Would you like to try a few coaching questions? Take a notepad and get started: What’s the last, frustrating and still unresolved conflict you’ve been facing? Remember the situation, and imagine you’re in a room, facing your conflict counterpart, and speaking to him or her*. How would you summarize your feelings about the situation? How
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Would you like to try a few coaching questions? Take a notepad and get started: What were your key successes over the last year? Who are the people who need to know about them? Who among these people are indeed aware of your successes? What do they know about them? What do they ignore? What
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  Would you like to try a few coaching questions? Take a notepad and get started: When you delegate some work, what is your typical communication style? What feedback did you get about it? What typically works well? What aspect of your communication do you typically struggle with when delegating? What would be one or
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It’s important to understand and navigate through complexity… Inspiration rarely choses nerdy, complicated, nerve-breaking or headache-provoking alleys. Inspiration is very much about simple, obvious and striking images. About an immediate and compelling understanding. It’s the “eurêka” moment that creates alleviation and joy, and triggers the desire to act. That sudden “insight” which fuels our energy
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Why speak, if you don’t think you’ll be heard? Sometimes you’re the only one to have a different opinion in the room. Caution or strategy would call you to keep quiet. But courage calls you to express your point. Why in heaven should make your point if you know that a decision has been made?
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One of the key differences across cultures lies in how people relate to power. In some cultures, power tends to be concentrated in the hands of some key individuals. “Power distribution is extremely visible in the way people use space.” They’re called hierarchical cultures. In others, power is more equally distributed among people and we
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Does your work week feel like a long list of exhausting tasks? As I was filing some old musical scores the other day, I got intrigued and reviewed some pages, remembering with pleasure how I loved to play certain pieces or on the contrary struggled with some technically challenging parts. I looked, turned pages and
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Constant rejection is no good friend of trust! Would you trust someone at work if they consistently push back when you ask them something ? Whether it’s about some information, some quick help, scheduling a meeting… if « no » is a recurrent answer, most of us start to develop mistrust, even though this person’s reaction might be
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Welcome to the delights of international English! Yes, indeed, there is American English, British English, South African English… and “international English”, this daily work life English spoken by non-natives all over the globe, with different accents and an incredible variety of grammatical twists and mysteries. Like any language it’s got its own rules, tricks and traps.
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You wouldn’t trust someone whom you feel doesn’t really listen to you when you explain something, would you ? Pick someone at work with whom you’d like to reinforce trust. In the coming days, make it a point to practice listening to that person, more effectively and more carefully than usual.