Category Archives: Organizational Culture

Leadership and Support

By “sup­port” I mean sit­ting on the same side of the table as some­one else, being able to empathize and to respect the per­son­’s dig­ni­ty and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. It means serv­ing as an advo­cate who gen­uine­ly believes in this per­son and is will­ing to help, even if it involves chal­leng­ing feed­back and straight talk. To me, […]

July 10, 2018 – 1:09 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Consciousness, Listening, Organizational Culture | Comments (0)

Not Deep Enough

It often seems plain that the prob­lems of orga­ni­za­tions are real­ly just the prob­lems of us unwill­ing to go deep enough. Deep enough into see­ing things from oth­ers’ per­spec­tives (whether cus­tomers or staff or peers) and deep enough into our own “stuff,” as well — the stuff that gets in the way of effec­tive leadership. […]

May 2, 2018 – 8:50 am | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Consciousness, Organizational Culture | Comments (2)

How to Have a Strategy for Change

Think of “strat­e­gy” as hav­ing a per­spec­tive, an agen­da if you will, about how things could be bet­ter. When I’m help­ing a man­ag­er think about what those things are for a depart­ment in a more or less tra­di­tion­al hier­ar­chy, I like to employ a kind of sys­tems map that illu­mi­nates dif­fer­ent aspects of the work […]

February 23, 2016 – 5:26 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Listening, Openness, Organizational Culture, Power, Transformation, Undiscussables | Comments (0)

Leadership Feedback, Leadership Wounds

In one way or anoth­er, lead­ers are always receiv­ing feed­back. Some­times it is from the voiced reac­tions of peo­ple at a meet­ing they are guid­ing. Some­times it is more for­mal, for exam­ple from a staff sur­vey or 360 degree appraisal process. As a con­sul­tant and coach, I’ve noticed a fair­ly com­mon pat­tern in the process […]

January 4, 2016 – 10:35 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Conflict, Consciousness, Grief, Organizational Culture, Reflective Leadership, Self-Knowledge, Shadow, Wounds | Comments (4)