Supervisors sometimes avoid taking corrective action because it feels too much like parenting. Other times they withhold critical feedback because the childhood injunction, “Judge not, lest yee be judged,” still rings in their ears. It is time to set these past feelings aside and talk about a new approach called valuative coaching. The purpose of performance […]

The value of a metaphor is that it provides a safe way for coworkers to discuss the undiscussable. Individuals do not have to accept the whole metaphor as truth. Each person can accept those parts that have meaning for her or him. For most people, getting the story straight does not matter. What does matter […]

Leaders get together frequently to exchange ideas and share information. They network for career opportunities, speculate on projects, and commiserate over troublesome employees. Why is it, then, followers are not afforded this same opportunity to gather with their counterparts? Employers seldom set aside the time and space for followers to compare notes and share their […]

Doers often disparage workplace relationships because they “don’t know, don’t like, or don’t trust” the people with whom they work. Applying the tenets of teamwork as defined in the previous two Blogs when building a task-based relationship objectifies rather than personalizes individual performance. This shift in focus attracts Doers because it is now clear to […]

  When organizations send upper level leaders to training with the intention of improving over all performance and productivity, they often neglect to raise consciousness among their lower level followers. Those responsible for providing the training fail to see that graduates will be picking up a new language expressed in words and concepts that are […]

Personality clashes, unmet expectations and resistive coworkers are among the primary causes of behavioral-based conflict in the workplace. Without an effective resolution process, no work unit can continue to function effectively. When evaluating the need for a conflict management program, be aware that unresolved conflict is directly related to job satisfaction – as job satisfaction […]

The existence of a rumor mill is an indication that employees don’t trust what they hear from official communication channels. Sadly, in a large organization the rumor mill is sometimes the only source of information available to those at the lower levels. The most effective way to close down the rumor mill is to provide […]

If you ask someone at Alcoholics Anonymous how they are doing, they say, “I’m in recovery;” meaning they know they are not perfect, but they are working on it. That desire to improve is what moves us through life: the potential of being better. The four stages of the Mastery Learning Sequence outlined below provide […]

Mainstream management methods can only bridge the gap between functional and dysfunctional employees, bridging, at best, merely provides a communication link between competing subgroups. In order to close the gap, you need to conduct a purposeful search for a common meaning without creating intra-group opposition. One way to do this is to form a Group […]

Leaders in today’s complex organizations are discovering that getting followers together to develop a common set of goals is not only difficult, but it is frequently divisive and disruptive to the normal work flow. Their challenge is to meld the individual perceptions and expectations into a unified vision. The primary obstacles keeping followers from coming […]