Two things are happening simultaneously in our organizational cultures, our markets, and our personal lives. We have established non-curiosity (“I don’t care how it works, I just want it to work”) as the new standard for engaging with the work, the ideas that interest us (or not) and the world Read more…
If work isn’t ‘driving your bus,’ then what exactly is motivating you to act with purpose in a world where emotional labor matters more now than ever before.
When the answer to the question is “Nobody,” we’ve got to reexamine what the inherent messages are in the funnel of school to work. When the answer to the question is “I already work hard enough,” we’ve got to redefine the term “hard” away from breaking concrete in the sun Read more…
Caring costs. It costs to be empathetic to your employees’ emotional needs. It costs to be mindful of the non-verbal messages you’re role modeling. It costs to be engaged all the time in the active act of actively listening. It costs to develop connections that gain you nothing in the Read more…
The work is rarely the most entertaining or compelling, thing. The result of the work is a lot more compelling—good, bad, ugly, or indifferent. The process is rarely envied. The result of the work—the sausage, such as it were—is delicious on the plate, and worthy of being enjoyed. And sometimes, Read more…
What are you paid to do? What do you believe you are paid to do? What does your employer tell you that you are paid to do? What does your spouse believe that you are paid to do? What does your family believe that you are paid to do? What Read more…
Taking a holiday from conflict—either from managing them or resolving them—is something too many of us are engaged in too regularly. A holiday is supposed to be a break and a time of renewal, yes, but it is also to be a time of mindfulness, refocusing, reframing, and rededicating ourselves, Read more…
There is a lot of mental infrastructure from the Industrial Revolution still laying around. And most of that infrastructure can be seen on display in organizations: Employees who are at the bottom of an organizational chart, believing that they are the foundation on which the organization rests, yet feeling as Read more…
The skills required to facilitate training for an audience with content that wasn’t developed by the facilitator, are the same skills sale people practice every day: Persuasion: Since a facilitator doesn’t create the presentation content (or product) they are facilitating (just like the sales person doesn’t create the product they Read more…
Access to the means of production in an increasingly computerized global economy is THE social justice issue of our time if indeed the computers ate—and will continue to eat—all of our jobs. There is an issue with the fact that rural areas in the United States (and worldwide) have limited Read more…