Twice a month, Lead Change Group authors write a blog post on the SmartBlog on Leadership site. Today it’s my turn with a post called How to Get Your Team to Speak Up. It’s based on my observation that many team leaders create a culture where saying “no” is unacceptable, thereby causing their team…
Leadership
A Vision is a Promise. Are You Keeping Yours?
Are you a person of your word? As a leader, when you lay out a vision, you are creating a promise— that the future state will be better than the current one. People buy in to that vision based on their trust in you to get them there. It’s up to you to deliver. Making…
How to Tell If Your Boss is a Psycho or Jerk
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…
Do Your Words Encourage or Deflate?
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. …
What to Do About Employees Who Don’t Care
I’ve never been much for watching sports. So when my kids started playing organized athletics, I was not very enthused. A friend who has already been there, done that told me “it’ll be different when you’re watching your own kid.” She’s right. When it’s my kid (and by extension, the other kids on the…