Performance Conversation – Requests and Promises for Agreements

This is from Laurie, even though it says the author is Jeffrey. I see why performance conversations are such a confront: saying publicly what I’ll do and by when would be fine if I was sure nobody was listening! So, I have created a timeline for getting my “management is missing” summaries – including solutions […]

Understanding Conversation – Clarifying Ideas and Roles

I took my ideas about an online conversation for “Management is Missing” into several meetings over coffee and lunch in the past 10 days. I had lunch with a man who develops websites: he liked the Performance Circle idea, and we sketched out some thoughts on how to have the kind of interactive discussion I’m […]

Leadership Credibility Depends on Closure

Credibility is a key element in effective leadership and depends on the effective use of closure conversations.  Most people realize that credibility is built by telling the truth.  But credibility is also built by doing what you said you would do by when you said you would do it and when you don’t, acknowledging the […]

Understanding the End Game

My daughter and I recently visited my mother at her home in Kentucky.  My mother is 89 (will be 90 early next year) and is concerned about who will “pay her bills” (take care of her) in the remaining years of her life.  It was an invitation for an understanding conversation, which my daughter and […]

Closure Conversations Repair Relationships

Good working relationships are essential to getting work done and to a satisfying work place.  But what can we do when relationships turn sour?  You could have a closure conversation with the person. One of the managers in my Mastery in Execution class had a very poor working relationship with a woman at work and […]

Increasing My Accountability

A manager in my Leading and Managing Change course approached me after class with the following issue: “There are things at work I should be accountable for and I am not.  I think I should be accountable because they are in my area, but my boss doesn’t hold me accountable for them.  Do you have […]

New Initiative – Identify my Performance Circle

I led a program recently for project managers and saw their biggest challenge is that most people don’t see the “bigger picture” when they are at work on a project – or any work assignment, for that matter. Most of us tend to focus on what’s in front of us (the desktop, both computer and […]

Closure Conversation Helps Get Job

Closure conversations can be used at anytime, they don’t have to be used only at the end of a project or an accomplishment.  Jason, a hospital administrator in a Columbus hospital, used a closure conversation at the beginning of his interviews for a new job at a different hospital to reduce anxiety and address an […]

Closure Conversation Saves Dog and Home

Closure conversations are one of the most powerful conversations you can use.  I want to share an email from a former MBA student that illustrates just what impact a closure conversation can have.  She writes: Professor Ford, I had to write to you and let you know I had the most incredible closure conversation today.  […]

Did You Ask?

The June 12th Dilbert comic strip (below) gives a good example of the difference between an understanding conversation and a performance conversation.  Dilbert, probably like many of us, assumes that explaining what is needed to someone who’s job it is to do it should be sufficient to get it accomplished.  He is wrong.  If you […]