In a recent team building class for a federal agency, the participants got into a heated debate about government workers who are complacent or unmotivated. First we had the usual debate about whether a leader can motivate someone or not, coming to the usual conclusion that an employee must motivate herself; but a leader can create the conditions for that to happen. Then we got into a more interesting discussion about the stereotypes surrounding government workers and their work ethic, the difficulty in firing them, and whether the government attracts people who are already unmotivated, or makes them that way after years of working in a certain environment. Some people said that lazy people who want job security go to work for the government. Others said that years of working in the same job with little change and no focus on career movement make people burned out and so once…
Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irrationality, is full of stuff about employee motivation that we consultants take for granted. The beauty of the book is that…
That’s my new line, and I start every team building class with it. People come to a team building class thinking that somehow we will talk about different…
There is one thing people like to debate with me in a class, and that’s whether people have bad intentions. It goes like this: I’ll explain the fundamental…
I used to be a ski instructor and we had a saying: If you want a happy ski client, treat kids like adults and adults like kids. A…
Last week my brother and I decided to start a crane training school. Not only that, but we hired my friend Daniel Dunn of Dunn Productions to shoot…
I was helping a colleague teach an instructional design workshop, and the room was full of experienced instructional designers whose supervisor had felt they could use a refresher. …
I’ll bet I’m not alone in saying this: Thank god the elections are over. I’m sick to death of the negative campaign ads. Sharon Begley penned a Newsweek…
My new favorite blog is Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. The posts rarely have much to do with the workplace, at least in a direct sense, but she’s a…
I’ve always been fascinated by how culture—national, tribal, organizational, etc.—impacts performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis of airline crashes that were caused by a cultural norm that says “never question…
In training sessions on communication skills, interpersonal skills or even performance management, I often try to sell the idea to managers that if they can find the source…
…then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. That’s what I tell folks who complain to me about their labor market and their impossible, imposed-from-above recruiting goals. It’s…
Recently I was facilitating a team building session for a young, enthusiastic group of government employees, and a new colleague who would serve as my back-up for this…
In a recent team building session, a group I was working with posed an interesting question. If members are not fully engaged in their team meetings, is that…
Dahlia Lithwick, in her recent Newsweek column “The Female Factor,” asks the question whether having three women on the Supreme Court will make any difference. The answer, according…
One of my favorite topics to teach, in any teambuilding, leadership or communication skill-related class, is Peter Senge’s concept of balancing advocacy and inquiry in conversation. Advocacy means…
A great blog post on Harvard Business Publishing’s site—Six Fundamental Shifts in the Way We Work by John Hagel III and John Seeley Brown—summarizes some interesting trends from…
Another great Newsweek column from Sharon Begley, The Limits of Reason—Why evolution may favor irrationality, describes a phenomenon of human error that brings to mind Chris Argyris’ Ladder…
I like to talk about the Fundamental Attribution Error, because after you explain what it means, everyone has a good story. Take the workshop I taught this week,…
I love Sharon Begley, Newsweek’s science columnist, because she makes me realize I had a false notion in school: that I hated, or at least could not get…
I just read one of the best articles I’ve ever come across on interpersonal communication and particularly on the sources of misunderstanding: How to Avoid (and Quickly Recover…
Of all the wonderful self discovery assessments and tools out there, my personal favorite is the one I’ll call Interpersonal Styles. I first came across it in the…
Recently I wrote a blog post called Overcoming objections to alternative work arrangements. A reader named Sharon made some interesting additional points about why telecommuting causes heartburn for…
If there’s one thing all customer service workshops have in common, in my experience, it’s the big picture stuff: why customer service is important, the costs and benefits,…
It seems that in every management training session I do lately, the same issue comes up: we’re being forced to do this flex time and telecommuting stuff and…
I’m driving a 26-foot truck from Colorado to New Hampshire this week with my friend Allison. I’ve never driven a truck this big before. At first I approached…
A recent article in Harvard Business blogs (Why We Shouldn’t Hate HR by Bill Taylor) commemorates the 5th anniversary of the infamous 2005 Fast Company article Why We…
In an article on the Harvard Business Publishing site, Trina Soske and Jay A. Conger argue that leadership development programs fail for two reasons: 1. They focus on…
Years ago, after a period of intense reflection, I realized something about myself. When I looked back at the less successful ventures in my life, nearly all of…
In a recent article by Susan Cantrell and David Smith, How the recession has changed the face of talent management–for the good, the authors argue that tight budgets…
Recently I began a grant writing project to help raise funds for a local emergency services purchase. The process got me thinking, what if every organization had to…
If you want to get inspired to change your life for the better, read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. That’s assuming you haven’t already read this much-talked-about…
During a teambuilding session this week, I led a leadership team in an exercise to identify style. I asked them each to work in groups to identify three…
Harvard Business’ tip of the day this morning was to put culture before strategy in a turnaround. “To right an organization headed for trouble, you need to build…
For Mother’s Day this year, my mother and I had our traditional seafood dinner at her house, with fresh lobster and clam steamers. What was different this year…
When I teach a business writing course, my favorite part of the class is when I get to rail against “corporatese,” that pompous, inflated and indecipherable language that…
I drove across country last week and listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on the way, my second read of this fascinating book. If you haven’t read it yourself, the…
Every diversity trainer I know presents some version of “dimensions of diversity” during an awareness class. That means they show some kind of list of diversity dimensions that…
Generally I update this blog twice a week; at the beginning of the week and at the end. This morning I sat for the longest time trying to…
The “E” word is empathy; apparently a dirty word in the world of justice. Dalia Lithwick, in a recent Newsweek column called Steven’s Real Legacy, decries the demonizing of…