, 2023 View Article

How to Encode a Common Language into Your Culture

Lyn Turknett, Co-founder and Co-chair, TLG The “common language” of a culture, in my experience, usually revolves around values and principles that are foundational and that are understood across cultures and generations. The values are often core to the business. For example, “high reliability” organizations, ones that deal in life and death (think healthcare, aviation, […]

July 27, 2023 View Article