Why Your Mindset Could Be Limiting Growth

The key when we don’t see eye to eye is understanding where the other person is coming from. That’s not always easy. I found myself in a situation where someone else was assuming the worst about me and I couldn’t understand why. I’m a transparent person; so you don’t have to guess my motivations. Nevertheless, I was shaking my head in disbelief as someone accused me of things I would never do. It wasn’t until weeks later that I finally saw where they were coming from. The person had a scarcity mindset; something I have a hard time relating to since I have an abundance mindset.

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3 Toxic People in the Workplace and How to Manage Them

Toxic people in the workplace are nightmares! They thrive on making your life miserable. Often their behavior is driven from pride and somehow it makes them feel good to treat you poorly. Likely you have seen all these people at some point in your career. Here are a few tips with how to deal with them:

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4 Ways Employees Should Be More Like Consultants

“I can’t tell my boss what I really think. I’d probably get fired.” I hear this lament too often from employees with legitimate concerns carrying potential impacts to the organization’s success. Personally, that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. If it needs to be said, I tend to say it (maybe a little too often). This situation made me realize there are ways that employees should act more like consultants and therefore experience the freedom that comes with it.

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Go Ahead, Have the Meeting, If…

“I can’t have you tying my team up in daily meetings.”

“Why do you need that meeting; we already have another meeting with the same people.”

I can’t tell you how frequently I get questioned on the number of meetings I hold. Inevitably, though, at the end of the project phase, most people agree with my meeting strategy. Meetings are a part of life. Get over it. Don’t be a meeting avoider, and even worse, if you are creating an environment where people are afraid to have meetings, have you thought about the unintended consequences?  Continue reading

It’s Time You Realized It’s All Your Fault

Laid-off? It’s your fault. Didn’t get the promotion you wanted? Guess what? That’s your fault as well. In a dead-end job? You get the idea. Where you are today is your fault. The reality is, our lives are the aggregate of the decisions we have made to this point. The good news? If it’s your fault, that means you have the power to change it. You are not some victim at the mercy of a corporate conspiracy. Here’s what you can do about it:

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You Can’t Do Anything You Set Your Mind to, so Stop Trying

You’ve been lied to. How can we sleep at night lying to little kids? You can’t do anything you set your mind to, and more importantly, you shouldn’t try. I understand why we encourage this type of thinking: a large portion of the population is under-performing; they aren’t living up to their full potential. If people are told they can do anything they set their minds to, then they are more likely to try to do something. But for those of us who are trying to live to our full potential, this phrase can be detrimental to our success. Continue reading

This Missing Skill Is Killing Our Business and Personal Relationships

The news has been rough: the terrorists’ massacre at Charlie Hedbo’s; a bomb going off outside the NAACP in Colorado Springs – heaven forbid we bring up Ferguson or the cop killings in New York. To add to these stories, I also read a news story about a Florida man throwing his five-year-old daughter off a bridge. After the initial feeling of mortification, I read some of the readers’ comments. I was even more mortified by those. They were obviously not comments by people exercising critical thinking. All comments initially centered around how terrible the man was, how he should be killed, etc. Continue reading

It Is All About You, and Here’s Why

I’ve always been curious about people who go on journeys to find themselves. I imagine someone going to a far-off land, being isolated from everything that was once familiar, and connecting with a spiritual side, just like a page out of Eat, Pray, Love. I realized two things: “finding” yourself is important; and you don’t have to travel to do it (although your self-discoveries may be more intense if you do; since I haven’t done it, I wouldn’t know). Here is what “finding” yourself (or self-discovery) does: Continue reading

3 HR Practices That Kill High-Performance Teams

It’s all about the money. While the number one reason people leave companies is not money, a lot of dissatisfaction stems from money and the performance review process. It’s not about the dollar amount, though. It’s about not getting equitable rewards for equitable work. I’m not sure about your experiences, but my experience during annual review time was never pleasant. A general tension permeates the office as people wonder where they will fall in the performance rankings. Rumors about force-ranking employees and how the bonuses will be distributed prevail. And then once the reviews are delivered, commence walking on eggshells as people dance around the subject of whether they felt their ratings were fair. The impact of this is highest for top performers and high performing teams. Here are some human resource practices that contribute to disengagement of high performers: Continue reading