Do you say “yes” too often?
How many times do you say “yes” to a request only to find yourself stressed or in a time crunch? Are you the person everyone knows will say “yes” when asked to do something? What do you think motivates this type of behavior? While saying “yes” and sorting out details later can be effective in […]
Network much?
What is the most effective way to find a job? How can you have a positive impact on your career? How can you build more meaningful relationships professionally? The answer to these three questions is by building your network! So, why is it that in a recent study by Marketing Expertus, only 25% of professionals […]
Do you fall in and out of love with your job?
For the past twenty-three years, I have worked at the same organization, and I am frequently asked what has kept me engaged for such a long time. Oh, my goodness, there are so very many things, the research, the faculty, the constituents, the staff, and last but not least, my fantastic leadership team. Not too […]
Just eat the last doughnut!
Over my spring break with my daughter, I was unwinding on the beach and noticing those patterns in life that I am often too busy to see because I am constantly moving at warp speed. What struck me was all the serving I do without asking or expecting to be served. As a child, I […]
A different type of resolution: What is your “mission-critical” statement?
The tradition of making resolutions goes back to Babylonian times, and research on why we make New Year’s resolutions suggests that using temporal landmarks, dates of significance that provide a frame for a new beginning, are helpful in physiologically providing us with a sense of renewal. As we roll into a new year, many of […]
Managing emotions in the workplace.
Throughout my professional career, I have never seen or taken a managerial course about managing my emotions or the emotions of others in the workplace. Yet, during the course of my career, I have found that emotions are at the root of most of the behavior I have had to navigate. For many of us, […]
The art and science of asking questions.
As a child, I asked a lot of questions, and many times, my mother would recite the proverb, “curiosity killed the cat,” then, with a big smile, would state, “but satisfaction brought it back.” She always had great patience with all my questions and never tired of my curious mind. Asking questions has always been […]
Our words matter.
Many of us struggle with language and the use or perceived misuse of words. In recent years, our word choices in certain areas have come to communicate much more than the plain meaning of a word. Words like diversity, privilege, and ally have taken on meanings based on the cultural and social context of the […]
Out of office???
As managers and leaders, many of our employees look to us to either signal or give explicit permission to take time away from work. Therefore, it is essential to foster a culture where stepping away undisturbed to recharge is okay and encouraged. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report states that employee stress is […]
How to be a guppy again.
For any profession, there are different levels of mastery. The conscious competence learning model suggests four levels of learning, from incompetence to competence. The four levels follow with my fish analogies in parenthesis. They are unconscious incompetence (guppy), conscious incompetence (minnow), conscious competence (shark), and unconscious competence (orca). Throughout our careers, we become different types […]
360 feedback and influence.
Receiving feedback from direct reports, peers, and managers can be challenging to digest. My mindset in these moments is that there is a grain of truth in almost every piece of feedback I receive because, for the person giving the feedback, this is how they perceive me. However, this does not always lessen the sting […]
The Last 30 Days.
Barring exigent circumstances, how you resign from your job and depart from an organization matters. A lot has been written about the first 90 days of a job but not very much about the last 30 days of a job. A 2021 Gallop analysis found that 48% of the working population is actively searching or […]
Employee fear: anxiety and phobias.
As a manager, how do you know if you have an employee suffering from anxiety in the workplace? Before digging into anxiety, it helps to understand fear. Fear is a natural emotion that all of us experience as humans. When we think about the word fear, we usually think about it in primal terms, an […]
Working long hours? Rx: You need a hobby.
Have you noticed that your work sometimes feels as if it expands or contracts to whatever period of time you set aside for it? This phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s Law which states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” When I was a young child, I remember having […]
The penalty box.
Have you ever felt as if you have been placed in the “penalty box” by your manager? Everyone has at one time or another. But why is that? There can be many reasons. Sometimes we misinterpret what a manager or leader says; at other times, we fill in the gaps with our own narrative, and […]
