Our Articles
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Alone Does Not Mean Lonely
The holidays are done. Christmas and New Year's Day having followed Thanksgiving less than a month before. Times to be with family and those you’re close to. But for me,...
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...
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It Takes Dragons
People ask me why I use a rather fierce looking dragon as my Center for Human Systems’ logo. Dragons are known throughout the world in all climates, cultures, and eras....
OD Is Not A Recipe!
Lean, Six Sigma, Prosci, and other formulized change management methodologies all offer an orderly set steps to take—a recipe for ending waste, improving productivity, and...
Give Your Clients What They Need, Not What They Want
A CEO of a medium-sized hospital asked me to train his front-line patient-facing staff in how to be pleasant to patients. The head of IT department asked me to facilitate...
The Power and The Problem of Organization Development
Organization development is the most powerful technology we have for managing change in human systems. Yet, that focus on human systems, which is the heart of OD’s power, is...
Managing the Discomforts of Leadership
I'm often asked to work with smart but underperforming executives, whose justification is that taking certain actions would be uncomfortable. They also cite that they don't...
Leaders, Are You a Part of Your Teams Or Apart from Your Teams?
Human beings have two opposing and powerful pulls: to be part of and to be apart from. When we are ‘part of,’ we belong. We want to belong to groups of others that accept...
The Value of Being Unproductive
“I feel like I’ve always got to be productive,” a client told me. She continued, “I feel on the edge of burnout though.” I ask, “Do you ever take time off?” Then I add, “I...
Worthlessness Is a Worthless Fiction We Were All Taught!
I grew up with a humiliating stutter. I was asthmatic and puny. I saw myself as pretty worthless. I had a friend, a psychologist, who used to say that everyone has their...
Two Perspectives of Power & Conflict in Teams and Organizations
“It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.” ~ Francis Bacon Conflict is the bane of...
Energy Sponges! Ways Leaders Waste Their Time and Energy
Time is a resource. And leaders never have enough of it. There are goals that must be met, staffs to be managed, customers to coddle, finances to figure out, superiors to...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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