5 Ways Listening Like an Anthropologist Will Make You a Better Leader
When I was in grad school, there were clearly two camps (and they didn’t respect each other all that much): The scientests out to prove their hypotheses through experimentation, control groups, and statistical analysis, and the qualitative researchers who showed...
7 Ways to Create a Listening Culture
If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly make every employee in your organization proficient in one behavior what would that be? Critical thinking? Customer-orientation? Sales? What about listening? What if you had a listening culture where everyone truly stopped...
Leaders Stand in the Gap of Uncertainty to Help Others Across
Far too many of us can also relate to working for managers who wielded their title and position authority as their only levers for leading. These managers caused me to question the likelihood of my contributing anything of value to the corporate mission. To hear their...
How to Become the Best ___________
One of my millennial friends, Vince, recently posted this on Facebook. “I may not be the best organist, and yes, I play it like a piano. But I am determined to learn the Tocatta part of Tocatta and Fugue in D minor down for Saturday for a tour group I am playing...
How to Succeed With Limited Resources
You don’t have enough time, enough resources, or budget– or maybe you lack all three. You may be surprised to know that’s exactly what stacks the odds of success in your favor. According to research psychologist Adam Grant, increasing resources...
How to Stop Drama Queens and Chronic Complainers From Destroying Your Team
I often start my speeches on employee engagement sharing prototypes of various kinds of disengagement. The favorite is always Barbara Boatrocker– “her life feels like a sad country song, every little thing is wrong”– for the appropriate...
Why Job Descriptions are a Dying Art
A client called. “Karin, I’m going to send you the job description for the new role we designed, but ignore all the HR mumbo jumbo. Just concentrate on the competencies and see if they seem right to you based on the strategy we’ve been working...
Why to Be Overconfident (every now and then)
There’s a name for people who are over-confident all the time. And it’s not good. But every now and then, the situation calls for a quick response of “I know exactly what to do, follow me.” Over-confident Lessons from the Port-o-Pot The outdoor...
