The Thoughtful Leaders Blog

Four steps to reducing the harmful effects of email

Posted by Robyn McLeod on September 8, 2011

In teaching a program on Managing Conflict recently I asked participants to name some of the sources of conflict in their organization. They offered many suggestions about the things that cause conflict to arise, and the strongest sources of conflict, the ones that seemed to generate the most nods of agreement and emphatic responses, centered around communication – lack of communication, miscommunication, conflicting messages, and misinterpreted messages.
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Filed under: Communicate/communication,Listening,Manage conflict - Tags: Communication, Conflict Management, email-free Fridays —

Are there bullies in your workplace?

Posted by Robyn McLeod on March 11, 2011

Earlier this week my family watched a program on bullying among teenagers, a subject that schools across the country are grappling with, as bullying takes place in school, outside of school, and in cyberspace. The program brought unsuspecting teens into a scenario where actors played the parts of two bullies and a victim. The program host and the parents of the teens observed their reactions via hidden cameras. Needless to say, a few of the parents felt extremely proud of their children for speaking up and confronting the bullies, while the majority of the parents watched their children remain silent, look away, or even laugh and encourage the bullies. It made for a great conversation with our children about what to do when you are bullied or you see someone else being bullied.
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Filed under: Communicate/communication,Manage conflict,Thoughtful leadership - Tags: bully, bullying in the workplace, Conflict Management, setting an example —

Let it go

Posted by Chatsworth Consulting Group on March 7, 2011

“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.” Booker T. Washington

A friend of mine used to tell me how she’d be mad at her boyfriend, and he wouldn’t even know. “We’re fighting,” she’d say, “And he has no idea.” It was clear to her that she was expending energy with her anger and frustration, and it wasn’t affecting him at all.
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Filed under: Change and grow,Manage conflict,The Thoughtful Leaders Minute - Tags: Conflict Management, Leadership, self-reflection —

The first step towards winning an argument

Posted by Chatsworth Consulting Group on January 3, 2011

“There’s more than one way to look at a problem, and they may all be right.” Norman Schwarzkopf

Have you ever been totally certain you knew the right and best answer to a problem? You knew the best way to approach an issue, how to get the greatest outcome…only someone else was also completely certain that they knew the best answer, and it wasn’t close to the solution you came up with. And what if that someone was someone who really mattered to you, whose opinion mattered, who you needed agreement from, needed on your side? And they were steadfastly asserting that their “wrong” answer was the way to go.
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Filed under: Awareness,Communicate/communication,Leadership,Manage conflict,The Thoughtful Leaders Minute - Tags: Conflict Management, Leadership, self awareness, self leadership —

BEEP! Your turn to talk

Posted by Lisa Kohn on July 23, 2010

My brother and I almost broke up over email. Well, instant messenger and then email.

We IM all the time. We joke. We play. We tease. It’s what we do. Only I joked with him one day, while we were discussing a tough family issue, and he misconstrued it and it went outrageously, quickly downhill from there. The IMs got tenser. The emails got curter…and meaner.
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