Oct 19 2012

5 Traits Bosses Find Annoying

Already your thinking, “only 5?” After managing people for over 20 years, I thought I’d hone in on the ones that just never seem to go away.  Admittedly, everyone has their own pet peeves, but these are mine:

comment
Oct 17 2012

Will Election Day Ever Get Here?

If you’re like me, you’re getting sick of all the political ads, political rhetoric, Facebook chatter and debate discussions. But what do you do when it seeps into the office? Can visceral dialogue about a candidate lead to rage in the office, as a recent WSJ article suggests? How can you respect people’s First Amendment rights, but keep peace in the office?

comment
Oct 09 2012

Managing Personality Conflicts

I’ll admit it. I worked with people I really disliked.  It took years, but I managed to find a way to put my personal feelings aside, find some common ground and move forward.  But if you’re the one that has to manage the people that can’t stand each other, you just want to scream, “Can’t we all just get along?” Since that rarely works, try something different.

 

comment
Oct 02 2012

Who's in Your Blind Spot?

 Steve Tobak's recent blog on blind spots got me thinking about the blind spots so many managers and executives have around people, not just shortfalls around knowledge or politics.  I sometimes tend to exaggerate so I’ll say almost every executive and manager I’ve worked for had at least one blind spot when it came to his or her employees.  See if you can see yourself in these examples:

 

comment
Sep 11 2012

5 Lessons Learned From Bad Bosses

They say there are two things certain in life- death and taxes. I would argue there’s a third- working for a bad boss.  And since I just wrote about how to get rid of a bad boss, I thought you might be able to learn something from them before they go.

comment
Sep 04 2012

What to do About Bad Bosses

There are a lot of bad bosses out there.  Just ask Psychologist, Robert Hogan. At a recent American Psychologist Association conference, he stated, "seventy-five percent of working adults say the worst aspect of their job — the most stressful aspect of their job — is their immediate boss." 

 

 

comment
May 31 2012

Work is no Place for Negative Emotions

Harvard Business Review recently wrote an article on working with someone you hate. The tips are great and it’s nice to know how to deal with hatred. But is the workplace any place for hate, anger, bigotry or any other extreme negative emotion?

 

 

comment