How to Know if They're Truly Committed
Do some people tend to let you down? If you’re like most of us, the answer is, “Yes!” So, how do you know if someone is truly committed? How can you tell if they will actually do what they said they will do? Whether it be in our relationships with friends, family, or those in our work environment, commitment is often a tricky subject because it is tied so directly to responsibility and accountability. And because we too often connect responsibility and accountability to blame
Is Empowerment Merely a Myth?
“You do realize that the popular concept of empowerment is a myth, right?” That’s not what a person usually says to their manager, but the frustrated shift supervisor said it anyway. And her manager was stumped. How should he respond? And what exactly did she mean? So how about you? What’s your understanding of empowerment? Is it a myth or some mystical power effective leaders are able to bestow upon those they lead? Of course not, you may say. So, what is it then? Why do we
How Eliminating Blame Makes Us Smarter
Have you ever played the blame game? You know how it works . . . when something goes wrong, we all begin ducking for cover and point the finger at someone else. Why does this happen? For many people, responsibility and blame go together. The joke is that we’re happy to accept responsibility when things go well, but we’ll refuse to accept blame when they go wrong. But what if the two don’t actually go together at all? In fact, what if accepting 100% responsibility eliminates b
How Problem Solving Can Create More Problems
Chuck Blakeman, writing for Inc. Magazine* states, “Business leaders are taught to be relentless problem solvers. But that focus traps them in a downward spiral of reactive problem-solving that feels more like a hostage situation than leading.” He goes on to say, “A problem, once solved, merely restores the status quo. Solving it gets you back to where you were before the problem arose but brings no lasting difference to the situation. A staff member quits, we recruit a new o
Why Your Unconscious Mind Craves Meaning
Vision statements. Most of us have made a few with colleagues over the years and can recall the hours spent in discussion, carefully wordsmithing, scribbling on flip chart paper and a white board, finally agreeing on the perfect vision statement, then filing it away or posting it on a wall and pretty much forgetting about it. If you’ve had that experience you may be wary of the practice. So were we, until we began experimenting and eventually developed an entirely different p
