Posts tagged as:

Communication

The Z Factor

September 2, 2010

KNOWING WHEN TO ZIP YOUR LIP IS KEY TO SUCCESS Given that my company’s tag line is “master the people equation”, I’m always on the look-out for clever “equations” that tie to human dynamics. Of course, people are far too complex to be reduced to one “correct” answer like a math equation. Still, it’s fun [...]

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Leaders: Get The Rude Out

July 16, 2010

Given my love of words, I subscribe to Thinkmap’s Visual Thesaurus. Each day, I look forward to an email from Thinkmap’s Word of the Day. (Yes, I’m that geeky.) Today’s word is “erudite”.  It means “having or showing profound knowledge”. Don’t you just love how it trips off your tongue? Say it with me: erudite. [...]

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Game-Changers Welcome Resistance

June 11, 2010

This morning, while preparing for the work day, I had a random thought and quickly posted it to Twitter: Props to Joan Koerber-Walker for starting the #BeOriginal hashtag on Twitter. Judging by the number of retweets, I’d say this tweet had legs!  Or should I say “wings?”  To go beyond the 140 characters with that [...]

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Advice for Leaders Who Blog

June 8, 2010

I just returned from a quarterly management meeting being hosted by a client.  It’s a two-day meeting being held offsite for 30 mid- to senior-level managers of a business unit.  During the meeting, Pete, head of a 1200-person business unit, unveiled his brand-new blog.  I really admire Pete. He’s been taking risks and encouraging his staff [...]

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Are Your Employees Going the Extra Mile?

June 4, 2010

Leaders, when’s the last time you saw your employees go the extra mile?  Today? Last week?  Last month? The photo at right was taken by Terry P., the Library Media Supervisor at my kids’ elementary school. (Back in the day, we called them “librarians”.) Shortly before this picture was taken, Terry had been doing an [...]

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Making Decisions, 100 Years at a Time

June 3, 2010

I’ve been watching reruns of the Ken Burns series The National Parks  on PBS. It’s an in-depth look at the birth and evolution of our country’s national park system.  Called “America’s best idea” by writer and historian Wallace Stegner,  men both famous ( Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir )and lesser-known (Stephen Mather , Charles Young) were [...]

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Avoiding Verbal Spam

May 24, 2010

Sometimes a tweet just sums it up perfectly.  Ben Eubanks tweeted:   “Verbal Spam”.  Creates quite the mental picture, doesn’t it? How often are you subjected to verbal “spam” in the workplace?  Probably more often than you’d like.  My first reaction to Ben’s tweet was to imagine people who blather on, saying nothing of value.  [...]

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4 Ways to Gain Team Input

April 30, 2010

So I’m sitting at a large round table, talking with a team of eight senior-level leaders who work for a large corporation.  These are smart, sophisticated people, who have both street cred as field operatives and many years’ experience leading various types and sizes of work groups.  We’re discussing how to ensure that our communications [...]

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Beyond Diversity Training

March 21, 2010

Ways to encourage diversity on your team beyond race, religion or sexual orientation.  Several weeks ago, I got an unexpected Skype call.  It was from my long-time client Pete. He was calling from Germany to say “hi” and let me know he’d just landed a new job as Director of Operational Excellence for a large [...]

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Leadership, Writing & Office Politics

March 6, 2010

Activity on The People Equation has been light recently due to my many offline projects. Here’s a quick run-down on what’s been happening and how you might benefit from knowing about them: The HR Happy Hour Tackles Leadership Earlier this week I was a guest on the The HR Happy Hour radio show (Episode 35: [...]

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