Telling someone something they don’t want to hear is never fun. Saying “no” when someone asks you to fix something is often a necessary part of a manager’s job.
Addressing Complaints, Part 3: Saying No to Requests
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Paul Tevis
Asking for Clarity from Your Boss
One of the biggest obstacles to working well with others is not sharing a brain. Asking for clarity helps you avoid playing “Bring Me a Rock.”
Not All “Teams” are Real Teams
Few words in the corporate world are abused and misused more than “team.” Calling something a team doesn’t make it one.
What is a High-Performing Team?
Without a clear definition of what “high performance” means, it’s easy to defend describing many teams with that term. Isn’t the promise of high performance the reason we form teams? And if a team is already high-performing, they don’t need to get better, right?
Retrospectives Are Real Work, Too
One of the challenges that managers, coaches, and consultants face is helping groups and teams to effectively balance productive work with work that builds and sustains their productivity. The key to that is understanding that working on the group’s functioning is also real work.
Navigating Team Conflict with the Waterline Model
Conflict is a natural part of working together in groups, yet in the midst of it, it can feel terribly dysfunctional. There’s no shortage of ideas about how to work through it, and there are lots of tools available. How do you know where to get started?
How Deep Do You Ask People To Go?
Whenever we try to help a person or group change, we intervene at some level of depth. For any given change, we almost always have multiple options for how to involve people. As managers, coaches, or consultants, we need to know how deep we are asking them to go.
Ground Your Feedback in Mutual Purpose
Feedback is more likely to be effective when it’s clear that you’re both heading in the same direction.
Getting Aligned Through Shared Understanding
When presenting a change, you want to understand people’s responses to what you are actually proposing, not to what people are afraid you are suggesting. Asking how committed people are before ensuring everyone is talking about the same thing isn’t helpful.
Performance Feedback Requires Clear Expectations
Addressing underperformance is a two-way street. Do you understand your part in it?