Tag: employee relations
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
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
Warning! Coaching Won’t Resolve These 5 Problems
Lately, more and more leadership development, employee feedback, and general management is being outsourced from actual business decision-makers to Human Resources business partners and professional coaches. But coaching isn’t necessarily the answer for every employee... Continue reading
What to Do When You Have Trouble Praising Employees
Practically every executive knows that praise is a crucial management tool. Gallup research shows that when managers recognize employees’ strengths and positive characteristics, rather than focusing on their weaknesses and negative characteristics, employee engagement goes... Continue reading
What Happens When Leaders Divide to Conquer
Working with teams or leaders in conflict is a crucial part of many of my assignments -- even when it was not included in the original scope of work. Sometimes these disagreements arise because individual... Continue reading