Category Archives: Trust

Ambiguity, Organizational Stress and Leading Well

Back in the late 1980’s when I was doing recon­nais­sance into how well peo­ple were speak­ing up in orga­ni­za­tions, there were two main behav­iors by lead­ers that peo­ple told me caused them to become care­ful about express­ing them­selves. One was abra­sive behav­ior by lead­ers — shout­ing, crit­i­ciz­ing, insult­ing or oth­er­wise under­min­ing peo­ple. The oth­er leadership […]

April 18, 2022 – 2:50 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Power, Trust, Undiscussables | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

On Organizational Anger

There is a form of orga­ni­za­tion­al anger that all lead­ers need to under­stand. It is not the hos­tile out­burst of an aggriev­ed staff mem­ber, though this may be a symp­tom just as a shoot­er in a pub­lic place can be a symp­tom of a broad­er social despair. It is not the same as deal­ing with […]

March 30, 2021 – 3:07 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Conflict, Love, Self-Knowledge, Trust | Comments (0)

The Other Contagion: Mistrust

Under any cir­cum­stances how peo­ple per­ceive they are being treat­ed by their employ­ers either cre­ates greater or less­er trust. The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic nat­u­ral­ly stirs up and may dras­ti­cal­ly height­en what­ev­er lev­el of trust is part of an exist­ing work­place envi­ron­ment — depend­ing on what the lead­ers do. A lot has been made of ensur­ing adequate […]

March 16, 2020 – 2:42 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Changing the World, Reflective Leadership, Self-Knowledge, Trust | Comments (4)

On Workplace Depersonalization

I have been think­ing a lot late­ly about work­place deper­son­al­iza­tion. Let me give you a cou­ple of exam­ples. True sto­ries. I go for a doc­tor’s appoint­ment and am sit­ting in the wait­ing area while oth­ers check in. One of the recep­tion­ists says to an old­er, incom­ing patient: “Oh, hel­lo! It’s so nice to see you! […]

December 11, 2019 – 1:44 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Self-Knowledge, Trust | Comments (3)