Line managers who are not interested
August 31, 2010
I received this email from an Alchemy subscriber…
Have you ever looked at Line Managers (LMs) who simply aren’t interested in being LMs? They neglect their staff; don’t answer calls, don’t reply to emails or just send one liners, don’t accept meeting requests and simply are not available to assist?
I sent these off the cuff thoughts [...]
The bullying boss. What can you do?
August 29, 2010
I heard a heart rending story the other day from someone who was being bullied at work by his boss. His life was greatly affected by it… you could even say he was miserable. And to show you that the stereotypes are often wrong, his boss is a woman.
Bullying, sadly, is alive and well in [...]
Stupid stuck states
August 26, 2010
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Albert Einstein
A stuck state means there are stupid thoughts at work. Even the most intelligent people can have blinkered areas where thinking becomes limited, where certainty rules, and where there’s a lack of open mindedness. Until these limited thoughts [...]
Smile… it’s good for you
August 22, 2010
Most people smile much less often than they think, yet smiling is important for building rapport and helping others to feel comfortable.
Read the rest of this entry »When they come and ask you what to do
August 15, 2010
When they come and ask for help, you have a great opportunity to focus on training your team to think through problems.
Unfortunately, that’s the very time when it’s easiest to just tell them what to do.
People like you when you talk solutions
August 8, 2010
Do you habitually talk about problems, or talk about solutions?
Problem talk includes descriptions of what the problems are, analysis of where they came from, elaboration of the effects they are having, how people feel about them, and speculation about what they are leading to. It is any talk that puts the focus on the problem.
And the circus came to town
August 1, 2010
If you find out what people want to see at the circus, that’s market research.
If your circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus coming to the Fairground Saturday”, that’s advertising.
If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.
If the [...]
How ‘what you know’ can hurt you
July 25, 2010
Mark Twain said “It is not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble. It is what we think we know for sure.”
What we think we know for sure becomes a blind spot because we stop examining it, and we all have these blind spots. Many of them.