Here’s another survey result. This one tied for 5th place on the list of Biggest People-Problems at Work: “Dealing with difficult personalities and behaviors.” Comments went on to describe examples such as “unfriendly people”, “passive-aggressive people”, and “people playing power games”. One person explained, “Nobody wants to work with some people because they don’t like […]
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 […]
Give closure conversations a try – they can remove speed-bumps in everything from personal relationships to organizational change initiatives. Believe me: I have a million stories on this. Here’s one. I went to a not-so-great educational program this past summer. The fairly small audience – about 35 people – was made up of some people who were on […]
I did a survey in one organization. The two places most managers wanted performance improvements were (1) communication, and (2) accountability. OK, no surprise there. Better communication and more accountability would make a manager’s life easier, right? But 6 months later, guess what they hated most… Communication about accountability. Dave, a mid-level manager, said on the comments […]
People are mad that Elaine avoids work – and sick of her “good excuses”. There are two different views about what their manager, Beth, should do: She should meet with Elaine at the start and end of every day to check on whether she’s doing her assignments or not. She should give assignments to everyone […]
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 […]
There is one last piece to the motivation story. It’s about what happens when people agree to do something by a certain time, then don’t do it and don’t let you know in advance that they aren’t going to be able to do it. These people have learned – from their parents, teachers, and bosses […]
Now you know: motivation is really only about having people take action and produce results, with a commitment to honoring their word to you. It’s not about getting people to “feel” a certain way so they’ll like you enough to do something. And it’s not about your own personality or charisma somehow inspiring them to […]
We have found that ALL attempts at motivation involve either Understanding Conversations or Performance Conversations, or some combination of the two. When you think about it, that’s really remarkable. No matter what you are trying to get done, or whom you are trying to get to do it, every single attempt at motivation we have […]
This will be a multi-part post about “motivation”, i.e., getting people into action. Here’s the starting point: What does it take to get people to do what needs to be done? How do you get people into action? Why are people not doing what they are assigned? We often get these questions from managers who […]
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