Category: Engagement
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Reddit Place – closer to your organisation than you think?
Something wonderful happened a couple of weekends ago. From “When Pixels Collide“: For April Fool’s Day, Reddit launched a little experiment. It gave its users, who are all anonymous, a blank canvas called Place. The rules were simple. Each user could choose one pixel from 16 colors to place anywhere on the canvas. They could…
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Does your team have commitment issues?
The meetings have been endless – yet you’re going round in circles, and things you’d thought had been agreed keep being re-opened. Or maybe you thought you’d got your team to agree and sign their names in blood – but a few weeks later, there’s little sign of progress. You might be suffering from commitment…
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Is absence of conflict killing your team?
Conflict is healthy. Decisions taken from a set of alternatives are measurably better than plans which emerge from a single solution. Generating, developing and choosing between options is better when carried out by a group with diverse – but relevant – skills and experience. So if you have a strong, diverse team formed from capable…
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What do we mean by Trust? An example.
British politics is in turmoil. After the EU referendum, the Conservatives had a short and vicious internal fight, then appointed a new leader who has ruthlessly replaced most of the previous Cabinet. Theresa May now appears to be pursuing a very different agenda from the mandates delivered by both the 2015 General Election and the…
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What do we mean by Trust?
A few years ago, I took someone’s line-management over at short notice. We’d known each other for several years but not worked much together – I knew him as an experienced and well-respected leader of his function. But in our first 1:1, he seemed reserved, hesitant, and not a little worried – which didn’t match up with…
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Gratitude and Recognition (or saying “please”, and “thank you”)
My Dad gave me one piece of advice when I first became a manager. Always say “please”, and always say “thank you”. It costs nothing, and it shows the people you manage that you care about them. It struck me as an odd thing to say. My parents drilled into us the importance of being…