Posts Tagged ‘Coaching’
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Jerk at team meeting
Here’s the situation. It was just told to me this morning, you have a team project due in one week. One of the team members is always making jokes at the expense of two other colleagues. Everyone feels the stress, not the humor.
The jokes are really dumb, and some are dicey, just on the edge of poor judgment. No one laughs, problem is no one stops the “jerk from joking” (those were the words that were said to me). One of the newest members of the team walked away saying he would not continue with this poor quality of cooperation.
What do you do to help handle the conflict?
Let me know. I am ready to give a half hour free coaching call as well as a copy of my book “Don’t Bring It to Work“. By the way, did I let you know the book has won a best business book of 2010 from Nautilus Awards that was judged by publishers, professors, and writers.
The three best answers will also be put on this blog next week. So, think it through. I will also give you my ideas (you go first!).
Thanks for reading my blog, it means a lot to me.
Tags: Coaching, Conflict, Consulting, Cooperation, Free, Meeting, Situation
Posted in Communication, Conflict | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
I was doing some research about the environment. My mind went to Henry David Thoreau and how he was a “gadfly” to keep people connected to nature. He was a searcher for the truth and knew that our inner nature is connected with outer nature.
His life, his writing, was about seeking the deeper meaning, of everything. We have become such a “sound bite” nation any idea that takes more than five words to express is ignored.
Maybe we do need to stop, during these summer months and be quiet in nature’s bounty. Sit with the tress and flowers, sit with the sand and water, sit with the stars at night, and just sit. It was in this quiet that Thoreau wrote “Walden“.
What does this have to do with work you are wondering; nothing and everything?
We are living in such a polluted world and it is not just the physical chemicals, the oil, and the trash that is bearing down on us. We are also burdened with workplace conflict that seems to get worse and worse all the time.
With my coaching clients I am hearing more and more disaffection that co-workers have with each other. With all the team building programs, all the pizza parties, all the community days set aside, there is still an edge of tension in most work environments.
This emotional pollution is causing untold stress and it tumbles from home to work to little league. What can be done?
The idea of being an office environmentalist came to me as I was researching information about Thoreau. He died at the young age of 44 and left a legacy for others, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King to look at what I am calling emotional pollution and take a stand.
We are spending way too much time yelling at company officers who have done poor jobs, not just BP, check out the poor quality cement work of Halliburton in the Gulf as another example.
It’s not about how bad “they” are. What about our personal responsibilities for maintaining our beautiful planet, for being kind and civil to each other at work, in our communities?
This Thoreau quote stayed with me, I offer it to you “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
Take some quiet time this summer and think about how you can help get to the root.
Tags: Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Environment, Gadfly, Henry David Thoreau, Nature, Reflections, Silence, Sylvia Lafair, Truthteller, Workplace Conflict
Posted in Accountability, Boss, Business, Character, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Consulting, Decision Making, Executive Teams, Honor, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Media, Nature, PatternAware, Patterns, Reflections, Relationships, The Country Place, Transformation, Workplace Relationships, leadership development, motivation | No Comments »
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Being a boss is a big deal; so many plates to juggle. Hopefully you began your juggling career long before you moved into the manager or supervisor position. If not, keep throwing them in the air and practice, practice, practice.
Here are some suggestions to help you as you let go, catch, let go, catch. The worst crashes to the floor; the most contentious and difficult to manage concerns clarity.
Here is what to watch for so the plates with the whole enchilada don’t to hit the ground:
1. Political correctness is toxic. Egos, yours and others, are unfortunately often rewarded by saying what sounds good rather than what is true.
2. Confusion dissipates clarity. Make sure you talk in short, sentences that have headlines, deadlines, and real expectations attached.
3. Favoritism destroys enthusiasm. Everyone needs something from you and as long as you are fair they will feel you are taking care of them.
4. Patterns trump logic. Learn to know the specific ways your employees respond when stress is high and meet them with language they can hear.
5. Team meetings are people meetings. Always leave some time for the team to talk about what they want and need that is not part of the formal agenda; being heard is critical.
6. Performance issues do not dissolve. Everyone is waiting to see how you tackle poor performance and if you face it head on or let it slide.
