Employees who challenge the status quo can help create positive changes in organizations, which leads to improved productivity, creativity, and innovation. In this blog post, we will explore how employees who challenge the status quo make a difference in their organizations and how to encourage this behaviour in your workplace.
Category: Leadership
Leadership Lessons From Dan Brown’s Inferno
I am a strong believer in the statement “fiction imitates life”. I have often derived the best of life, business, relationship and leadership lessons from fiction. Great authors are great gurus. Here are two leadership lessons from Dan Brown’s bestseller Inferno.
How To Use Popular Opinion For Tough Decisions At Work?
Leaders cannot duck or bury their faces in the mud when making tough calls at work. Leadership is tested when selling unpopular decisions to the team. How do you do that? “My way or the highway” does not work. It gets you obedience, not acceptance. Do you use popular opinion as a work around? Can you?
How To Deal With Brilliant Jerks?
How do you deal with brilliant jerks at work? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says “fire them”. Ariana Huffington, cofounder of the Huffington Post says – “No brilliant jerks allowed”. The cost to the company is too high if you do. Do you agree?
Unconscious bias at work – Are you a victim or accused?
You may not need to think too hard to answer this. While I will consciously refrain from saying all, a very large majority of us have been a victim of unconscious bias. Not just victims, we all can as easily be accused of being unconsciously biased against someone.
Stereotyping is a form of bias. How often we stereotype others? How often have you been “stereotyped”?
How to have a difficult conversation with employees?
How do you deliver difficult messages to your team? What’s your style? I prefer stepping out of the office meeting room. A walk outside the building, a café work better when I need to have a difficult one on on discussion. Why are “out of office” meetings effective to deliver difficult messages?
Empathy in Leadership – Why every leader needs a customer service stint?
Empathy, compassion, listening with patience, the willingness to express gratitude and accept mistakes are some of the soft skills that leaders need to lead happy teams. Jerks cannot be good leaders. People management is about people. You cannot excel at people management if you lack empathy and compassion. Compassion and empathy in leadership is non-negotiable.
Humor Tips for the Grumpy Boss
This is one of the classic workplace characters – the grumpy boss.
Mind you. He or she is not evil or wicked. They are just grumpy – bad-tempered, irritable, annoyed. They have this unique skill to say the most pleasant of things and still manage to upset people. Here are 5 tips to help the grumpy boss add humor to his aresenal.
My Biggest Leadership Mistake
My biggest strengths as a leader have been the ability to connect with my team and help them find simple solutions for problems both at work and in life. A fellow manager once said that I “effortlessly bring a method to the madness”. However, I am like most on a journey to improve myself every day. As I would rate people management as one of my key leadership qualities, this post is about my biggest leadership mistake.
This one change will make you a better leader
There is always a method to the madness. All complexities in life and work have a simple solution somewhere close, out of sight. Leadership is one such complexity. While there are a million resources to enlighten us on becoming a better leader, I rank this one quality as the most rewarding.