Category: Organizational Culture

On Putting Things Together

I often find myself work­ing with teams — or at least I would say, with groups. Smart peo­ple with good inten­tions oper­at­ing col­lec­tive­ly. Peo­ple capa­ble and often far more than just capa­ble, who want the best for their orga­ni­za­tions and work hard every­day to get there. How­ev­er, as a pro­po­nent of reflec­tive lead­er­ship I also… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Putting Things Together

The Uses of Power

On one hand, the pow­er an orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­ers hold is cru­cial to achiev­ing pos­i­tive results and impacts. But it’s also true that that pow­er can also lead to chal­leng­ing dilem­mas, espe­cial­ly when it impru­dent­ly meets its coun­ter­part, resis­tance. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the com­mon expe­ri­ence of man­agers who must imple­ment some kind of orga­ni­za­tion­al change —… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Uses of Power

The Nature of Negative Assumptions

By neg­a­tive assump­tions, I mean beliefs that you or I might hold about oth­ers that label their char­ac­ter or motives in pejo­ra­tive ways. See­ing anoth­er per­son as weak, for exam­ple, or fun­da­men­tal­ly self­ish are exam­ples of neg­a­tive assump­tions.  Such con­clu­sions have a lot more pow­er than we might expect. For one thing, neg­a­tive assump­tions about… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Nature of Neg­a­tive Assumptions

Are you intrinsically motivated? Really?

It’s easy to think you are, but your behav­ior might tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. For exam­ple, if you find your­self work­ing 24/7. It could be that you love your work, that you feel you are mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to some­thing big­ger than your­self and that at the core you are help­ing oth­ers with­out ask­ing for… Con­tin­ue read­ing Are you intrin­si­cal­ly moti­vat­ed? Really?