7. Watch out for martyrs. They come in early, leave late, bring snacks for everyone and complain all the time. Stop the over-giving before it takes on an unhealthy life of its own.
8. Coach for success. Give private time to everyone and encourage the best that they have to offer and keep the bar high enough to push people past their comfort zone.
So, what is the main thing? Clarity and consistency are powerful tools. However, clarity wins over being consistent mainly because life has a way of throwing curve balls out there and forcing us to change the way we do things based on new circumstances.
If you hear your staff saying they are confused you must stop everything and find ways to clear up the confusion. That will make both your job easier and their ability to follow you lead much smoother.
Here is a great way to help you gain clarity and eliminate confusion. When you think to yourself “I don’t know what to do here” simply take a breath, close your eyes and open them, do this about half dozen times. Then say to yourself, “If you did know what would you do”? Listen closely to the first thing that comes into your mind, it is usually a perfect answer for the situation.
Also, use this with others. Whenever you hear those deflating words “I don’t know” have the person take a breath, blink their eyes and then ask “If you did know”. It is a way of accessing inner creativity that may seem like magic, who knows, maybe it is. In any case, it works and you can keep the juggling going and going and going!
Tags: behavior patterns, Boss, Career, Clairty, Coaching, Communication, Egos, Employees, Martyr, Patterns, Performance, Supervisor, Team Meetings, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Advice, Boss, Boss-Employee Relationship, Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Decision Making, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Management, Meetings, Patterns, Reflections, Relationships, Workplace Relationships, leadership development, motivation | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
All workplace relationships include personal stories that are often buried under the stresses and strains of getting the job done. We then never get to know each other past a quick “hello” and “see you tomorrow”. When a situation occurs that is life changing it not only changes the individual or individuals involved, it can also change the entire organizational culture. Jay Steinfeld shows us the power that rests with individuals who are willing to become self aware, explore the connection between personal and professional life, and make changes that are deep and profound. The courage to change, a core of all leadership development, is written in his words and actions.
How Empowering My Staff Powers My Business
by Jay Steinfeld, as told to Jennifer Alsever
After running two Houston window blind stores for more than a decade, Jay Steinfeld and his wife and business partner moved most of the business to the Web in 1996, founding Blinds.com, now a $50 million business and the No. 1 seller of blinds online. Yet after his wife’s death in 2002, Steinfeld underwent a personal transformation that changed how he did business.
Blinds.com CEO Jay Steinfeld
Ten years ago, I wasn’t as nice of a guy as I am now. I seldom complimented anyone. I wanted everything done my particular way, and I reamed out people when they failed, even if they did 90 percent of the job right. Then my wife Naomi died in 2002. We were married for 26 years. She was my best friend and my partner in business. Naomi’s death devastated me, but it also woke me up. At that point, both my parents had died, I had three kids to raise and I had a business to run. I realized I could not do everything alone.
A new mindset, just in time
I got counseling and poured myself into books on business and psychology. My favorites: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankel. I realized my 70 employees weren’t my servants. I worked for them. They needed to be encouraged to take risks and empowered to do their jobs.
I sought out smart, top-level people for chief operating officer, chief marketing officer and chief technology officer so I could rely on them to develop their own departments. By giving them more leeway, I had more time to think about the future of the company, and we were all free to be more creative and come up with more ideas. I wanted them to seek continual improvement and experiment without fear of failure. I owe my company’s survival to that shift.
Boosting sales through brainstorming
Our company’s sales hit $50 million this year and profit went up 17 percent. But for the past two years, the market for window blinds has been in a tailspin. Dismal new home sales means dismal blinds sales. Two large regional blinds manufacturers recently filed for bankruptcy, numerous retailers closed their doors, and the industry’s sales are again down 25 percent this year. To grow, let alone survive, we knew we had to do something. But I didn’t take it on alone like I might have a decade ago. It had to be all of us innovating and trying new ideas.
Some of the risks we took were complete flops. One crazy idea that failed miserably was advertising on dry cleaning hangers. We tested three different messages, and each was worse than the other. We tried revamping the category pages on our website, spent a lot of time asking customers what they wanted, did internal focus groups, and went live showing the new page to half of our visitors, and the existing page to the other half. We saw zero change in sales.
