The other day a box arrived at my office. Carefully packed in foam was this lovely award from Inscape Publishing. Although SkillSource has been an award-winning distributor with Inscape for sixteen years, I’d never bothered to select the physical “trophy” (as my son called it); opting instead for other forms of recognition that the company…
Search Results for: leadership
15 Ways to Be Nice at Work
This week is Be Nice Week at my kids’ school. It’s part of an anti-bullying program designed to “promote the old-fashioned value of being nice”. Today the students and teachers will wear “Be Nice” t-shirts offered by the The Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan. I bought a t-shirt too and will be wearing it today…
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…