What We Watch Influences How We Communicate

Wow, Friday was the busiest day this blog has had.  Forty-one visitors!  Thanks to all of you for stopping by.  Seeing the stats was a great way to start the week this morning.  Tell all your friends, and feel free to leave comments.
Let me get back to something I said on Friday.  I talked about [...]

Contested Control

I’ve posted before about connections between what we watch and how we communicate at work.  One of the themes from The Office is that a workplace is a place of contested control.  That is, the show presents its workplace as a place where employees are constantly vying for control and turf.  Is your workplace like [...]

Providing Good Feedback

Clampitt (2005) suggests that effective managers provide good feedback to their employees.  Sounds easy right?  But I would guess that most employees don’t feel that their supervisors do that well.  How do you give good feedback?  First, make sure that employees know their responsibilities and the standards by which they will be evaluated.  Second, don’t [...]

Encouraging Innovations

How do you encourage employees to be innovative?  How do you foster that innovative spirit?  A chapter in one of the books that I use in a class I teach talks about several steps (Clampitt, 2005).  First, educate employees about the importance of innovation.  Second, develop policies that encourage innovations.  Third, try to eliminate the [...]

Forgiveness and Work

Is your business a “Dog Eat Dog” world?  Is communication in your workplace typically a competition where only one person wins and everyone else has to lose?  Unfortunately, that’s all too common.  I’m going to say something that some of you may think is very un-business-like.  Forgive others.  No, it’s not a Sunday sermon on [...]

Decision-making, Dialogue, and Dissent

If you are someone in an organization that is charged with decision-making, how do you make decisions?  Do you make the decision yourself and tell others how things are going to be done?  Do you have a discussion with others before making the final decision?  Do you let others have the opportunity to give open [...]

Hierarchies and Relationships

Many thanks to those who helped me solve the formatting issue from last week.  I think I have fixed the problem (but let me know if you find it again).
I was reading a book last week that talked about what it meant to be in trusting relationship with someone.  The book contrasted that with hierarchy.  [...]

A Reminder about Person-Centered Messages

First, a service announcement: Typically, I use FireFox to work on this blog.  The other day, I was on Internet Explorer and noticed some formatting issues as I was viewing a post.  If you use IE and notice problems on this post, please comment so that I know it is a problem that affects others’ [...]

How to Get What You Want

All Things Workplace had a great post about how to influence others. It’s all about cooperation. Think about that for a minute because that’s different from the ways that we normally think about influencing others. How can you work with this person to get what you both want, rather than working against each other? Normally, [...]

Be Yourself

I really appreciate this brief, but pointed post.  Too often we try to be something we are not.