Solving customer problems pays off
One of easiest ways to rev up innovation was simply thinking about our customer’s problems. What might prevent someone from buying blinds online? We figured out that customers get overwhelmed by the thought of measuring and installing blinds themselves, so we made about 65 two-minute videos that explicitly show how to measure and install blinds. My daughter, Esther, our PR manager, regularly searches Twitter for tweets about installing blinds. She responds with links to our videos. So far, the web pages on our site with videos bring in about 15 percent more revenue than the ones that do not.
We also spent $150,000 and six months building a widget that helps buyers who don’t know what they want. They answer questions such as if they have kids or pets and what’s more important to them, price or blocking out light. That tool gave us another 15 percent lift to our sales.
Finding partners for profit
Letting my chief marketing officer, Daniel Cotlar, and his team run with ideas has been huge. By doing cross promotions with Flowers.com, Cooking.com and OmahaSteaks.com, they helped boost our gross margins per customer visit by 25 percent over the past two years. Someone who buys a certain amount of blinds get discounts from other companies, and vice versa. This turned out to be a really low-cost way of marketing.
My senior leadership team also drove the boat on an idea to partner with big-box retailers — an idea that for years was pretty scary. We worried that if we partnered with big-box stores, offering them technology so their online customers could buy blinds, we would create big new competitors. But whether we helped big-box stores or not, they would eventually get into the blinds business, and the bad economy was a good time to do it. We wound up striking deals with Office Depot, Linens & Things, Window World, Rugs Direct, and Overstock.com. We do all the selling, fulfillment, customer service, technology — everything. It’s been a pretty good deal for us: It’s looking like it might increase sales by 10 percent this year.
Testing, testing, testing
I could not have done this alone. Free-flowing ideas are key. Risk taking is key. It’s all about testing and retesting ideas in small ways and then continually improving them. We set 90-day goals and check in with each other every 30 days. Today, we get more done in 90 days than we did in all of last year. It’s a complete culture shift – one of clear and focused execution. I know it because when I come to work every day, our employees are energized. And we still have jobs. In fact, we’re hiring.
Sylvia’s Response:
Thanks Jay for sharing so openly. Your desire to search for meaning is powerful. The fact that it changed the way you do business is a great example of my hypothesis that we can change the world of work as we become more self aware.
In “Don’t Bring It to Work” there is a list of the 13 most common difficult behavior patterns in the workplace as well their complimentary positive opposites.
As I read about you I saw how the “persecutor” aka bully boss can morph into a visionary. Instead of pointing a finger at people that same finger can be pointed upward toward a vision of better ways to work together. That is exactly what you did. Also the super achiever in you turned into a creative collaborator. And the fruits of your personal search are being felt throughout your company.
I would classify you as an “elegant leader” and just want to acknowledge how out of the ashes of your personal tragedy there is a whole company that has benefitted.
Well done!
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Book, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Education, Family-Based Patterns, leadership development, leadership programs
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
A friend of mine, amazing man, just sold his business for a lot of money, I mean a lot of money. Everyone is happy for him. He smiles when he talks about his pot of gold, his fabulous career, yet the smiles seem somehow vacant, somehow sad.
He invited me for late morning coffee. We sat at a cornet table, far from the maddening crowd in this busy Starbucks and I heard the story under the plastic smile.
He has the money now, and he has what he never had before, the time; all that is good. However, he told me he has been haunted by memories of years gone by and he can’t get these memories out of his mind.
Let me give you the picture. This tall, handsome man is in his early 60’s. He has been healthy and vibrant. Married, divorced, remarried; two grown children, a son and a daughter and two step sons. He has a beautiful wife, beautiful city home and a beautiful vacation home in a beautiful beach community. Got the picture?
Sounds like the model of American success? On one level it is. On another it raises a major question: what do we give up to get?
That is his struggle today. He is haunted by thoughts of how much he missed watching his kids grow up, how driven he was for success. How sad he is about the times that the office became his sanctuary and everything else was on the back burner.
Not sure what he wants to do with the remaining years. His parents and grandparents lived to their late eighties so unless hit by a truck he has many good years ahead. Yet, no preparation for what to do; there is only so much golf you can play.
