The Old Suggestion Box

I’m still having a little trouble balancing things and finding time to blog.
When I was in college, I worked at a job and we had a suggestion box right next to the supervisor’s office.  Funny thing was that no one had a key to the box, so we all thought of stories of some of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Open Door Policy

How open is your “open door” policy?  There is a cliché about an open door leading out of the organization, but that cliché has a ring of truth.  Although open door policies are the most common way that supervisors ask for feedback from subordinates, those policies also tend to be the least used (Harlos, 2001).  [...]

In the Company’s Best Interest

As I’ve mentioned before, I have recently started a project where I am talking to business leaders about communication where they work.  I’ve just done a few of those interviews, but they are going well so far.  Someone said something recently that I wanted to share on this blog.  We were talking about dissent and [...]

Speak Up

I’ve posted before about how television affects our expectations for our workplace.  One of the things that I notice on television is that there is a no shortage of employees who speak up at work, but typically, their dissent leads to nothing.  Most dissent from employees on TV is either ignored or outright rejected by [...]

Listen to the People around You

I feel like I’ve been gone forever.  Between conferences and vacations, it’s been a while since I was able to blog, but it’s great to be back.
This may not seem relevant at first, but I promise there’s a great connection to how you communicate at work.  One of the conferences that I attended in the [...]

Upward Influence

We’ve all been in situations where we need to convince a supervisor to go with one of our ideas.  I’ve blogged before about the importance of person-centered messages and solution-oriented conversations as ways of successfully influencing your boss.  All Things Workplace had a great post on ideas for influencing your boss that included audience analysis, [...]

Effectiveness–What You Say, Why You Say It

This week, I’ve talked about dissent messages and effectiveness and dissent goals and effectiveness.  Today, I want to draw these things together.  Our goals make a difference in how effective our messages are.  For example, if you want information, a question may be more effective than sarcasm.  In this research project I have been describing, [...]