Personal Effectiveness

How to Tell If Your Boss is a Psycho or Jerk

April 19, 2012

Overhead at my favorite coffee shop the other day: “My boss is a total psycho!” I wanted to turn around and say, “Oh, really? And just how exactly do you know this? Are you clinically trained to diagnose mental illness?” But of course, someone’s medical credentials aren’t the point.  The point is, humans crave linguistic shortcuts—a [...]

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Using The PRIMES to Solve Project Team Problems

April 16, 2012

This is the second blog post about the book The PRIMES by Chris McGoff. Author McGoff says “The PRIMES show up every time people join up in groups to solve problems, drive change and transform systems.” There are 46 PRIMES, so there is a lot covered in the book and it’s all great. But I [...]

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Do Your Words Encourage or Deflate?

April 10, 2012

I love “people equations”—any formula (scientific or otherwise) that can provide a framework that helps us interact more effectively with clients, peers, suppliers, leaders, and team members. I recently encountered an article that quoted positive-psychology expert Martin Seligman as saying that he uses something called the “Losada Ratio” when talking with people he cares about.  [...]

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4 Workplace Communication Tips for Twenty-Somethings

March 7, 2012

Patti Lamberti is a professional in residence who teaches courses in journalism and new media at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication. In her post Tech Savants, she gives us the rundown on what twenty-something’s think about a mainstream workplace communication tool: “Email is for old people.” Ouch. Anybody who’s had a conversation (or more [...]

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15 Ways to Be Nice at Work

February 24, 2012

This week is Be Nice Week at my kids’ school. It’s part of an anti-bullying program designed to “promote the old-fashioned value of being nice”. Today the students and teachers  will wear “Be Nice” t-shirts offered by the The Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan. I bought a t-shirt too and will be wearing it today [...]

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Leadership and Positive Social Contagion

February 8, 2012

Are there any positive leadership stories out there anymore? Anyone? Anyone? Sometimes, I feel like Ben Stein’s economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, casting about for any story that sheds a positive light on the ability to lead with character. In the last week alone, I’ve personally heard three stories of leadership failure:   [...]

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7 Questions That Help Conversations Move Forward

February 2, 2012

The other day I attended a webinar led by Al Switzler, co-author of the books Crucial Conversations and Influencer. During the webinar Al made this point about interacting with colleagues: If your response to frustrating conversations is to increase the frequency of your key point or the volume of your delivery, but you don’t change [...]

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Command and Control Just Won’t Die

January 25, 2012

For nearly two decades, management gurus have been heralding the death of the “command and control” mentality in Corporate America. Personally, I think it’s very much alive. Over a year ago, I wrote that the so-called “death” of command and control management is nothing but an urban legend. Now, a recent article on the Forbes.com [...]

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Stack Your Phones at the Next Company Meeting

January 17, 2012

There’s a new game making the rounds these days called Phone Stack. Have you played it? The basic gist is this—when you dine out with friends, everyone puts their phones in the middle of the table and then embarks on a huge game of chicken— who  can resist the siren call of their phone for [...]

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December 2011 Reading Round Up

December 8, 2011

Hello, readers! In addition to The People Equation, I write for a couple of other blogs. Several of those pieces published this past week, so here’s a rundown in case you want to peruse additional content related to human resources, leadership and being workplace savvy: December Leadership Development Carnival Becky Robinson, Director of Social Marketing [...]

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