As a leader, at some point, you are going to have to tell employees or coworkers something they don't want to hear. Sharing bad news is hard on you, but it's much harder on the people who have to hear it. So stifle your discomfort and follow this advice from the good folks at GetVoip.com when you have to break bad news. You can also find more infographics at Visualistan … [Read more...]
Negative Vs. Positive Leadership (and Why You Should Choose the Latter)
If you're a leader, best-selling author Jon Gordon wants you to take this message to heart: Spreading negative energy solves nothing. In fact, it causes people to shut down. Morale suffers, employees disengage, productivity takes a hit, and profits fall. "It's easy to get upset and derailed by anger when things go wrong, but then the issue gets lost because you mismanaged … [Read more...]
Your Power of Choice in Conflict Resolution
In many cases, the path from conflict to resolution is like traveling down a dirt road in the country. It’s a little rough. Dirt might get in your eyes so that you don’t see clearly what lies ahead. You have to go more slowly than you do in other situations. Once you are on the road, you have to keep going. It is too narrow to turn around and go back the other way. At … [Read more...]
The 5 Ways People Respond to Conflict (and Why You Should Care)
In my work with clients of all kinds, I have noticed five basic types of people when it comes to responding to conflict. Admittedly, I did not come up with these categories from a sophisticated and comprehensive statistical analysis. They are, however, built on my observations from working with many people and talking about their approaches to conflict and then observing the … [Read more...]
Trust Takes 2 Forms—Here’s How to Foster Both in the Workplace
By Guy Harris The word "trust" has many layers of meaning. While most of us have similar general perspectives about what it means to trust another person, there are some subtle differences in how we view this simple word. The words I often use to describe the two sides of trust are transactional trust and relational trust: Transactional trust refers to the trust we … [Read more...]
How to Have Difficult Conversations Successfully
There are a lot of challenging situations that new leaders face and the one that we get the most questions about is this: how do I have have a tough conversation without damaging the relationship? It's a sticky situation, and in today's video we're providing some easy and actionable tips for making this task just a little bit … [Read more...]
A Smart Approach to Reduce Change Resistance and Gain Buy-In
If you lead others, you're in the change business, and that means you will face your fair share of resistance. People will reject your ideas, fight the direction you want to go, disregard your expectations for new behaviors and more. Dealing with resistance is a normal part of leadership. When you initiate change that involves other people, they will inevitably ask: “What’s … [Read more...]
Effectively Manage Your Bully Employee
We've all heard of bully bosses, and hopefully, you strive not to be one. But what should you do when you have an employee who bullies coworkers and even you. The person might lose his or her temper, make hateful or hurtful jokes, or use aggressive tactics to force others do as he or she says. Don't let it go unchecked or you could damage team morale and productivity. … [Read more...]
The First Thing You Must Do During Emotional Conversations
You likely can relate to this scenario that often comes to my mind when I think about communication ... I was working through an issue with a coworker who was distressed over problems with a process that affected us both. I helped to create the process and had the authority to change it. Plus, I had enough knowledge of the process to troubleshoot and fix a fair number of … [Read more...]
When An Employee Says “I’m Too Busy”
New leaders in particular deal with more change resistance (and resistance in general) from their employees. Bitter coworkers who were overlooked for the promotion dig in their heels and make life hard for new managers. Some just want to take advantage of the new guy or gal. Others want to see how far they can push you. That sort of behavior, as juvenile as it is, can … [Read more...]