Category: Leadership
How to Give Uncomfortable Personal Feedback, with Grace
Most people feel awkward raising personal issues with colleagues. That’s especially true when those issues concern the physical body, seem like an inherent expression of the person themselves, or are things we would feel mortified... Continue reading
8 Ways to Prevent Participation and Innovation
Employees can be such a headache, especially the proactive ones! They’re always asking questions, wanting things to be either some new way or the way they used to be, or else they’re making suggestions and... Continue reading
3 Powerful, Practical Fundamentals to Help Change Stick
Change may be a constant in life, but in business, many planned change initiatives either peter out or don’t even take hold in the first place. According to a Towers Watson study, only slightly more... Continue reading
Why Your Silos Are More Important Than You Think
Last month, a longstanding client brought me in after reviewing some recent customer research. The company provides a relatively complex service, and one of their most common and unprompted customer complaints was that the company’s... Continue reading
4 Ways to Ease the Pain of Interdepartmental Conflict
When departments operate in silos -- say operations wants to streamline processes while sales seeks to please customers by customizing -- the result can be repeated misunderstanding and extreme mistrust. Even otherwise reasonable employees can... Continue reading
How to Get the Best from Your HR Department
Too often, I hear leaders and staff in all kinds of organizations express a lack of confidence in their human resources departments. For many senior executives, this lack of confidence is actually a lack of... Continue reading
This is a Surprising Twist to Try When You Give Feedback
Standard guidelines for performance feedback call for content that’s specific, behavioral rather than personal, consistent, and delivered immediately after the triggering situation. But I’d like to suggest an alternative approach. If the behavior you’re trying... Continue reading
2 Never-Fail Rules to Make Change Initiatives Successful
Last week I facilitated a senior staff meeting that focused on silo-busting and improving cross-departmental collaboration. The group leader wrote to me afterwards to say he was very happy with how things went, and asked... Continue reading