Boss Hating and Reader Baiting

Stop moaning about the boss. Use these five time-tested strategies to create the best possible situation for you and your employer:

The Carrot Principle by Chester Elton — Book Brief

Mindset (Part 2.5) How to Find Out Who You Are

Picking up on yesterday’s post and if we’ve done our homework assignments, we’re ready to get down to the task of figuring out what the market thinks of us, and how to make something good come from that.

The way people think about us determines whether or not we are promoted, make a big sale, secure investors, and yes — get a date, a decent table at a restaurant, and the list goes on.

People who get that warm and fuzzy feeling every time they come into contact with us choose us over others. It’s not necessarily fair but it’s reality, and we can influence the outcome.

Mindset (part 2): How to Find Out Who You Are

Strange title for a post — How to Find Out Who You Are? Maybe, but when you understand where I’m going with this, I think you’ll realize the relevance.

I led a training session for the Chamber of Commerce today that focused on streetsmart marketing strategies, guiding about 50 people through exercises to increase their awareness of their personal market standing. One of the questions was “Who are you?”

I’m not sure that anyone was on the same page with me as I started, but they quickly picked it up. The answer lies in the minds of the people we market to — whether that marketing is external (customers and vendors) or internal (support staff and other coworkers).

Everybody has an opinion of us in both a personal and work-related sense and, like it or not, that’s who we are so far as the market is concerned. We don’t have to agree with how people see us but, as the saying goes, perception is reality.

Hail the New Texting Champion!

There’s a contest for seemingly everything these days so I wasn’t surprised when I caught the news that we had crowned a new texting champion. That’s right, America has a new text message superstar, 15-year-old Kate Moore of Des Moines, Iowa.

Moore outpaced 20 finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course. Okay, there’s some creativity involved with that.

Let’s make it more meaningful

Maybe they should have added adult activities such as …

Mindset (part 1): They’re Not Out to Get You

It’s so easy to think that the people on our team must be screwing up on purpose. C’mon, admit it — you’ve had similar thoughts at least once.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told him about ___________, and he still got it wrong. He’s got to be doing this intentionally.”

I’ve known a few people who have set out to mess with the boss, but it’s extremely rare. I still believe that most people want to do the right thing and will make their best effort if given the opportunity.

As I’ve written about managers, it’s the same with other staff members: About 5% are …

Kids and Working: We Need to Get to Them Earlier

Most managers look at the generation coming out of school with a fair degree of skepticism that they’ll be able to make a serious contribution early on.

To a large extent, this view is accurate. Most young women and men aren’t adequately prepared to deliver even minimum wage value. Often times it’s a lack of basic skills but, too frequently, it’s the attitude toward work.

A lot of kids want money and know they have to work to get it, but they don’t care much for actually doing it. Work looks boring, tedious, repetitive, uninspiring, and generally uncool. Maybe this is because we’ve…

How to Remind Yourself of What You Really Believe

I remember the first time I heard the line, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach” — and I thought it was a strange viewpoint. Why can’t teachers “do” and “doers” teach? The truth is that they can, but the reality is it doesn’t happen as often as it should in a meaningful way.

I’m a bit unique in the world of trainers who lead courses on management and leadership, in that I actually…

The Power of (Re)creation

I have trained a lot of people over the years and the courses I originally wrote and produced have held up well throughout continual change.

Truth be known, I’ve changed a lot as well. Because I’m not the same person I was almost a decade ago when I created the initial materials, I prefer not to present some of those courses. The information is still solid and value is high, but I’ve moved on and…

How to Leverage Training (Part 2): Our Initial Results

In my last post I discussed the concept of making training — rather the followup to training — something that the entire staff can take part in. If you missed it, you’ll benefit from getting the background with How to Leverage Training (Pt. 1) — How to Make it a Whole Team Activity. This sets the stage for what’s in this segment.

We’ll report on our progress incrementally

When I decided to write about our shared training experience I figured I would let it all play out, and then report on the outcome. That changed when I…