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Workplace Dynamics

The Perfect Corporate Culture Doesn’t Exist

July 14, 2010

Have you ever noticed how pervasive “perfection” is in our language? The phrase “perfect storm” is used to describe a “rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically”. Last month, ump Jim Joyce ruined a “perfect” game for Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga. Recently, corporate success coach Ann Farrell ruminated on striving for the [...]

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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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25 Free Leadership Development Resources

March 3, 2010

As part of my gig as a guest on the HR Happy Hour’s Leadership Show , I agreed to pull together some leadership resources for the Happy Hour listeners. When I talk with clients about leadership development, they often say one or both of the following: a) We don’t have the time to develop something [...]

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Office Politics: It’s Personal

February 9, 2010

Our 5-part series on positive office politics, (The P Quotient) is drawing to a close. In this final installment, Jane Perdue looks at personal influence, one of four key behaviors needed for a person to be considered politically savvy in a productive way. Just tuning in to this fascinating topic? Start here for the [...]

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Do You Trust Your Agenda?

February 4, 2010

As part of an ongoing blog series on Positive Office Politics (follow #OPQ on Twitter), Susan Mazza asks “What’s Your Agenda?” In this blog post, she explores personal motivations and how they show up in the workplace. She says: We ALL have agendas. You could say our ambitions, no matter how altruistic or noble they may [...]

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Stepping Into the Abyss

January 26, 2010

It’s great when a fellow blogger inspires me to get revved up on a topic. And so it is with Mary Jo Asmus’ series on the role that employees should play in helping their leaders improve. Last week, in response to her post “Bad Manager or Flawed Human?” the discussion on her blog was lively. [...]

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Thank Your Mentor Today

January 21, 2010

Today is Thank Your Mentor Day, which is part of National Mentoring Month. Who knew? Over the years I’ve had LOTS of fantastic mentors, and this is a perfect time to give them a well-deserved shout-out. The list below represents my former work team leaders, company executives, peers and fellow entrepreneurs. Interestingly, none of them [...]

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The Ambiguity Factor

December 3, 2009

When was the last time you heard an employee say “Wow, the implementation of that new program (system/process/idea) was smooth!” My guess is you’ve rarely (perhaps never?) heard that. There are oodles of reasons why the launch of a new system goes awry— competing values, unclear objectives, unrealistic deadlines, budget constraints and so on. Here’s [...]

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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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