Category: Conflict

The Psychic Space of Relationships

What’s clear is that when peo­ple come into one another’s pres­ence, they essen­tial­ly rub up against one anoth­er, trans­mit­ting sig­nals to one anoth­er that are per­ceived as a com­bi­na­tion of threats and wel­comes.  This is what it means to be in con­tact.  Some­times the threats out­weigh the wel­comes; some­times the reverse.  The threats and wel­comes are at var­i­ous… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Psy­chic Space of Relationships

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

The Connection Between Thinking and Behavior

It isn’t always so clear how our think­ing dri­ves our behav­ior.  Some time ago I found myself work­ing with a lead­er­ship client who I’ll give the fic­ti­tious name, Michael. I asked him dur­ing one of our con­ver­sa­tions: “Michael, how do you feel about work­ing with your col­league, Jeff?” “Oh, Jef­f’s okay,” he said to me,… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Con­nec­tion Between Think­ing and Behavior