03 March 2010 ~ 11 Comments

25 Free Leadership Development Resources

As part of my gig as a guest on the HR Happy Hour’s Leadership Show , I agreed to pull together some leadership resources for the Happy Hour listeners.  When I talk with clients about leadership development, they often say one or both of the following:
a)      We don’t have the time to develop something
b)      We [...]

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09 February 2010 ~ 3 Comments

Office Politics: It’s Personal

Our 5-part series on positive office politics, (The P Quotient) is drawing to a close.  In this final installment, Jane Perdue looks at personal influence, one of four key behaviors needed for a person to be considered politically savvy in a productive way.  
Just tuning in to this fascinating topic?  Start here for the first [...]

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04 February 2010 ~ 2 Comments

Do You Trust Your Agenda?

As part of an ongoing blog series on Positive Office Politics  (follow #OPQ on Twitter), Susan Mazza asks “What’s Your Agenda?” In this blog post, she explores personal motivations and how they show up in the workplace.  She says:
We ALL have agendas. You could say our ambitions, no matter how altruistic or noble they may be, [...]

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26 January 2010 ~ 3 Comments

Stepping Into the Abyss

It’s great when a fellow blogger inspires me to get revved up on a topic. And so it is with Mary Jo Asmus’ series on the role that employees should play in helping their leaders improve.  Last week, in response to her post “Bad Manager or Flawed Human?” the discussion on her blog was lively.  [...]

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21 January 2010 ~ 7 Comments

Thank Your Mentor Today

Today is Thank Your Mentor Day, which is part of National Mentoring Month.  Who knew?  Over the years I’ve had LOTS of fantastic mentors, and this is a perfect time to give them a well-deserved shout-out. The list below represents my former work team leaders, company executives, peers and fellow entrepreneurs. Interestingly, none of them [...]

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03 December 2009 ~ 4 Comments

The Ambiguity Factor

When was the last time you heard an employee say “Wow, the implementation of that new program (system/process/idea) was smooth!” My guess is you’ve rarely (perhaps never?) heard that.  There are oodles of reasons why the launch of a new system goes awry— competing values, unclear objectives, unrealistic deadlines, budget constraints and so on. 
Here’s another [...]

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06 November 2009 ~ 11 Comments

Praising Mastery

I’m reading the book The Power of Respect by Deborah Norville.  She cites a very interesting study from the journal Motivation and Emotion. In this study, a group of researchers from Reed College in Oregon studied whether one form of praise was more effective than another.  The researchers used two different types of praise: “mastery”, [...]

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01 October 2009 ~ 1 Comment

Not Everyone’s a Critic

Not everyone’s a critic, but some days it sure feels like it. 
Case in point: in my community this year some very enterprising philanthropists organized a fantastic event called ArtPrize. The event opened September 23, 2009. In essence, it’s an art competition with an “open source” feel.  Artists from anywhere in the world are eligible to [...]

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20 September 2009 ~ 2 Comments

The Language of Frailty

Words fascinate me.  Walking into a book store jazzes me the way some people invest emotionally in sports or music. From my first published work at age 13 (op-ed piece in our local newspaper) to being a Spanish major in college, to conducting Communications Skills workshops for employees, language has always been more than just [...]

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18 September 2009 ~ 4 Comments

Bully on the Track Field

So I’m reading Bret Simmons’ post When the Bully Boss is Female . . .
There’s a slight whooshing sound in my brain and all of a sudden time sort of shifts.  It’s the 1970’s and I’m in 8th grade.  A new family has moved from Chicago to our tiny farming community in Michigan.  They have [...]

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