Monthly Archives: June 2012
Blog post by Michelle Adams
1. Bill needs to save money on gas so he buys a hybrid car.
2. Alberto wants to get into better shape so he joins a gym.
3. Michelle needs more sales leads so she hires a search engine consultant.
4. Lance needs to pick up his child from school so he leaves early most days.
5. Selena, a recent L.E.T. Graduate, wants to practice her skills so she downloads the mobile L.E.T. site.
So, those statements above are all proposed solutions to apparent needs. But what if we were to ask ourselves before we stated our “need”, “What would that do for me?”
So for example, be Bill for a moment. You say to yourself, “Well, the car is the solution BUT what would that do for me? I would save money on gas. Okay, but what if I could meet that need of saving money on gas with some alternative solutions, like…… ...Read more
Blog Post by Scott Seroka
So how do you, as a manager, improve your relationships with your direct reports so that they deliver on your expectations? The answers can be found in a strong leadership training program – one of the best investments you can make into your brand.
Ask a CEO what his or her most important asset is, and they will likely tell you that it’s their brand or their people. If you think about it, they are actually one in the same, because people (employees) represent the brand. Taking this one step further, you could confidently say that the quality of a company’s brand is equal to the quality of it’s people.
But let’s drill down a bit deeper… ...Read more
Blog Post by Scott Seroka
In our search for strong employees to fill critical roles in our organizations, we typically go to employment sites like monster.com where we craft impressively alluring job descriptions, brag about our competitive benefit packages and tell everyone how fun we are to work with. The one thing we don’t reveal is salary – the most important of all – we keep that number securely in our belt as a tool for negotiation.
Salary, benefits and job stability may be all that is needed to bring aboard top talent, but employees need much more to stay and give you their all. Employees expect and deserve answers to the following on an ongoing basis…
1. What is expected of me? ...Read more
Blog Post by Scott Seroka
Most people agree that meetings can be a colossal waste of time. And it’s not surprising when most meetings start off with all the right intentions to address important issues only to transition into venting sessions taking everything off course into never-never land. Or worse, meeting participants get stuck on one topic and bludgeon it relentlessly until someone concludes that the meeting has dragged on too long and subsequently suggests another meeting to continue the pain.
Add to this that meetings are incredibly expensive. If you take the average hourly rate of each person in the room and multiply it by the time spent in a meeting, (even for those short half-hour meets), the cost would be enough to choke a giraffe.
If you’re nodding your head, consider implementing the following practices below to make future meetings efficient and productive: ...Read more
Blog post by Victoria Benodi
The other day, I was ambushed by a colleague. It wasn’t intentional…she didn’t mean to ruin my morning. But it happened. These things do.
I had given this 
colleague some information, expecting her to hold it close and not divulge it. With the info, I also shared my opinion about the info, again expecting her to never repeat my words. However, the next day, I got pulled into a conference call with her – and her boss – and the topic of discussion was the news I had given her the previous day! I was totally caught by surprise and felt betrayed and ganged up on.
So what to do?
A few years ago, when I first did my leadership training and learned skills like Active Listening and I-Messages and Shifting Gears after confronting, I hit the ground running. I felt like a superhero with a secret weapon, and I was quick to bring it out whenever I could. ...Read more
Blog post by Michelle Adams
(Excerpted from L.E.T., Leader Effectiveness Training by Dr. Thomas Gordon)
People are conditioned almost from infancy to think of feelings as bad and dangerous—enemies of good human relationships. People grow up afraid of feelings—their own and those of others around them—largely because they have heard from adults in their lives many messages like these:
• “Don’t ever let me hear you say you hate your baby brother.”
• “You shouldn’t feel discouraged about what happened.”
• “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
• “Don’t feel bad about it—things will be better tomorrow.”
• “There’s nothing at all to be afraid of.”
• “Keep a stiff upper lip.”
• “Swallow your pride.”
• “Watch your tongue, young lady.” ...Read more
“Gosh, couldn’t we have avoided that confrontation? I thought we got along better than that. Did it really have to come to that?” Most of us think of confrontation as a bad thing. Someone gets hurt. So, we tend to treat confrontation as something that should be avoided. But, if done right and with the right intentions, a confrontation is really an act of respect.
