We are living in complicated times, friends. People seem to be up in arms over everything. Take this week’s brouhaha over Nike deciding to include Colin Kaepernick in a new campaign. There seem to be two very distinct opinions regarding the company’s decision, and neither side is pulling any punches. Once upon a time ago, our opinions were

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You are leading a team and some (maybe all) of the members see themselves as individual contributors, not necessarily members of a team. They state and show that they’d rather work alone, and prefer individual accomplishments and results over tying their fortunes to a team. You want a cohesive team. That is, a group collaborating

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by Chuck Chapman, Content Strategy Coordinator Think of all the people who have “remote” roles in our lives. It doesn’t matter if they’re celebrities who deliver us entertainment through our screens, people we’ve “met” via social media, or customer service reps we only talk to over the phone. These are people we’ve never locked eyes

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You may have made this fevered pitch for emotional control to someone (or yourself): “Get your emotions under control!” And yet, while you may have wanted to do it, you might not have known how. Let’s face it, things at work can be frustrating. It could be a Customer yelling at you, a report that

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Team collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are becoming more common for organizations with remote workers. So are complaints. Time that used to be spent cursing email is now spent rolling our eyes every time that little hashtag symbol pops up on our screen. It doesn’t have to be that way. Like every communication

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As I travel around the country to lead workshops, I often hear frustrations with or objections to some of the supervisory/leadership techniques and approaches that I advocate and teach. I seldom hear an outright disagreement with the general approach. Instead, people express their frustration or objection like this: “That sounds great, but … “I work

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  by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel No matter where your team members are located, good, strong working relationships are critical in order to have a high performing team. Remote team members don’t have to be “best friends.” They don’t even necessarily have to like each other all the time, but there has to be

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Few people get as much positive feedback as they need or deserve, especially at work. So if you see morale taking a nose-dive (or even if you just want to do something nice for your employees), complete this super simple activity to give everyone a big morale boost. Create an envelope with each team member’s name

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When you have explained something a number of times to the same person or group of people, it is really easy to allow your frustration with the communication process to build. It’s a small step from frustration to anger and another small step from anger to an escalating conflict. Other people’s failure to understand you

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Every leader has been told that offering positive feedback is one of the most valuable things you can do. You’ve heard of all the benefits. You may have heard that you don’t do it enough. If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve likely learned the basics of giving positive feedback successfully, such as: Make it

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