Posts

Productive Communication Works!

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A woman who had been waiting for an executive in another department to make a budget decision finally stopped waiting and… communicated productively. Good work, Kelly!

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Why We Don’t Put Deadlines into Our Requests  

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Is it pushy to ask for what you want? Not if you’re pleasant about it. In fact, you might be doing them a service.

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The Hard Work of Making Good Requests: Part II 

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The first rule for getting what you want is to Pay Attention to spelling out exactly what you want. Then make a request for it.

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The Hard Work of Making Good Requests: Part I

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Help people give you what you really want by making complete requests that use all 6 “journalist questions”.

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Attitude Can Cause Blindness and Ignorance

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  After years of saying that a consultant’s job is not to change people’s attitudes, I might need to eat my words. Here’s what I learned from reviewing a Harvard Business Review case: a bad attitude can blind an employee – even a good one – from seeing who to communicate with and who needs […]

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Unreasonable Request Saves the Class

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If you find yourself in a difficult position, make an unreasonable request – you might be surprised by the result. On Friday, April 13 Jeffrey received an unreasonable request from a colleague at Benedictine University. He asked if Jeffrey would come to Benedictine and teach an Executive Ph.D. course on organization change the following Wednesday, […]

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To Be More Effective, Give Your Boss a Deadline

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One way to effectively manage a boss is to give her a deadline when she doesn’t give you one. One of the complaints I frequently get from managers in my MBA classes is that their bosses rarely say by when they want something done.  Bosses say things like “when you get a chance”, “this week”, […]

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To Keep Sponsors, Keep the Agreement

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To keep the support of their sponsors, black belts and other specialists will do well to manage the agreements they have with sponsors. The director of a lean management program recently approached me with a problem he was having with program sponsors prohibiting students from implementing their lean projects at work.  According to the director, […]

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Be Zealous About Keeping Agreements

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Effective performance conversations depend on people keeping their agreements and doing what they said they would do.  Encourage people to respect the idea that keeping agreements matters. Keeping agreements is the foundation for effective performance conversations.  Every time we say Yes to a request, we have created an agreement with someone.  It might be as […]

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Good Promises Convert Expectations into Agreements

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Don’t risk being held to account for things you don’t know about. Take the time to find out what people really expect you to do, and what they expect you to deliver.  If they don’t tell you, ask.  It’s part of getting and giving a good promise and is key to effective performance conversations. I […]

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