Search Results for: consistent

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Does your Boss have Tantrums? 4 Uncommon Strategies for You!

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(True Story!)

Imagine being a new Office Manager for a small company. The first day on the job your new boss, a.k.a the owner, meets you at the office.  He stays there for the morning and then leaves.

The other employees work afternoons and weekends. So you’re in a new role, in a new industry. You’re alone at the office, answering phones, and trying to create a weekend work schedule for people you have never met, with less than 4 hours of “training.”

Logic says that you should not be surprised when that first busy weekend goes south. But your new boss loses it!

He’s in his mid forties, tall, long legged and thin. Now his string bean legs are stomping around the office, while he is hollering, blaming and yes – he even throws a pen across the room in frustration. (Not at you – thankfully!) But wow!  Just wow!

If his behavior weren’t so immature and shocking – you would have doubled over in laughter at how crazy he looked!

In the heat of the moment you could decide that you have no desire to work for this Boss Baby.  And you could walk out the door, put in your notice, begin updating your resume…

Or you could make some uncommon choices:

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How to Choose Your Response to Situations Beyond Your Control

Increasing understanding, critical thinking, compassion and collaboration

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Viktor Frankl survived a concentration camp and said this…

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

Post Charlottesville conflict continues to fill the airwaves and cyberspace, encouraging chaos and division.

…So how have you been responding?  Are you:

  1. Denying that this conflict is impacting real lives, workplaces and communities?
  2. Pushing your perspective on others?
  3. Sitting in silence and worrying about it?
  4. Studying the issues, and then carrying your candle into the darkness, determined to be a part of the solution?

IF YOU SEEK TO BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION:

The process below will help you fully leverage your freedom, while strategically using both your mind and your heart.

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5 Ways Assumptions Impact Real Problem Solving

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I’ve been working with a group of pre and early teens and we’ve been talking about perceptions and reality. In our last meeting, I asked if they have ever greeted someone and not been greeted in return. Emphatically – yes!

So I broke them up into small groups and asked them to come up with a list of at least 15 reasons why someone they greeted would not respond.

At first they listed things like this:

  • They hate me
  • They are mean
  • They are rude
  • They are a bully
  • They are racist

It took awhile for them to start coming up with reasons like this:

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Uncomfortable Questions and Leadership…

Do you encourage them, consider them and ask them?

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I was leading a small team in a culturally diverse city in the U.S. when two of my employees asked why all the titled leaders on our leadership team were white.

I was raised in a part of the country that was not culturally diverse, today – nearly a decade after their question 89% of the population in my home state is white and 95% of the county that surrounded the town I grew up in was white.  As a result, it was a question I didn’t see coming and one I did not have a good answer for.

[Tweet “If you seek to lead well… You will consider uncomfortable questions.”]

My reactions:

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Maximize Your Purpose with an Altered Path

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The Dream GiverYears ago I read a book called The Dream Giver.

It’s a beautiful little book that emphasizes that each one of us is born for a purpose. As children we often see this as our big dream.  Often between childhood and adulthood we forget the dream or walk away from it because it seems impossible.  And then one day we are reminded of the dream again and we make the choice to pursue the dream or to let it die forever.  Then the book helps you anticipate and prepare for the challenges you will encounter as you journey from where you are to where that dream is.

I purchased the book in 2003 shortly after it was published, simply because I liked the author.  As soon as I opened it I was hooked, because I had a dream as a child. It was a dream that I forgot all about as life happened. And then in 1999, I it came back full force. In 2001, I took my first very clear step toward the dream.

Since 2003, I’ve referred to that book several times a year. It’s highlighted, filled with notes, scribbles and pages that are bent back.  In October 2010 I referred to it constantly as I launched a new consulting business in a city I had never lived in and knew no one but my husband.

In November 2012 just as my new business was gaining momentum, my husband was asked to accept a position a half a world away, and this quote from the book filled my mind…