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…
Leadership
Command and Control Just Won’t Die
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…
Don’t Kill Productive Meetings by Dragging Them Out
My friend Sally works for a company that holds monthly small-group “open forum” type meetings for cross-sections of various company departments. The purpose of these meetings is to promote cross-departmental communication. Each month, leaders from different functions in the company moderate the discussion. In general, Sally enjoys the meetings, except for one aspect: they are…
6 Ways to Take the Dread Out of Writing Self-Appraisals
If your company conducts its performance appraisals on an annual calendar basis then the past month has likely had you knee-deep in the process. There’s an equally likely chance you are supposed to do a self-appraisal for your performance view as well. As a leader, do you dread this task because you’re so consumed with…
Book Review: Leadership Caffeine
I’ll be right up front on this book review: I know the author. Art Petty and I are professionally acquainted; we’re fellow leadership bloggers and our paths sometime cross on consulting projects. I’m a huge fan of Art’s writing about leadership—he’s extremely pragmatic, yet self-effacing. You won’t find bombastic pontificating on his blog. What you…