Conflict. It’s something that many of us prefer to avoid, but it can often be unavoidable. It’s a natural, if not always pleasant part of dealing with people. As leaders, it’s important that we understand the best and most effective ways to manage conflict in the workplace. Various studies have been conducted to assess how…
Labelling others. We do it all the time. Labels make life easy for us. In the supermarket, labels make it easy to identify and pick up the exact items we want, and on our clothes, they tell us how we should and shouldn’t treat them. But people aren’t objects. We place labels on them based…
One of the biggest challenges faced by my clients is dealing with conflict. They’ll take drastic steps to avoid confrontation or “difficult conversations,” even if it affects their ability to lead. What they often fail to consider is how to prevent these uncomfortable situations from coming up in the first place! During our coaching conversations,…
Recently, I’ve been working with a senior leader who was slowly losing patience with a team member. My client noticed the team member was struggling to complete his work, which led to a dip in performance. The leader had a fortnightly meeting with the team member to go through the allocated tasks, and couldn’t understand…
How do you feel when you hear negative feedback about your behaviour? Especially when the complaint comes from the person you feel is at fault? As a leader, you are expected to role model certain behaviours. But this isn’t easy when team members speak over you or appear to challenge your authority in front of…
Something I’ve noticed when working with leaders in coaching or facilitated sessions is our natural tendency to focus outside ourselves. We spend all our time concentrating on the things that are visible to others – our behaviour, language or body language – but not really noticing what’s going on inside. Recently, a client described a…
Recently, I was working with a group of senior leaders who all expressed their frustration about the lack of engagement with staff. This was particularly noticeable during meetings, where the conversations were all one way and despite asking open questions to engage staff, they felt they just weren’t getting anywhere. In my experience, when staff…
