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Five Secrets to Getting the Credit You Deserve and the Appreciation You Want
1. Become an expert appreciator yourself. Give others the credit they deserve. Catch them doing even small things that help the team. If your appreciation is genuine and timely, it will increase the frequency of the “appreciated behaviors” and at the same time demonstrate “appreciating people” as an important skill in itself. Appreciating useful contributions…
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Top Ten Tip-Offs That Someone Is About to Cut Your Budget
Keeping with the spirit of the season (by which we mean the end of the fiscal year, not the holidays), here is a list of phrases you will want to watch out for as your organization starts talking about the budget for 2014. Any of these may mean someone is about to cut your budget.…
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What Power and Authority Do You Have and How Do You Use It?
As we celebrate the inspirational life of Nelson Mandela this week, I am struck by how he developed a masterful understanding of power and authority. This may be a good opportunity for each of us to reflect on our own power and authority and how we are using it. There are many different definitions of…
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Four Steps to Make Your Team Meeting Worth Everyone’s Time
We have all participated in team meetings where very smart people deliver their competing brilliant insights about the “real problem” and what would solve it. “We just need to change the website to put the products front and center.” “We just need to segment our market.” “We just need to offer discounts.” “We just need…
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Experiment This Week With the Power of an Observant Thank You.
Here in the US, it’s Thanksgiving this week as well at the beginning of Hanukkah. Many folks will take time off from work to be with family. So instead of my usual Thursday post on Strategies (th)at Work, I’m doing a special short post early this week about saying thank you. First, I want to…
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Four Keys to Building Your Credibility as You Start a New Job
When you start a new job, you want to hit the ground running and build your credibility without stepping on those political landmines that can derail your plans. Here are four keys to building your credibility. First, avoid the ingratiating informers. Informers want to increase their power and influence in exchange for telling you who…
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How To Help a Boss or a Client Who Is Determined and Wrong
We are standing in the elevator and I ask my colleague, “how’s the donkey?” She replies, “dead.” We both sigh and the other people in the elevator look at us uncomfortably. A week before, my colleague’s boss made a decision that he wanted her to implement immediately. She was sure he was going to regret…
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Three Keys to Measuring and Managing Customer Satisfaction
All of us think we can whip up a customer satisfaction survey with a rating scale, send it out, and tabulate the results. What’s so hard about that? What could possibly go wrong? Here are three keys to getting it right. First, customers form their views based on the end-to-end customer service, not just on…
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Four Best Questions to Hire Someone Who Will Hit the Ground Running
Do you need to hire someone who can hit the ground running? Forget trying to find someone who will know how to do the whole job before they arrive because even if the job is similar to one they have already done, the operating environment is always different, often in subtle and important ways. What you…
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The Secret To Keeping Your Balance When Your Job Becomes A High-Wire Act
Do you feel like you are walking a tightrope at work? Maybe you have been promoted recently to a position of leadership and you are finding the politics even more complicated than you imagined. Or maybe you are finding it impossible to balance work and the rest of your life. Or maybe you are managing…