“The Answer to the Problem is Here, Inside You.”
<484 words> The other day I saw a wedding video on Facebook. A group of men performed the great and terrifying Maori haka with words especially written for the occasion. Millions have watched the video. Some people felt that the haka was threatening and/or insulting, but no, it is a great sign of respect, according to NewZealand.com […]
Four New Things for the New Year
<292 words> Stop. Think. Choose. Do. You’ve come through Christmas ok, haven’t you? Kept your mouth shut when you wanted to speak out? Went home before the same old quarrel kicked into gear? Dreading going back to work to face the bully again? Are you always going to be like that? Avoiding […]
Working at a Rogers Call Centre Pays Off
Rogers, one of Canada’s major cell phone service providers recently won a prestigious award for the way it used coaching of call centre employees to improve customer satisfaction and revenue in-flow.
It looks like a game-changer.
PERSONAL SAFETY IN THE FACE OF GLOBAL TERRORISM
The recent spate of fundamentalist terrorist attacks across the globe had triggered exactly the weapon it was intended to unleash: fear expressed as anger, causing confusion, separating us rather than bringing us together. It is a time when we may be so exhausted by confusion and fear that we readily sacrifice the rights and freedoms that are so hugely important to us. We’re at risk of running backwards. I’m not prepare to do that.
Fairness is simple. Bring culture into it and bedevil everything.
The way of breaking through cultural barriers to fairness is to return to our human origins. Fairness is the default position; culture is the way in which we express and judge it. The more culturally divergent a workplace is the less likely it is we’d have consensus on what constitutes ‘fairness’.
This paper explores Brown’s human fundamentals via Pinker; Frans de Waal’s research on the moral behaviour of animals; and then human culture via Hofstede, with a view of stimulating HR to look at how they ‘do’ fairness differently. What is being done currently doesn’t quite meet the human standard of fairness.
And so, how does one set that standard? The answers are in your approach and your level of cultural competence.
Some ideas are offfered on how fairness might be viewed and enacted differently – if someone has the curiosity and courage to do it.
5 Leadership Outcomes offered by the Trudeau Leadership School (TLS)
The Trudeau Leadership School offers an innovative child-transportation method that builds leadership in the next generation, as can be seen in the featured photograph. 1. Close physical contact with Dad without being mushy or coddled. 2. Eyes forward to take it all in. 3. Build responsibility for keeping self in balance with just enough support to make […]
Love and introspection shifts a world
Sometimes when you’re engaged in a quarrel with someone the things takes on a momentum of its own…..The person who blinked first was hurt and puzzled….it became imperative that a peace be brokered in a family that felt like it was falling apart, before it was too late.
Our own role in creating conflict – how human are you, in my eyes?
How do we see other people? I know so many people who say ‘I don’t like conflict…I avoid conflict….’, and yet I’ve heard them talk about other people in ways that invites particular behaviours – behaviours that reinforce their (usually negative) perception of those other people.
We create our own conflicts typically without consciously intending to, and then we’re surprised when we discover that other people have seen us in ways we don’t think are true. If I see you as a lesser being; if I see you as an object; it is much easier to feel justified in how I characterise and judge you.
The answer is in the room.
Who is the expert? There is sound theory on how adults prefer to learn, and there is sound theory on how individuals have their own learning styles. The true expertise lies in knowing how to facilitate a learning conversation, not in having the one definitive answer.
Use the right tool for the job
I am going to talk about two things that have happened this week. On the face of it they may not appear to be related, but if one moves away from the detail – the ‘what happened’ or the ‘what is’, to the abstract where you might explore themes and lessons learnt, they are very closely related.
Firstly, it is about kitty litter as a tool….
I had just come from a coaching session with a client. This is the second thing I want to talk about. We had been discussing employee engagement surveys….