October 11, 2021
I’ve often written about the slow death of command and control leadership – envisioning the demise of that mindset as the prevailing force in organizational life. It is slow going – isn’t it? At least it feels that way to me – even as an “observer” in my role as a consultant. The power issue hangs over us. Although there […]
October 10, 2021
“Forgiveness is a lovely idea until you have someone to forgive.” C.S. Lewis I’ve thought a lot about forgiveness lately. Often when we face life’s major passages, a flood of old thoughts and feelings suddenly reappear. But I must admit that I am not at the place where I started when I began to think about the concept of forgiveness for this […]
June 26, 2021
Isn’t it time to change the dominant stories we’ve been taught about workplace relationships? They’re old, exhausted and defeating. They’re based on models of thinking about human motivation and dynamics that have been discredited by modern science. These old stories are often steeped in mistrust. They’re hierarchical and parental in nature and based on a belief that the sole motivation […]
March 13, 2021
“Anger can be a wonderful wake up call to help you to understand what you need and what you value.” Thich Nhat Hahn For seven years I regularly facilitated seminars on conflict resolution. Most of the group participants wanted answers to problems they saw as the source of their conflict. Usually this had to do with fixing the behavior of another person. […]
February 28, 2021
Somewhere along the line I absorbed the nearly universal belief that hard work is a defining value of a person’s worth. Intellectually, I don’t buy into this meme – but emotionally I can feel its pull and weight for every hour “wasted” on “non-productive” work. Although the nature of work has changed dramatically since I was a child, the thinking […]
February 19, 2021
Succesful collaboration is built on a high level of emotional literacy. Without the capacity to generate and sustain certain feelings, our ability to collaborate with others is not possible. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workplace, our emotional repertoire has become habituated. Emotional habits are then fueled by our thinking process which is often fixed into patterns. […]
February 5, 2021
Since Part 1 of this article was published it has consistently remained in the blog’s top 10. While I am a very informal student of the science, what I’ve learned has reshaped the way I approach my work. I continue to hope that eventually, this slowly, but surely, organizational leaders will come to realize that many of the beliefs, practices […]
January 27, 2021
The scene – the window from my midtown Manhattan hotel facing an office building. The time – 6 am – the usual time I wake up when working in New York City (unless I can help it!) Years ago, when I started staying at this hotel, the offices were mostly dark at 6 am. But in recent years, more lights in more windows […]
January 11, 2021
“We use the same cells to build a sense of self, since these cells originate early in life when other people’s behavior is the reflection of our own behavior. In other people, we see ourselves with mirror neurons.” Marco Iacoboni, author, Mirroring People, The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others Emotions and actions are powerfully contagious. When […]