Category: Undiscussables

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 Shadow of Psychological Safety

It is prob­a­bly inevitable that when a con­cept achieves broad accep­tance that there will be debate over what it is and what it is not. Sur­vey­ing LinkedIn and oth­er social media sources, it’s appar­ent that the con­cept of psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty devel­oped by Har­vard Busi­ness School’s Amy Edmond­son has both achieved this lev­el of accep­tance and… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Shad­ow of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Safety

Drink Deep and Decide What You Need

As the great res­ig­na­tion con­tin­ues, it’s clear that things will need to change more, not less. It’s a new con­scious­ness that is aris­ing, that just won’t put up with mean­ing­less work, armored hier­ar­chies, unre­spon­sive lead­ers, exces­sive work and dead­line pres­sures and all man­ner of inequities and work­place unfair­ness­es. Peo­ple will go. They just leave. They… Con­tin­ue read­ing Drink Deep and Decide What You Need

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… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ambi­gu­i­ty, Orga­ni­za­tion­al Stress and Lead­ing Well