He asked me to officially coach him, help him find some meaning, some new kind of quality. Most of my coaching time is spent with folks requesting leadership development and executive education. This is a new and important place for me to focus; with the boomer group searching for meaning.
We will be starting a program soon that is the result of my coaching with this man; it has been named “Total Life Connections“. It is based on our highly successful “Total Leadership Connections “program. It addresses the big question of how to give back, how to make a difference, what really matters when pinnacles of success have been reached and we stand there with vacant smiles asking “Now what?”
This program will answer that quality of life question. Call or email for more details.
Tags: Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Consulting, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, programs, Transformation, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Consulting, Education, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Patterns, Reflections, Total Leaders, Workplace Relationships, leadership development | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
I found this very good blog about the Toyota fiasco. Please read and note my comments; I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Article by Steve Tobak, The Corner Office
Survival of the fittest requires conflict; that’s as true in the boardroom as it is in the wild. In that sense, conflict isn’t just a good thing, it’s a key ingredient in all great organizations. It’s the manner in which businesses test new ideas and up-coming leadership talent.
But there comes a point when otherwise healthy conflict turns toxic, even destructive. I’ve seen it happen too many times, and when it does, it can plunge a successful company into a tailspin from which it might never recover. Case in point: the leadership crisis festering inside Toyota.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal chronicled the long-standing feud between the founding Toyoda family and Toyota’s non-family leadership faction. For generations, the pendulum of Toyota’s corporate leadership has swung from one to the other. And that’s worked pretty well … until now.
Now, the warring factions have taken their long-standing feud to previously unseen heights of public, personal attacks on each other. The family faction is led by Akio Toyoda, current CEO and 53-year old grandson of the company founder. From the WSJ:
Mr. Toyoda and his allies have been saying openly that when he took the top job last year after a 15-year hiatus for the Toyoda clan, he inherited a company weakened by non-family predecessors who sacrificed quality for faster growth and fatter margins.
The problems arose when “some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit,” Mr. Toyoda said at a Beijing news conference in March. Mr. Toyoda’s opponents – former company presidents Katsuaki Watanabe and Hiroshi Okuda – have an entirely different view (also from the WSJ):
They say Toyota’s current troubles are less a quality crisis and more a management and public-relations crisis of Mr. Toyoda’s making, reflecting their longstanding warnings that he wasn’t ready to run a global corporation.
“Is Akio ducking criticism of being a beneficiary of nepotism by accusing us and trying to justify his ascendancy to the top job?” one of Mr. Watanabe’s top aides said. Hiroshi Okuda … has told at least two associates since the recalls of cars involved in sudden acceleration incidents earlier this year: “Akio needs to go.”
Asked [in 2000] about future prospects for Mr. Toyoda, then a 43-year-old general manager, Mr. Okuda said: “Nepotism just doesn’t belong in our future.” He elaborated: “Akio-class talents are rolling around all over Toyota, like so many potatoes.”
In my opinion, both parties are actually at fault for the company’s current crisis. As I said a couple of months ago in At the Heart of What’s Ailing Toyota:
Like so many big companies before, in its relentless drive to become the world’s largest auto maker, Toyota’s management took its eye off the ball. In other words, growth became its priority, while the unique aspects of its culture and operational competencies responsible for its success to this point, became secondary.
After many years of stellar leadership, last year Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company’s founder, became CEO. And while Toyota’s issues have gestated for some time before Toyoda took the reins, his spectacular mishandling of the crisis demonstrates that he wasn’t ready for the job.
Nevertheless, instead of working together to resolve critical issues facing the company, Toyota’s leadership has devolved to juvenile finger-pointing. And, if this once-great company’s leadership doesn’t get its act together, well, as I said before, “not only will its recovery be long and painful, but it may not recover at all. It happens.”
My response below:
The Toyota mess is so familiar to anyone who has spent time working with family businesses. I grew up in one and remember the tension between my father and his two brothers and then the tugging, pulling, and positioning when outsiders joined the ranks.I became a family therapist and then morphed into an executive coach with a passion for working with family firms.
