I recently found out about Kintsugi, which is a centuries-old Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and transforming it into a new work of art with gold. The name of the technique is derived from the words “Kin” (golden) and “tsugi” (joinery), which translate to mean “golden repair.” The scars and cracks of the broken […]
ARTICLES
How to rebuild a cohesive team
All human groups struggle. If this struggle has been extended and intense, we need to focus even more on the four C’s: Clarity, Communication, Connection, and Calm. This is especially so in times of crisis, conflict, change and any kind of challenge. What is needed is • Clarity: in relation to roles, expectations, how individuals […]
Acknowledging others is vital, simple, quick and powerful!
Meanings of acknowledgement: acceptance of the truth or existence of something. recognition of the importance or quality of something. the expression of gratitude or appreciation for something. the action of showing that one has noticed someone or something. a statement printed at the beginning of a book expressing the author’s or publisher’s gratitude to others. […]
Do teams need to be both great at getting their work done and be happy? Could a team usefully be effective and unhappy?
Here I explore the distinction between two team elements, being effective and being happy and I list what teams need to be effective and to be happy. I also provide 2 checklists to assist to identify these two components. Our work gives us a lot of insight into how people work both as team members […]
Will all groups have conflict at some point? Is it useful to ignore it? Is conflict worse if you talk about it?
Have you ever wanted to ignore disagreements, disputes or challenging behaviour and hope it will go away? In a senior leadership team workshop designed to address open dispute and historical tension between the leaders, a participant asked the question: But aren’t you making the situation worse by doing this workshop to bring out all the […]
Being a great supervisor requires significant skill
Now is the time to ensure the necessary and important skills are in place for all supervisors, team leaders and middle managers because the lack of these skills has an immensely damaging impact on teams and organisations. Building frontline management skills across all parts of the organisation is vital because it is supervisors and managers […]
How much harm does working with difficult people do? Here’s what people had to say. And more from the survey – the 3rd most difficult behaviour.
Why care about the work environment and the impact of difficult behaviour on others? Survey respondents gave distressing feedback on the harm from working with difficult and dangerous people. There were some sad and even heartbreaking responses to the question about the impact of working with a difficult person. Here are some of them: I […]
The top 4 reasons people are good to work with and the link to the second most difficult issue at work.
Who is good to work with? In a classic example of where research supports our lived experience, the top two behaviours of people who are good to work with are: good at their work are easy to get along with. How true this is. It is so much easier when you are surrounded by these […]
Thank you so much to those who completed the survey about dealing with people who are difficult at work. The top 3 difficult behaviours at work will not surprise any of you.
The survey on difficult behaviour was designed to uncover the most challenging behaviours we deal with at work and uncover how well organisations and leaders deal with this. We asked the specific question ‘what made people difficult to work with?’ and the top response was moodiness. No surprise, right? The effect of the moody colleague, […]
Kindness, the antidote to these strange times.
In 2000, I was with my parents in the seaside village of Kovalam, in Kerala, India. We had found a restaurant we particularly liked and each time I chose the same meal. On our fifth visit, as I ordered the same meal again, I said to the waiter, ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m boring’. He […]
Easy learning? Effortful learning? Effective learning? What works?
Unfortunately, the trend in many organisations is to design learning to be as easy as possible. Aiming to respect their employee’s busy lives, companies build training programs that can be done at any time, with no prerequisites, and often on a mobile device. The result is fun and easy training programs that employees rave about […]
The importance of safety in relationships
How safe and connected do you feel to those close to you? Do you feel insecure and threatened or supported and cared for in your relationship with your partner, your loved ones or your work mates? If something is amiss, it might go deeper than you’ve realised. I’m a relationship counsellor (amongst other roles) and […]