We’ve all at least known, if not actually been, a disgruntled former employee. Disgruntled former employees (DFE’s, for short), are often problematic in the eyes of management. After all, they’re often the loudest, most publicly opposed to leadership. They’re completely unhampered by any societal obligations to their now-ex-coworkers, and unless […]
Category: belonging
Don’t Break Belonging
If you’re a leader seeking to build belonging in your organization or team or loose confederation of monster hunters or whatever, you’ve got to build trust. Trust, interestingly enough, is measured by its weakest facet. This means you can have all the credibility in the world, but if you don’t […]
Approval
It’s tempting to want to get picked. After all, it’s a great feeling as someone is articulating their desire for you, your skills, your talents, your value. I’m not above this desire. Who doesn’t want to be chosen? But at the end of the day, the best thing we can […]
Cavities
Running a team or an organization is difficult. Often there will be many small problems that get ignored or pushed to the side in the pursuit of the greater goal. And while this is understandable, you don’t want to let these issues fester. Especially if they’re things that don’t often […]
Pass It Forward
Especially in hierarchies, it’s easy to pass things forward. Whether it’s being treated humanely or being treated poorly, we usually model what we’ve seen and then others model that behavior as well. But if you were treated poorly, you can always choose to stop the cycle of abuse and follow […]
Toilet Paper and Electricity
Toilet paper, running water, and electricity are all things that are easy to take for granted. Often, we don’t even really think about them until we realize their absence. The same goes for trust. While it’s easy to take it for granted, once it’s gone, the absence can quickly grow […]
Intent Vs Impact
It’s easy to hide behind the consequences of your actions when the intention was not malicious. “It’s just a joke.” “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way.” But that doesn’t mean that the impact of one’s actions was any less than if the intent was, in fact, malicious. If we […]
Having it Both Ways
When arguing something we’re factually correct about, we often expect the other party to admit that they’re wrong and learn from the experience. But how often are we willing to admit that we’re wrong and learn from the experience? It’s foolish to expect that if we’re right, the other party […]
Face Creases
Using my respirator for a few hours (for painting) usually leaves some face creases, very similar to those that our health care workers have been sharing on social media after long shifts trying to save lives while protecting their own. While these face creases might not be conventionally attractive, they […]
Blame the Models, Then Yourself
So often when we’re pursuing something, we look upwards to examples that we can learn from. This is awesome in that you’re not reinventing the wheel, and you can avoid some obstacles from learning from our role models. But when it comes to leadership, we have decades of poor leadership […]