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Developing and Using Personal Support Systems
Charles N. Seahore, Ph.D. was the author of this article. Charlie was an exemplar of leadership and the practice of organization development. One method, of acquiring, maintiaining and demonstrating one’s interpersonal competence is to have a network of supportive...
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: What Does the Pain of Independence Have to Do With It?
An article by Doreen Stern, Ph.D. from "The Stepping Stone," March 2016, Issue 65. ~~•••~~I consider myself a straight shooter. Firm handshake. Excel- lent eye contact. Big smile. And like a Girl Scout, I tell the truth. Yet these facts are incontrovertible: I once...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 3
Contracting for Ego Management We all have egos. To a greater or lesser degree, we all have needs to maintain and/or protect our sense of identity and self-esteem. The admonishment to leave egos at the door is fruitless. Therefore, the following three can be useful in...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 2
Contracting for Effective Relationships How well a leader accomplishes his/her intended goals and strategies is very much dependent on the quality of the connection among the members of the system. As important as relationships among team members are in the world of...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 1
Contracting for the Impact We Intend Effective leaders need followers to execute strategies and tactics if they are to accomplish their visions and goals. Too often misunderstandings and miscommunications hamper effective execution. Good contracting can prevent these...
Leaders and their Egos
Leaders are human and can screw-up. Their screw-ups, however, can be very costly. A primary source of their screw-ups, like all of us, is their egos. Our egos are our sense of identity, our sense of self-importance and self-esteem. They are our perception of our...
LEADERSHIP and the Importance of Connecting
Leaders cannot accomplish their intentions and goals alone. It is essential that we connect well with those whose support makes us leaders. I mentioned last month a leader who embarrassed an important employee in public. That leader weakened their connection with that...
Managing Your Intentions and Impact
A frustrated leader screams at a valued employee in public. Another talks over a subordinate while wondering why his people don’t speak up more. Both leaders have done something (with no conscious intention) that is likely to damage their effectiveness as leaders. We...
The Power of Conscious Choice
A power that the best of leaders have is the power of conscious choice. All of us have the power of choice. It’s just that the best leaders multiply it by using it consciously. Most of us make the myriad choices of daily life automatically, though expedient and...
Expanding Your Experience of Choice
From our previous article, we know that we all make many choices automatically. They save us time and energy and we don’t even notice them as choices… even when they are not saving us time and energy, when our automatic choices are actually wasting time and energy....
A Question of Loyalty
I was consulting with a significant part of a large aerospace company. I was interviewing a very senior vice president. He was complaining about how hard it had become holding on to top employees. Of particular concern to him was what he saw as the lack of loyalty of...
You Can’t Do It Alone and. . .
You Don't Have to Many leaders have the notion that it is lonely at the top. Like so many things, if you believe it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact is no one has ever accomplished anything of any significance alone. Think about that. I think about my...
Get to Critical Mass Support with System Mapping
Creating change in human systems such as teams and organizations is a matter of developing a critical mass of support for the change goal. Of course, developing that critical mass may involve working through whatever resistances there are and resolving the conflicts...
Changing an Organization’s Culture
Changing an organization's culture or the norms of a team is not something to take lightly. An organization's culture is the pattern of how it routinely behaves much like the personality of a human being. The analogy is apt since an organization is a human system....
Don’t Waste Your Strategic Plan
Don't waste your strategic plan. A good strategic plan serves as the focal point for how an organization toward both long and short-range success. It provides… Direction for aligning an organization's staff and activitiesCriteria for organizational decision-making....
The Ways We Waste Our Time and Energy: Conscious Use of Self #2
Time is a resource. And leaders never have enough of it. There are staffs to be managed, customers to coddled, finances to figured out, superiors to satisfy, and the partner and kids at home to be pleased and loved. The list goes on and on. Time’s a wastin'. Yet, we...
Self-Mastery: The Foundation of Effective Leadership (and a lot else!)
The foundation of effective leadership is self-mastery. When followers aren't following and results are hard to come by, the first place a leader needs to look is at themselves. When life isn’t working for you, when you aren’t getting the results you want, when your...
Leadership = Some Place to Go and People Willing to Follow
Great leaders are going someplace extraordinary and lots of people follow them! Leaders in most organizations know where they want to go. Keeping followers aligned and in sync to get there, however, can be frustrating. Here are seven areas to turn that frustration into excitement. All of the questions are born from the two primary aspects of leadership: They have some place to go, and they have people following them!
Quick and Easy Consensus Decision-Making
Consensus decision-making has the reputation of being very time-consuming. It needn’t be if the steps outlined below are followed. The failure of most supposed consensus procedures result from failing to ask those objecting if they are willing to accede to the...
Six Ways to Cure the Dysfunctional Team Blues
The CEO is frustrated! She is the CEO of a major health care organization and, like many other organization leaders, believes in teams. She has project teams, functional teams, cross-functional teams, process improvement teams, etc. A few of those teams work very well...
