How to Deal With a “Do-It-My-Way” Person

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Ever have someone try to tell you the Right Way to do something when you’ve already made up your mind what to do? A few ideas on how to end those conversations, and maybe prevent their arising again.

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What You Want & By When: Managers, Leaders, and Schedules

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One manager in a recent MBA class was provoked by a discussion about the importance of using schedules, and offered her opinion on the difference between leaders and managers. “I want to be a leader,” she said, “not a manager. What does scheduling have to do with leadership?” Good question, actually. We were talking about […]

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Micromanagement: Story #1

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A friend of mine is an accountant for a yoga-fitness studio, and last week he told me his studio owner is a “micro-manager”. I asked him what he meant – here’s what he said: “Patty is our studio owner who sometimes drops in on a yoga class, and if she thinks a student is doing a pose incorrectly, she will interrupt […]

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Where Accountability Comes From – How to Support People in Honoring Their Word

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Here’s how to help other people learn to keep their word with you. Please do it! It’s a service to everyone in their lives, not just you.

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A Recipe for Little Changes – Organizational and Personal

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Five steps to change the way things will be done – in the office and at home – by reducing resistance from others and including their best ideas.

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Email Template from a Friend

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I was talking with a former client the other day about her recipe for getting what she wants from co-workers. It’s pretty smart! Jadie was making requests, and she was tracking the responses the way Jeffrey taught her in his MBA class. Her success rate (the % of her requests for which she received actionable […]

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Not Everybody’s Interested

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I used to think everyone wanted to know more about “productive communication”. People are only interested in productive communication in the areas of life where they have some commitment. That seems obvious now, but I didn’t always know how to find out about people’s commitments. Here’s my latest method: look at how long it takes them […]

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My Sloppy Request was Not Very Productive

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Here’s a failure in what I thought was a productive conversation. I’m thinking I’ll have to train everyone I interact with about the Four Conversations. Starting with myself. I told a person from the (radioactive) Waste Management Symposia – an annual conference where I participate and speak – that I was going to Saskatchewan to […]

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Make Counteroffers When Necessary

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When given a deadline you know you really cannot meet, propose an alternative you can meet – that’s called making a counteroffer. If you don’t counteroffer when you know something cannot be done, you’re setting up yourself and others for failure. What do you do when someone asks you to do something you know you […]

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