Customers complain. It’s a fact of business life. Sometimes they have a valid complaint, but often they’re just cranky, having a bad day, or upset because they can’t find what they’re looking for. Whatever has set them off, they are likely to take it out on an employee. But if you are hearing a lot of complaints, especially if they are not targeting a single employee, they’re telling you something…
“Bring your team together with these team shirts.” The commercial showed groups of happy, smiling people, all wearing the same shirts with the company logo. The narrator explained that teams would be more productive when they wore the same clothes because they would feel more like a real team. Nice thought and I hope they sell lots of t-shirts emblazoned with company logos. But that will not cause a more…
Introvert or extrovert. Most psychological tests apply this label and in popular definitions, extroverts are seen as outgoing, fun-loving, and gregarious. Introverts are seen as inward-focused, quiet, and maybe even standoffish. The Daedalus Group uses the My HardWired™ Leadership Styles Assessment and like most such instruments, it identifies introversion and extroversion. While this is a legitimate identification, it sometimes leaves people, especially those identified as introverted, with a feeling that…
Most of the graduation ceremonies and celebrations are over now. Young people, and some not so young, have rightly celebrated great achievements and are now looking forward to the start of the next phase of their lives. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of speakers have taken to stages around the nation to provide motivational comments about the graduate’s futures. Now that the caps and gowns are put away and the party venues…
In a recent leadership workshop, we had deep discussion about diversity. Participants were looking for answers to an issue leaders face that seems to have no good answer. The conversation centered on two questions: how should a leader view diversity and why does this seem to be such an explosive and often no-win situation? That’s a difficult subject and even such a discussion can be fraught with danger. But it…
