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Employee Relations

Dealing with Toxic Team Members

In workshop discussions concerning conflict management, inevitably the subject of dealing with “toxic” individuals comes up. I maintain that if you have toxic individuals on your team, you normally don’t have a conflict problem, you have a values problem. We’ve talked about workplace culture before but, in my experience, few… Read More »Dealing with Toxic Team Members

I Want to be on That Team

Employee engagement is a concept that gets a lot of press these days. Leaders wring their hands about low levels of engagement and experts offer all kinds of actions and formulas that will fix the problem. All that angst isn’t really necessary, as engagement is a pretty simple concept. Few… Read More »I Want to be on That Team

Stuck in a toxic work culture? Three thoughts on what to do.

Our leadership students come from many different companies.  Most come from companies with great cultures that take an active interest in their employees and develop them into engaged individuals with a vested interest in organizational success. Others…not so much.  I’ve had a number of students who, unfortunately, worked in environments… Read More »Stuck in a toxic work culture? Three thoughts on what to do.

That cold shoulder just might be feedback…Are you listening?

Your teenage daughter walks in to the house after school looking sullen and without her characteristic after school greeting. You ask, “How was school?”  “Fine” is the answer. But a few seconds later the slam of a bedroom door indicates to you that everything, indeed, is not fine.  The silent treatment continues into dinner despite your efforts to find out what the problem is. Thank goodness at work you get to deal with mature adults where nothing like this ever happens, right? Right.

You’ve noticed that Bill, one of your team members, isn’t his usual self. In fact, it seems like he is being downright rude. He’s doing the work, mostly, but he’s not being as punctual and you are finding more than the usual number of errors in his stuff. He also has been kind of sarcastic in meetings. Not to the point of open insubordination, but still, it’s getting annoying. You finally ask, “Bill, everything OK?” “It’s fine.” Sound familiar?Read More »That cold shoulder just might be feedback…Are you listening?

How to be an Assertive Leader

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In a recent interview on CNBC, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo talked about a meeting with Steve Jobs where Jobs told her “If you really feel strongly about something — if you don’t like something people are doing — throw a temper tantrum. Throw things around, because people have got… Read More »How to be an Assertive Leader