Let’s chat about the phenomenon called ‘throwing someone under the bus’.

This is not a pleasant topic, and I’m sure none of you, dear readers, has ever done this.

However, it happens all the time, so SOMEONE must be doing it!

What is it? It is when things are not going well, and the leader pins the blame on someone else...

I constantly marvel at how poorly people treat their family members.

These people, our spouses and our children, who we vow to cherish and who are our own flesh and blood, are sometimes treated worse than anyone else on the planet.  I guess in many cases, there is truth to the saying “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”.

Sadly, the...

Do you hate conflict? Do you hate confrontation? Do you get uncomfortable when conveying something the other person doesn’t want to hear?

It isn’t necessarily easy for anyone to be the bearer of bad news, negative feedback, or to say “No” to a potential vendor. It isn’t easy to disagree with people or not give in to...

Many of the leaders I work with feel like all they do is talk to people all day. When I speak with their teams, they feel like they hardly ever see or hear from their boss.

What gives?

Are these people living in parallel universes in the same office space??

No.

The truth is that we, as humans, are selective listeners. We can’t focus on all...

What are the values of your work team/organization? Have you taken the time to take your group through the exercise of identifying values that you share and want to exemplify as a team?

Without doing so, your people will not be sure how to work and what to work on. That is a recipe for lack of effectiveness and confusion.

As a group do you...

We all know what the polls say—the majority of workers, some say up to 79%, are not engaged at work. About a quarter of those are so DIS-engaged they are actively working AGAINST their supervisor! And, half are looking for work elsewhere.

How can that be? How can so many people be so dissatisfied with their jobs?

One reason people are...

Did you know that everything you do communicates something?

Especially as a leader, you are watched, studied, ruminated about, and copied. And judged. And I can’t name one workplace I have worked with where many of the staff can’t do a pretty good (and funny) imitation of the boss.

Your appearance—Do you dress up? Are you...

So…your department or team has a big event coming up. It will be very visible to the organization, and possibly even to the public. You have assigned a person to be the lead organizer for the event, and she keeps saying everything is going fine. But, as the person whose head will roll if it fails, how do you supervise the project without...

As a leader, what does it mean to be ‘FAIR’? You have a team of very different people, with different needs and different abilities, and, well, how can you be ‘FAIR’ to all of them?

This is a very important question within every workplace.

Employees care deeply about fairness. When they perceive they are being treated...

I recently asked a friend about his new job. He has about three months under his belt, and I was curious how it was going.

“Good—I think…I recently got a bonus, but…”

“That’s great, but you sound a little uncertain…?”

“Yes, well, I don’t know exactly what they want me to do. I...