Posts tagged as:

Supervisory Skills

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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Supervisory Influence and the DISC Model of Human Behavior

February 16, 2011

Early in my career as a corporate trainer, my work team leader introduced me to a self-assessment tool called the Personal Profile System (now in a revised version called the DiSC® Classic Profile). We used the DiSC profile as part of our company’s curriculum for newly hired supervisors. The DiSC section of the coursework always [...]

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Supervisory Transition: Roles, Relationships and Remarkable Principles

February 15, 2011

A Conversation with Guy Harris on His New Book “From Bud to Boss” Last week I talked with Guy Harris, co-author of the new book From Bud To Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership. In the book, Guy and co-author Kevin Eikenberry craft a comprehensive treatment of the topic. It’s a practical [...]

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From Bud to Boss Sneak Peek

February 10, 2011

Sneak peek time: I just finished a great author interview and will soon publish a full blog post on it. In the meantime, here’s a quick summary: I interviewed Guy Harris, co-author of the book From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership. Guy, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has written a [...]

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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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Roles Plays Are OK

April 19, 2010

Over at the HR Bartender, Sharlyn Lauby has declared role plays in the training classroom passé, declaring Nobody Likes Role Plays. I agree with her assertion the traditional format in which the trainer announces, “Now, let’s put what we just learned into practice” and calling up two training participants to the front of the room [...]

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Taking a Break

December 26, 2009

I was out in the stores early this morning snapping up some after-Christmas sale items. In what appears to be a developing theme with me, I overheard another conversation with Human Resources implications in the store this morning. (Blog series, perhaps? See my other HR eavesdropping observation here.) Overheard: Employee: “Do I really need to [...]

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The Card Playing CEO

December 20, 2009

Now, here’s something you don’t see every day: a company CEO sitting in the firm’s break room playing cards with his frontline employees. Or do you? This is the question I’ve been pondering for awhile after I witnessed this exact scenario at a client’s headquarters a few weeks ago. After making a few discreet inquiries [...]

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Wintry White Leadership Carnival

December 7, 2009

For those of us who live in the Snowbelt, this time of year brings mixed feelings. Yes, it was fun for the kids to have a snow day last Friday. Yes, it was truly beautiful to decorate the Christmas tree whilst fluffy snowflakes drifted all around outside our cozy warm home on Saturday. No, it [...]

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Praising Mastery

November 6, 2009

I’m reading the book The Power of Respect by Deborah Norville. She cites a very interesting study from the journal Motivation and Emotion. In this study, a group of researchers from Reed College in Oregon studied whether one form of praise was more effective than another. The researchers used two different types of praise: “mastery”, [...]

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