Are you good? and Can you tell me of a time you have been good? are clearly two very different questions. The first one is instinctive, of course I am good. The second one activates the slow part of the brain, the reflective part, and is way more difficult to lie to. Behavioral questions like … Continue reading Better questions
Tag: change
I do not know
When you let go of things you are not good at, you find the space and energy to double down on your strengths. And, equally importantly, you leave the space to others in your team to do the same. For leaders, this is particularly crucial. We tend to think we should know it all and … Continue reading I do not know
Leaking
Work leaks into your personal life, news and preoccupations leak into your personal life, continuous demands of attention leak into your personal life. And to some extent, that is fine. At some point though, that becomes untenable, and that is precisely what you need to be aware of. When does that happen? How does that … Continue reading Leaking
Stand out
The faster way for you to build a story is to record what you do. Do it daily and consistently, and after a while, as you look back, you will find threads that already are the seed of a narrative. Put them together, water them, double down on recording, and you have everything you need … Continue reading Stand out
Enough people
Change does not happen because you want to. Change happens because enough people want to. And so, the first step towards change is figuring out what others feel about it. You might get stressed, impatient, irritated by the whole process. But if you cannot handle that, how could you handle what is coming after things … Continue reading Enough people
A part of the story
It would be liberating if we would all spend less time trying to convince others and more time trying to reach out to those we have an affinity with, and then expand from there. Growth is rarely forced upon. Telling without listening will cover only a small part of the story.
Connection
There is a very powerful idea behind the story of Sitka's remote off-site, described in details in this worthy article (full of tactics that are also applicable to meetings, all-hands, 1-1s and any other way your company has chosen to kill employees motivation). The idea is that when you gather a number of people in … Continue reading Connection
Killer
When you reject, belittle, or forget to follow up to an initiative taken by a member of your team, what happens is next time they will think twice before taking initiative. It is that simple. And the effect compounds for additional rejecting, belittling and forgetting. This is not to say you have to accept and … Continue reading Killer
Agent or spectator
The fact with difficult conversations is that you can delay them, but you cannot delay the negative effects of the situation that made them necessary in the first place. If a colleague is under performing and you have to pick up their slack, silence will not improve things. If your boss is not giving you … Continue reading Agent or spectator
Tired
As a general rule, writing less rather than more is a wise decision. And when you are tired, writing less rather than more should be an imperative. When you are tired, ideas gets fuzzy, reasoning falters, words get mixed up. Adding another sentence, another paragraph, another page will not make your argument stronger. Of course, … Continue reading Tired