I know that finger pointing is common in all companies and is compounded when the family name is being tarnished. Here is what I do know: when stress hits the hot button there is a natural tendency to revert to patterns of behavior learned in the original organization, the family, that were there for survival and security.
There is a need to create safety by blaming and judging others as a protection mechanism. I only hope that the Toyoda clan can gain some understanding of the how and the why they did not intervene to keep the brand and their name in a positive light.
Tags: Blaming, Coaching, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Family Business, Family Conflict, family patterns, Leadership, leadership development, Patterns
Posted in Accountability, Business, Character, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Decision Making, Economy, Ethics, Executive Teams, Family Business, Family Conflict, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Management, Media, Money, Patterns, Stress, Trust, Workplace Relationships, leadership development | No Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Did you ever sit in a meeting where lots of numbers were thrown around and you sat there thinking “So what”? Worse yet, did you ever sit in a meeting where the metrics were used as tools of punishment; where the leader would lower his or her voice and whoever had the poor sales quota would lower their head?
Often metrics are used to punish. Sadly, this is done in such an “objective” way that no one is told directly their performance is not up to speed, they are merely “shamed” in front of the group.
When metrics are used as a tool of discipline it does not benefit anyone. When numbers are the only aspect of business that matters it takes the mojo out of the work day. That is not to say the bottom line is unimportant, of course it is. However, that alone is a very poor motivator.
The problem, as I see it, is lack of context, lack of systems thinking. When you put all aspects of a business together including finances, business development, strategy, sales, marketing, and operations it is key to really think about the people who do and support these roles.
Metrics, matter. Metrics that cause stress and tension without putting issues and challenges in context create workforce conflict and unnecessary polarization. That is when the walls go up around individuals and silos are impenetrable. Too many teams and leaders I coach are turned off to the numbers they are presented because they feel there is emphasis on the metrics without the proper meaning.
Tags: Coaching, Discipline, Leader, Meetings, Metrics, Polarization, Stress, Tension, Workplace Conflict
Posted in Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Leaders, Metrics, Stress, Workplace Relationships | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Sometimes there is a frustrating moment when you are not sure what you see, hear, and feel is making sense to anyone but you. It is making you crazy. Are you the only one wondering what is going on in this meeting? Are you are the only one sensing the tension and disconnect?
Maybe, just maybe, it is not what is happening in the room at that exact time. Perhaps, it is a memory trace of a past event in your life, and there you are, in a sense, re-living it.
The scientific term for this is called an engram. Here is an example: You are a toddler and the family is going to the beach for the first time. Everyone is excited about flying from land-locked Oklahoma to Florida.
Your parents talk about swimming in the ocean, the warm blue water and the pretty white waves. You are old enough to know this will be special.
Then you get to the beach and it is pouring rain. You stand with your family on the motel patio and sense the upset and annoyance.
Now, fast-forward: you are a grown-up and you are taking your family to the beach. It is a sunny day and everything is working perfectly; except, you are depressed and sad. Do you feel as though you are crazy? Of course you do!
Blame it on your brain. The old trace memory from long ago has kicked in, and while it is certainly possible to shake off the upset, you wonder why it happened in the first place.
Many times we can go back and connect the dots of old memories; often we can’t. So, if your feelings are not connected to the situation of the moment, know it is an earlier pattern from the past at play.
Remember: 1. You do bring your past with you whether you want to or not.
2. Every thought and situation is recorded in your memory system.
3. Present reactions may be knee-jerk responses to the past.
So, when the guy next to you in a meeting says something that presses your buttons non-stop, ask yourself if this is from what is actually happening in the present, or does he remind you of your older, know-it-all brother who used to drive you crazy?
You can learn more about patterns by going to www.sylvialafair.com and take the pattern aware test to see what drives you to distraction.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Book, Coaching, Communication, family patterns, Family-Based Patterns, Psychology, Relationships, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Business, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Diversity, Employers, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Patterns, Psychology, Reflections, Super Achiever, Transformation, Trust | No Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Why not make Valentine’s Day into a week celebration; or a month, or a whole year? Be a leader and help position it as a daily delight, day after day.
