Challenges
The Art of Saying No
What we say “no” to is almost as important as what we say “yes” to. If you are like me and have difficulty saying no, you might enjoy my insights on getting to no.
What we say “no” to is almost as important as what we say “yes” to. If you are like me and have difficulty saying no, you might enjoy my insights on getting to no.
In our last blog you learned the shocking stats that “bad apples behavior” drags team performance down 30 to 40%. Here’s what to do when you have a “bad apple” on your team.
When you are leading a team that has a dysfunctional team member, you know performance drops. You might be surprised by how much!
Problem solving works great if there is a solution. Is awesome for technical problems. Is wonderful if what you had before needs a tune-up and not an overhaul. However, it does not work at all for situations which have no immediate fix, for which there is not a known solution and that requires new fresh thinking.
My Mother, a very wise woman, taught me that, “Practice makes perfect.” However, after 5 months of diligent (swimming) practice, I was not getting close to passable, let alone perfection. And if that adage was truly the case, the folks on the job that had done it the longest would be the best. Clearly not my experience in swimming or in life.
Intention and perception often run a collision course. I think I am being helpful, my employees see it as micromanaging. I think I am empowering someone, they think I have abandoned them. I believe we’ve had a solid two-way dialogue, the other person believes that I talked too much and listened too little.
A Gallop poll indicated that only 15% of employees in corporate America could articulate the purpose of their company or how their job contributed to it.
I was working with a client, a young entrepreneur who had quite successfully grown his business from nothing to a several million dollar enterprise. We had an interesting dilemma – he could see very clearly where he was taking the company. And yet, without fail, his employees told me that not only was the direction fuzzy for the company, but they weren’t sure of what they needed to do.
An uproar has been happening at Purdue University. The current governor of the state of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, has been named as the next president of the university and will take on his new duties in 2013. For those that study leadership, change and resistance, this is the perfect case study.
Renewal is especially important for leaders today. Work demands are higher. Leaders feel constantly “on the job” due to email, cellphones, texting and instant messaging. Resources are constrained yet the need to get more done is greater.
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