Moods at the Top Move Fastest – December 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:"Moods at the top move the fastest!" I was talking with a colleague recently and while describing her boss she said, “…and she’s always in a bad mood.” Several thoughts came to mind. The first was that employees do indeed notice and pay attention to...
Chameleon Droppings – November 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:Chameleon Droppings Are Worse Than Mouse Droppings In Any Organization Walking around a large organization, you are likely to see all kinds of things—people working, people on cell phones, memos on bulletin boards, coffee pots, and in the fall when you...
Delegation – September 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:Some Common Mistakes in Delegating Tasks I was talking with a colleague recently and he was lamenting the shortcomings of delegation, namely that delegated tasks were shoddy and often incomplete. Perhaps there is an explanation. My purpose here is not...
Dealing With the Unpleasant – August 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:It is going to be unpleasant and you are going to do it. As a leader, there are those times when you have to do the unpleasant thing: to fire someone, to reassign them, to tell the employee he has bad breath. There is also the time when you have to...
Stop Thinking – July 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:STOP THINKING No doubt all of us have had the occasions when we think too much. We don’t make progress on our decision making because we keep processing the same things over and over again. What we need to do is to cultivate the mindset, “just start...
A Sense of Meaning – June 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:A SENSE OF MEANING Someone recently asked me what I meant when I said, “It’s important to have a sense of meaning in our lives.” Meaning is having a full fuel tank and feeling good about it. If you have ever traveled a long distance “running on empty,”...
Thinking About Feedback – May 1, 2019
LEARN A LITTLE:Thinking About Feedback We all know that receiving feedback can polish our skills and improve our performance. But did you ever think about who gives us feedback? If it’s someone we respect, someone who is knowledgeable, we are likely to think about it...
How to Have a Good Day – April 1, 2019
Learn A Little: All of us worry about productivity and getting things done—how to be more effective and efficient. Caroline Webb in How to Have a Good Day shares an interesting formula for fighting distractions and procrastination in eleven simple words: One...
Change Your Words – March 1, 2019
Learn a Little: “When you change have to to get to, you change a complaining voice to an appreciative heart.” – Jon Gordon – The Positive Dog Changing words and our thoughts do make a difference-even in terms of how we experience cold and windy...
How Do You Start Your Day? – February 1, 2019
Learn a Little: How we start our day has a big influence on how we feeland perform for that day. Recent research shows thatjust 3 minutes of “negative” news in the morningleaves people feeling less resourceful all day. The morning sets the feeling...