Why Conflict Happens at Work, and How You Can Think About It
We all experience conflict on the job. Just the act of trying to coordinate activities with others -- or, actually, any attempt at working together -- can trigger conflict, even if everyone involved cares about... Continue reading
Your Customers Don’t Want to Be Trapped by Your Silos
A customer arrives at a service department he visits frequently to take care of some account maintenance. Before he leaves, he asks the department receptionist if she can pass along a document to another department.... Continue reading
You Can Coach Your Boss: 3 Powerful Uses of the Platinum Rule
“Can you give advice for those with managers who fit these descriptions?” A discerning reader posed that question after reading my last two blogs, How 3 Leaders’ Mistakes Undermined Their Leadership, and How to Use... Continue reading
How to Use The Platinum Rule to Engage Employees
Remember Silvia, Ophelia, and Felix, from last week’s blog -- the senior execs who were turning off members of their staffs? This post will show how we adjusted these execs’ behavior to match the realities... Continue reading
How 3 Leaders’ Mistakes Undermined Their Leadership
All in the same week, I had the opportunity to deal with three very different senior managers. Each was responsible for a different organizational function, and each had a different leadership style. And yet all... Continue reading
To Make Change Successful, Focus on Talk and Trust
Change is often seen as creative and necessary. It can be invigorating, in the sense of a fresh start. But change is also almost irrepressibly hard. When we first try to give up a personal... Continue reading
Manage Better by Understanding Mistakes and Why People Make Them
Many companies use some kind of program for “measuring quality,” but the result of these assessment is typically expressed in “error rates.” Error rates are pretty worthwhile when they’re used to identify process steps that... Continue reading
Are You Coaching? Or Just Waving Your Arms?
A lot of what passes for coaching -- in workplaces, in homes, even on kids’ sports teams -- is really just a lot of exhortations and fervent repetitions of normative statements. It doesn’t help the... Continue reading