Posts tagged as:

Supervisory Skills

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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When Performance Review Meets the Customer Experience

October 6, 2009

I just returned from the grocery store, one that I frequent nearly every week.  This is what I overhead as my groceries were being rung up and bagged today: Supervisor (to cashier): “When you’re done ringing her up, meet me upstairs for your evaluation.” Cashier: “OK.” Supervisor walks away. Cashier (to bagger): “Oh, man. . [...]

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The Anatomy of a Comment

October 2, 2009

Yesterday I posted my reaction to the various “comments” that a local art competition is receiving in our community.  These comments are appearing in several places: the art competition’s website, the online version of the local newspaper and various other local blogs. Reading these comments caused me to reflect on the nature of discourse on [...]

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The TMI of Leadership

September 29, 2009

The other day, I was having a discussion with a training manager named Sally.  Her staff designs training for her company’s field sales force. Sally works for a large organization that has a reputation for promoting from within. Here’s what we were discussing: Leaders higher up in her organization have noticed that when the sales people [...]

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The Sweet Spot for Mentoring

September 24, 2009

Note: this blog post is a collaborative effort between Jennifer V. Miller and Lisa Rosendahl.  We’ve each taken a different perspective on the topic of mentoring. Lisa’s post explores what attributes Human Resource/Talent Managers look for in potential mentors. This blog post explores mentor readiness from a personal perspective, asking: “How do you know you’re ready [...]

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