Pick your Battles

We’ve all heard that saying about having to pick your battles.  The idea is that if you are always competing with others, you won’t have any friends in the workplace when you need them.  One way to approach this is to think about the issue and decide how important it is that you get your [...]

People Are The Problem (Part 3)

I am the problem?
Be very careful before you point the finger at other people’s bad behavior.  One of the most interesting (and at times, most convicting) communication theory that I remember from graduate school is Smith and Berg’s theory of paradox.  There’s more to it than I can get into here, but part of their [...]

People Are The Problem (Part 2)

Who Started The Problem?
One of the points that a group presenting in my class made this morning is that often, difficult people look at others and think that the problem lies with the other people in the office.  For example, Joe and Sally are talking.  Joe thinks Sally is so rude, and so Joe begins [...]

People Are The Problem

One of my classes is giving presentations this week, and I am struck by the topics they have chosen.  The assignment directs students to choose a topic that is relevant to a large number of people in a typical workplace and design a training program to improve worker’s skills relevant to that topic.  Interestingly, 2 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Keep Records–Document Everything

Document everything.  That was the advice I just gave to a student of mine who is struggling to get along with some of the people he works with.  There are always two sides to every story, and I only heard one.  But to hear him tell it, he is just not going to click with [...]

Workplace Bullies

Statistics say that one out of every four people has been the target of workplace bullying (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007).  Unfortunately, just like kids on the playground, there can sometimes seem like no way out for employee being bullied, whether the aggressor is a supervisor or coworker.  What to do?  Documentation is one of the [...]

Learn From Conflict

Read this article about thinking of conflict at work as a learning opportunity.  Can you learn more about the people in your workplace?  Can you learn more about decision-making in your organization?  Can you learn more about yourself?