There are two definitions of “confront” in the dictionary: 1 – To face especially in challenge. 2- to cause to meet: bring face-to-face. Neither of these definitions sounds especially ominous. How many of us would cower at the prospect of facing the facts or being challenged? Yet, when I ask participants in leadership training that I teach, what they think of when I say the word “confront,” they reply, “fight, hurt, damage, provoke, attack” and so on. But, if confronting really means to “face with the facts,” they agree that is how it should be. I will then ask, “How many of you like to confront?” In most of the leadership workshops, not one person will raise his or her hand. ...Read more
Blog Post by Michelle Adams
Leaders must choose the kind of leader they want to be, and nobody else can make that choice for them. How do you choose from among alternative styles of leadership?
Naturally, in making your choice you will first want to consider the criterion of effectiveness (the central emphasis throughout this book). What leadership style will make you more effective—in building a team, making good decisions, getting productivity, fostering morale, and so on? You may also want to ask yourself other questions to help you focus on equally important issues: ...Read more
- What kind of person do you want to be?
- What kind of relationship do you want?
- What kind of organization do you want?
- What kind of society do you want?
Blog post by Michelle Adams
(Excerpted from “Be Your Best” by Linda Adams)
Everyone experiences fear, gets scared, is afraid. Still, we would probably be surprised if we stopped to think just how much of our daily behavior is motivated by a need to lessen our fears.
But since fear is often seen as a weakness, it’s not acceptable to talk about it. Not only do we not discuss our fears, we usually don’t even admit that we have them. We repress them so we become unaware that they exist. We get so used to living with our fears that sometimes we aren’t conscious of them anymore.
As a result, many people don’t face their fears and instead allow them to control their lives. ...Read more
Blog post by Michelle Adams
(Excerpted from Be Your Best, by Linda Adams)
Self-disclosure is direct and congruent communication and action. Let’s look at those times when you are the person who has an important need and you want the cooperation of another. Now you are the initiator, the person with a need.
We (in our Gordon Model Workshops) call self-disclosure in which you take the initiative a Preventive l-Message. It involves sharing with other people what’s going on inside you (needs, feelings, wants). The Preventive l-Message is a communication to someone who is significant in your life, someone who can help you in getting your needs met. It is a direct, clear and congruently strong expression, avoiding either submissive or aggressive overtones. It contains, to a greater or lesser degree, a possible solution to your need, representing the responsibility you have taken to understand and then act to meet your own needs. ...Read more
Blog post by Michelle Adams
We all have know unassertive leaders in organizations who just won’t confront people. The price they pay, obviously, is that the problems don’t magically go away; they suffer in martyrdom or build up feelings of resentment toward the person causing the problem. It always feels unfair in relationships when the scales remain tipped against you and in favor of the other person. Tolerating an inequitable relationship is often labeled permissiveness. And permissive leaders, like permissive parents, end up being the losers and not liking it.
Still another important reason why leaders approach the task of confronting with such trepidation is that the particular language they employ, originally learned from adults who confronted them as children, has a high probability of provoking resistance and retaliation or damaging the relationship with the person whom they confront. In Gordon Model workshops, instructors use a simple exercise and its results consistently demonstrate that when leaders confront people causing them a problem, the language of their confronting messages can be abrasive, threatening, judgmental, moralizing, condescending, sarcastic, or injurious to the self-esteem of the person confronted. Take this situation for example: ...Read more
Blog Post by Scott Seroka
Confrontation. Most people go through great lengths to either avoid it, or put it off even if there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Why? Well it’s rather obvious – many people associate confrontation with initiating uncomfortably awkward conversations where someone will be told something they don’t want to hear. Confrontation is usually feared and avoided because the confrontor assumes that an already strained relationship will only get worse as the confrontee may bark back something in his or her defense, or, in some instances, become very emotional. After all, people don’t confront good behavior – only behavior that gets in the way of getting one’s needs met. But, confrontation is inevitable, and learning how to confront properly is a skill that can be acquired through a good leadership training program.
And what is the price we pay for not confronting? It can cost us our emotional and mental sanity. ...Read more