Developing and Using Personal Support Systems
Charles N. Seahore, Ph.D. was the author of this article. Charlie was an exemplar of leadership and the practice of organization development. One method, of acquiring, maintiaining and demonstrating one’s interpersonal competence is to have a network of supportive...
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: What Does the Pain of Independence Have to Do With It?
An article by Doreen Stern, Ph.D. from "The Stepping Stone," March 2016, Issue 65. ~~•••~~I consider myself a straight shooter. Firm handshake. Excel- lent eye contact. Big smile. And like a Girl Scout, I tell the truth. Yet these facts are incontrovertible: I once...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 3
Contracting for Ego Management We all have egos. To a greater or lesser degree, we all have needs to maintain and/or protect our sense of identity and self-esteem. The admonishment to leave egos at the door is fruitless. Therefore, the following three can be useful in...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 2
Contracting for Effective Relationships How well a leader accomplishes his/her intended goals and strategies is very much dependent on the quality of the connection among the members of the system. As important as relationships among team members are in the world of...
Creating Agreements for Success, Part 1
Contracting for the Impact We Intend Effective leaders need followers to execute strategies and tactics if they are to accomplish their visions and goals. Too often misunderstandings and miscommunications hamper effective execution. Good contracting can prevent these...
Leaders and their Egos
Leaders are human and can screw-up. Their screw-ups, however, can be very costly. A primary source of their screw-ups, like all of us, is their egos. Our egos are our sense of identity, our sense of self-importance and self-esteem. They are our perception of our...
LEADERSHIP and the Importance of Connecting
Leaders cannot accomplish their intentions and goals alone. It is essential that we connect well with those whose support makes us leaders. I mentioned last month a leader who embarrassed an important employee in public. That leader weakened their connection with that...
Managing Your Intentions and Impact
A frustrated leader screams at a valued employee in public. Another talks over a subordinate while wondering why his people don’t speak up more. Both leaders have done something (with no conscious intention) that is likely to damage their effectiveness as leaders. We...
The Power of Conscious Choice
A power that the best of leaders have is the power of conscious choice. All of us have the power of choice. It’s just that the best leaders multiply it by using it consciously. Most of us make the myriad choices of daily life automatically, though expedient and...
Expanding Your Experience of Choice
From our previous article, we know that we all make many choices automatically. They save us time and energy and we don’t even notice them as choices… even when they are not saving us time and energy, when our automatic choices are actually wasting time and energy....
A Question of Loyalty
I was consulting with a significant part of a large aerospace company. I was interviewing a very senior vice president. He was complaining about how hard it had become holding on to top employees. Of particular concern to him was what he saw as the lack of loyalty of...
You Can’t Do It Alone and. . .
You Don't Have to Many leaders have the notion that it is lonely at the top. Like so many things, if you believe it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact is no one has ever accomplished anything of any significance alone. Think about that. I think about my...
Get to Critical Mass Support with System Mapping
Creating change in human systems such as teams and organizations is a matter of developing a critical mass of support for the change goal. Of course, developing that critical mass may involve working through whatever resistances there are and resolving the conflicts...
Changing an Organization’s Culture
Changing an organization's culture or the norms of a team is not something to take lightly. An organization's culture is the pattern of how it routinely behaves much like the personality of a human being. The analogy is apt since an organization is a human system....
Don’t Waste Your Strategic Plan
Don't waste your strategic plan. A good strategic plan serves as the focal point for how an organization toward both long and short-range success. It provides… Direction for aligning an organization's staff and activitiesCriteria for organizational decision-making....
The Ways We Waste Our Time and Energy: Conscious Use of Self #2
Time is a resource. And leaders never have enough of it. There are staffs to be managed, customers to coddled, finances to figured out, superiors to satisfy, and the partner and kids at home to be pleased and loved. The list goes on and on. Time’s a wastin'. Yet, we...
Self-Mastery: The Foundation of Effective Leadership (and a lot else!)
The foundation of effective leadership is self-mastery. When followers aren't following and results are hard to come by, the first place a leader needs to look is at themselves. When life isn’t working for you, when you aren’t getting the results you want, when your...
Leadership = Some Place to Go and People Willing to Follow
Great leaders are going someplace extraordinary and lots of people want follow them! Leaders in most organizations know where they want to go. Keeping followers aligned and in sync to get there, however, can be frustrating. Here are seven areas to turn that...
Quick and Easy Consensus Decision-Making
Consensus decision-making has the reputation of being very time-consuming. It needn’t be if the steps outlined below are followed. The failure of most supposed consensus procedures result from failing to ask those objecting if they are willing to accede to the...
Six Ways to Cure the Dysfunctional Team Blues
The CEO is frustrated! She is the CEO of a major health care organization and, like many other organization leaders, believes in teams. She has project teams, functional teams, cross-functional teams, process improvement teams, etc. A few of those teams work very well...