Training People how to have Tough Conversations

I was talking to an executive recently about organizational communication.  He said that he believed basic business skills were often important in landing entry-level jobs, but that being promoted relied more on communication than business savvy.  While I hesitate to make the same generalization, I do think most managers need the ability to communicate with [...]

When you make a mistake…

I got a little bit behind on Friday and wasn’t able to post, but I’m back today.
What do you do when you realize that you’ve made a mistake?  Do you cover it up?  Do you blindly continue on a course of action that you know is wrong?  Do you admit the mistake and apologize?  Most [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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).  [...]

Avoid Being a Bad Boss

Pardon the alliteration in the title, but there are a lot of bad bosses out there.  If you don’t know one, then you’re either not looking hard enough or everyone else is pointing at you.  But there’s hope for bad bosses, even with the economy like it is today.  Management researcher Bob Sutton posted a [...]

Followership

Have you ever thought about what it means to be a good follower?  There are probably more books about leadership than anyone can count, but there are far fewer books on followership.  Does that mean that being a leader is more important than being a follower?  I was talking to a business leader recently about [...]

What Makes a Good Leader?

I’m teaching a course this Fall on leadership and communication.  I don’t pretend to have the answers, but it’s definitely interesting to think about how do leaders effectively communicate with others.  Or at an even more basic level, what makes a good leader?  I’ll probably be exploring that question periodically, as I work through the [...]