3 Powerful Tools for Having the Difficult Conversations You’re Avoiding
Here are three tools to use for your difficult conversations.
We Suck at Setting Professional Boundaries. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Where is your line in the sand? Boundaries are about what’s ok and what’s not. It’s about what is considered acceptable in a community, workplace and how we interact with each other. The unfortunate thing about boundaries is that most of them don’t get communicated directly or effectively. Many are inferred or unspoken. Ultimately, we suck at it. Setting boundaries can feel hard, but trust me, it’s a worthwhile investment. If you’d rather get on with your work instead of constantly putting out fires, read on. Have you ever seen a person do something at work that wasn’t ok [...]
Freaking about Feedback
Feedback comes in many forms, a nod, a grade, a tweet, a furrowed brow, silence, thumbs up, surveys, empty chairs, evaluation forms, referrals, glowing testimonials. Much of it is constructive, positive and even glowing. So why do we fear feedback? Both giving and receiving feedback can be met with trepidation and anxiousness. Perhaps an experience of poorly delivered feedback left you feeling disempowered and now you brace yourself when you see feedback coming your way. Are you reluctant to give feedback because you anticipate others having similar ambivalence and want to spare them the discomfort? Why do we fear [...]
Leveraging Leadership Skills
What is leverage? To move something with less force for greater impact and movement.It makes movement easier. This is what I’ve discovered about leverage in leadership skills. There are three areas that we seem to struggle most with that just a little bit of learning can go a long way. Leveraging these skills can make a bigger difference in a wide array of areas, most notably, workplace culture. The three skills are 1) feedback: giving and receiving, 2) difficult conversations and 3) professional boundaries. Feedback: Giving and Receiving This is an area that gets plunged into the ‘too hard basket’. [...]