October 20, 2015
“The fantasy about organizational life is that people will behave in logical, unemotional and well-organized ways. It’s as though the boxes on the organizational charts are designed to keep the messiness of reality, people and emotions away from work.” Dan Oestrich and Kathleen Ryan, co-authors, Driving Fear from The Workplace. How is it that with so-called flattened hierarchies, employee engagement […]
October 11, 2015
Ever since I began to work in the business world, the term “soft skills” always felt off to me. The more I come to appreciate the complexity of human dynamics, the more off it feels. In my experience, there is nothing soft or easy about mastering people skills. In fact, when I look around, especially in the workplace, clear and effective […]
June 11, 2015
“The question in an imperfect competitive reality is: how do we move forward together? Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi This post is written out of concern. I’m alarmed by the amount of people in the workplace who admit (some without a hint of regret) that they just “don’t care” about many of the people they […]
May 13, 2015
Underneath every communication is a feeling. This feeling drives your communication. How conscious are you of the subtext of your communication and the impact it has on others? Every time we do a seminar or facilitate a meeting, people say they want better communication in the workplace. What most people are hungry for is communication that is real, honest, clear, concise […]
April 28, 2015
“I now realize I have been working with my eyes closed. I appreciate even more a professor with whom I work occasionally: he always makes the point that leaders, managers — everyone in fact — should never underestimate the importance of kindness at work.” Gill Corkindale, Harvard Business Review An article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) by author Gill Corkindale, “The […]
April 26, 2015
My Google search for leadership turned up 499,000,000 results. It’s a well-covered topic with every nook and cranny explored. What more is there to say? There is general agreement that leadership models are changing dramatically. To be sure we’re still in the grip of the old command and control leadership paradigm with most organizational cultures still reflecting the […]
March 26, 2015
This article was inspired by the work of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning Each Hour of the Day. For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen master, poet, peace and human rights activist was exiled from his homeland of Vietnam in 1966. In the early 60’s […]
February 11, 2015
“Trust is a delicate property of human relationships. It is influenced far more by actions than words. It takes a long time to build, but it can be destroyed very quickly. Even a single action – perhaps misunderstood – can have powerful effects.” Douglas McGregor, author of the business classic, The Human Side of Enterprise The Wharton School of Business published […]
February 3, 2015
“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion.” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania In the past decade, there has been an important finding in neuroscience that should […]