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But we are proud to say that Laurie Ford contributed 235 entries already.
That’s what a friend, Earl, said to me two months ago: “I can retire in 1 year and 1 ½ months.” I could tell this wasn’t a simple fact for him, because it was accompanied by a sad face and a sigh of defeat. This guy can’t wait to leave his job behind. We talked […]
The understanding conversation is the one that some senior-level managers and executives dislike. A VP in a financial firm once asked me, “Why should I ask people who work for me to give me input on a plan? Won’t they think I don’t know what I’m doing?” The difficulty is that it is a dialogue, […]
“I wish I could fire this guy,” Evan told me. “I ask him to do something – I’m very specific – and then he doesn’t do it. I asked him to finish that survey and bring it back to me. I get nothing. Is he lazy? Or is he stupid?” I asked Evan to tell […]
I’ve heard two complaints recently that seem to come from the same root cause: reluctance to make a request. #1. A technical specialist– let’s call her Sara – tells me that both she and her Supervisor agree that the Senior Manager of their department is a jerk. This Senior Manager makes decisions without consulting the […]
One of the Four Conversations that get results is a Closure Conversation. There are four ways to have a Closure Conversation, but the second type of Closure Conversation can be especially costly if neglected: Appreciate the people who are working on a project or goal, recognizing what they have accomplished and/or contributed and saying why […]
Shawna has been a senior manager in a state government agency for years, and confessed that the people in her department seem to ignore many of their assignments and her requests for them to produce results. “In fact, it seems like they don’t even hear me.” She was right: they weren’t listening. “They don’t take […]
The instructor explained that a “Closure Conversation” is when you talk with someone to complete what happened in the past. “Just because you don’t like someone is no reason to be ineffective with them,” he said. “It’s like erasing a blackboard – you take all the old issues out of play and make room in […]
Two people this week have complained to me about someone else’s failure to do something. One was Dan, a mid-level manager, who felt that another mid-level manager should have informed him of a decision she made. “She should have known it would create problems for our service team”, he said. “Why didn’t she call me to […]
Paula Deen, the celebrity chef and cooking show host, continues to have problems because her attempts at apologizing for making racial slurs are really not apologies – they are explanations, denials, and justifications. This is evident in her recent interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. Apologies are closure conversations in which one admits […]
Kristen Piombino reports that subscribers to the Harvard Business Review rated the ability to communicate “the most important fact in making an executive promotable.” They even ranked in more important than ambition, education, and hard work. But what exactly does the “ability to communicate” mean? We have found that most people believe they are communicating, […]
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