Now, let’s talk about a rare gift that can become a Valentine phenomenon; one without an expiration date like flowers, chocolates, or dinner at a candle lit restaurant. What I’m talking about you can give and keep giving for years. It is…. drum roll please….. an insurance policy!
Yee gads, you say; nothing romantic about an insurance policy. In fact that can be somewhat depressing. They are there for accidents, floods, earthquakes, and death. Go away, I hear you mumble.
Just listen for a minute….. I’m talking about something so radical, so revolutionary in the insurance field it can only be called “love insurance” and it takes a certain type of person, a true visionary leader, to understand the power of what I am saying. If you have vision and grit, then keep reading……give the gift of pattern busting!
Huh, you say! Not very romantic! And maybe you are thinking, how does whatever the heck pattern busting is, relate to insurance? Here’s the net-net. You know it is important to eat right and exercise to keep fit. You know you need to be seen for a regular check up by your dentist and physician. Those are preventive measures for health and longevity.
So, why not also consider your emotional well being, your emotional intelligence; important at home as well as for your career. You see, when you are healthy both physically and emotionally those around you benefit. Beginning to see the “love insurance” tie in?
What we have learned from a decade of facilitating the blockbuster program “Total Leadership Connections” is that it includes a built in insurance policy. Our insurance policy has an action component; it is called the OUT TECHNIQUE.
Here’s how it works: once you learn to observe your behavior patterns, the ones that always get annoyed stares from your family or your co-workers; you can learn to stop that dreaded behavior. Life becomes easier. Then, when you understand where these patterns began and what to do about it, you have even deeper and longer lasting change. And for the home run, when you transform these patterns to the positive side…. that’s where the “love insurance” kicks in.
That’s when you, your family and those you work with see the changes, hear you differently and respond to you in new and happier ways. So, take a free quiz, and find out what patterns are keeping you from being in the best shape possible. And you can call us for a free consultation on effective ways to bust through the old behaviors; the ones that get in the way of optimum living. Take a step in the direction of getting everyone the best insurance policy on the planet. Go to www.sylvialafair.com or call us at 570 636 3858. Let’s make Valentines Day more than a time of wine and roses and chocolate.
Tags: Behavioral Patterns, Business, Coaching, Communication, Conflict, Leaders, Leadership, leadership programs, Transformation
Posted in Business, Coaching, Executive Teams, Holiday, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Management, PatternAware, Patterns, Transformation, leadership development | No Comments »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
I saw an article in The Citizen-Times.com, Ashville North Carolina that struck a cord with me. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, in promoting his book, referred to Native Americans as “injuns”.
How many times have racial slurs slipped into a talk and ignored? When do we all stop and say “No more!”? Why is there still a propensity to put down groups of people, to make them seem less than?
In my work with cultural sensitivity and diversity, I teach that it comes from a deep, dark place in individuals and in groups. It is a safety device attempting to ward off the threat of “others”. “If they are not like me, they must be a danger to me.”
This kind of thinking lives in the older parts of the social brain and has caused wars and constant disaffection among people.
“Injun”, is no different than “kike”, “spic”, “dago”, “nigger”, or “gook” - it is intended to target a person or group of people, and make them seem unimportant, insignificant. It is a method of making those who use these terms to feel powerful and in control, and makes those who once felt like victims become victimizers. This is sadly, a common psychological mechanism that needs much more exploration, not just in personal matters, of physical or sexual abuse, but also in cultural abuse.
In her article, B. Lynne Harlan, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, raises the vital question: “When are we going to hold our leaders to a higher standard”?
This is a key discussion point for all programs: Be they MBA’s, leadership development, executive education, conflict resolution, team building, corporate governance, and the like.
It is time for all of us to look at the crusted, corroded arrogance and dissention that lives in our personal psyches and begin to clean up the inner pollution that causes as much damage as the toxins caused by machines in our external environment.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Book, Coaching, Communication, Conflict, Diversity, Economy, Education, Emotions, Ethics, Executive Teams, Family-Based Patterns, Health, History, Leaders, Leadership, Media, neuropsychology, Neuroscience, Patterns, Power, Relationships, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Coaching, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Education, Ethics, Health, History, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Media, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, The media, leadership development | No Comments »
