Leaders are almost universally judged on their ability to generate revenue. A prospering business must generate enough income to support development and growth. Even nonprofits must secure donations, user fees, grants, or similar streams of revenue to retain talent and achieve real-world results. But how do leaders best secure that revenue? Years ago a group of Harvard Business School faculty …
As a values-based management consultancy, much of our work focuses on the human issues of leadership such as dignity and respect, appreciation and gratitude, vision and inspiration. The idea of being a leader of people, not just processes and programs, strikes a chord in countless managers and supervisors. Yet time and again they say that no matter what they do, …
The responsibility for addressing the imperative challenge of creating unity rests upon two different but overlapping groups. First, it is essential that managers and supervisors, those people invested with formal organizational authority, commit themselves to forging the required unity, both between themselves and between the people that report to them. The unity of management is a prerequisite to …
What exactly is a job? A person could work a lifetime without ever explicitly considering such a question. But its importance should not be underestimated, for actions are guided and shaped (as well as constrained and limited) by below-the-line understandings of what one is actually doing day after day. In the most basic formulation, a job could be described simply …
All of us listen. From morning to night we listen to spouses, kids, clients, friends, coworkers, and employees. But the very fact that we do it so much fools us into believing that we do it well. The reality, of course, is that our superficial and often scattered attention is no more listening than communication is simply telling people stuff. …
All below-the-line beliefs and biases held by leaders influence the functioning of human systems. But few are more important than those concerning human dignity and worth. These qualities address our basic sense of place in the world. They speak to our most fundamental right to exist. And because they are so central to human self-identity and self-conception, they are effectively …
Content communication — the whats, whens and whys of day-to-day interaction — is extremely seductive in its tangibility. But leaders cannot afford to underestimate the impact of relational communication in the functioning of any human system. To understand the enormity of this influence, put yourself in the shoes of a woman working in an office full of men who …
Communication can be divided into two broad categories: content and relational. Content is the what of any message. It is the facts and figures, the ideas and opinions that we transmit through e-mails, conversations, memos, or notes on the bulletin board. It is anything that can be expressed in words. Relational communication pertains to the who of any interaction. Though …
Any time two or more people work in tandem, they create a human system. And that system will be only as effective as the patterns of communication that support it. For communication is the means by which diverse talents can be directed toward a shared goal, the way a collection of individual I’s can be transformed into a cohesive and …
Instant gratification is widely prized today, not the least in business circles. The number of leadership books promising tips, tricks, and secrets to achieve quick and painless change — of ones’ employees, ones’ organization, ones’ self — testifies to the number of leaders seeking the silver bullet solution. Of course many leaders realize that things which seem too good to …