Out of Office

This is the first week of school at my university, and I’m slammed with the typical first week adjustments and transitions.  I’ll be back with posts next week, beginning Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Some recent experiences with meetings

In preparation for school each fall, my university has a number of “retreats” for faculty.  In this context, the word “retreat” is used to refer to an all-day meeting, because “all-day meeting” sounds bad, but “retreat” sounds refreshing.  During those all-day meetings, I’ve noticed a couple of things that I thought would be relevant to [...]

Cautions about Emotional Intelligence

I had students present last semester on emotional intelligence.  I was talking with someone who guest lectures for me from time to time, and she also mentioned it.  Emotional intelligence is achieving buzzword status, but I think there is some clarification and caution that is important to consider.  First, self-awareness and knowing your own emotions [...]

Renewal

As an academic, I have a privilege that few outside of teaching enjoy.  I’m not talking about “3 months off” in the summer.  I’m talking about the rhythm of the academic calendar, where things completely reset several times a year.  As I start a new academic year, I do so having learned from last year’s [...]

Inertia

Do you have people around you that hate change, no matter what the benefit of that change is likely to be?  Are you such a person?  Oreg (2003) looked at resistance to change, and suggested six reasons why someone might be predisposed to resist change.  Such a person might be afraid to lose control, might [...]

Leading Meetings

As the start of school approaches at my university, there are often a number of meetings that faculty must attend.  There is definitely excitement as you see colleagues who you may not have seen all summer and as you meet any new faculty that were hired to begin this new year.  However, there is more [...]

Don’t Make Me Repeat Myself

I just read a research article that studied employees’ repetition of dissent (Kassing, 2009).  When employees voice frustrations to managers and those managers don’t resolve the frustrating circumstance, employees may repeat their dissent.  The research study examined that repetitious dissent.  The most interesting finding to me was that the ways in which employees repeated themselves [...]

Leadership–Position or Behavior

The first chapter in one of the books I’m using in a class opens with several stories about leaders who made poor decisions while ignoring the advice of dissenters (Banks, 2008).  The author presents the question about whether leadership is a position or a set of behaviors, something you are or something you do.  Think [...]

Giving Criticism

I read a fascinating article a few days ago about giving criticism.  Consistent with current research in dissent but written almost two decades ago, this article stated that as we give criticism to another, whether that other is a supervisor or a subordinate, we are balancing two concerns.  First, we want to change something (hence [...]

One more thing on getting employee feedback

The other key to an open door policy is to make sure that employees know you aren’t going to retaliate for their honesty (Smith & Fortunato, 2008).  It takes time to develop the reputation as someone who provides safety for honest feedback, but it takes virtually no time to develop a reputation who doesn’t want [...]