Rachel has created quite a stir – after reporting herself to be a black woman, her parents, both white, publicly demanded she tell “the truth”. Now they want her to apologize for lying. It appears that other untruths are suspected on Rachel’s part – the story is so interesting that reporters are digging up her whole […]
Last night was the final class on “Leadership and Implementing Change”, and graduate students reported the most valuable things they learned. Their #1 tip – Make agreements, track agreements, and follow up on agreements. Each student had done a semester-long project to define and implement a change in their workplace, applying the latest class lessons […]
The US election season is now underway. That means there will be 18 months of complaining about the candidates, then we can switch back to our usual complaints about the weather, TV programming, and people who eat pizza with a fork. Those are all examples of “uncommitted complaints”, because we usually are not going to […]
I just looked up “management communication” to see how it is described in the world today. I’m a woman with an undergrad degree in Psychology, and two grad degrees in Engineering, and I admit to being horrified. The American Management Association has a communication training on “Getting Results Without Authority”, subtitled “How do you influence […]
So the Manager says, “My people aren’t accountable”. And the Staff People say, “People who do poor quality work are not held to account for improving it.” I know this because I’m doing a survey about what managers and staff say about their workplace. It’s the same workplace, but two very different perspectives. The difference […]
We deliver management communication programs in all kinds of organizations, but sometimes we get to see how the basic principles work in our personal lives too. We have a friend, I’ll call her Celia, who attended one of those programs, and sent an email saying: “Hey! This stuff works at home too!” Celia said she […]
We just returned from a long weekend in New York City – lots of walking, much of it on crowded sidewalks – and almost zero police presence. Usually they’re everywhere, providing the reassurance that someone is watching out for us all, natives and tourists alike. Not this weekend. The NYPD Blues need a closure conversation. […]
In my year-end cleanup of Stuff and Promises, I have been getting rid of stuff (Goodwill, Salvation Army, food bank, etc.) and closing out promises made. The stuff is easier to clean up than promises, because promises disappear unless they are recorded somewhere. But really, all I have to do to find broken promises is […]
“Don’t people know that they need to respond to their emails? Don’t they check their phone messages? They either have no manners or zero common sense!” That was the exasperated holler from a miserable manager with a serious project and a team of people who truly believe they are “too busy” to communicate. In fact, […]
You know that person who says they will do something and then doesn’t do it? The one who says he’ll be at your place at 10:00, then shows up 15 minutes – or an hour – late. Or the one who says she’ll email you that document as soon as she gets back to the […]
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