Knowledge is power, so the saying goes. So when Matt DeKam, Senior Commodity Manager at Ingersoll Rand, told me that transparency has been one of the keys to his most successful supplier relationships, I was intrigued. After all, suppliers want to maximize profit, and buyers want to minimize cost. Can they really both meet their
It vexes us all: that never-ending, un-prioritized barrage of messages—from spam to strategy, trivial to tragedy. Since nearly every coaching session I conduct makes its way to the problem of email, I decided to interview Nate Whittier, a good friend and the best industrial psychologist I know, to learn how we might manage email more
Categorizing people by giving them labels is something we humans are really good at. We’ve always had tribes, territories, kingdoms, neighborhoods, cliques and departments, and sometimes these boundaries are helpful and healthy—they help us determine where we stop and others start in processes, laws and affinities. But other times, putting someone in a category makes
What’s in a name? Since leading the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts has bucked a long-standing tradition. Instead of referring to lawyers arguing cases as “Opponents,” he calls them “Friends.” About this shift, Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus said in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “I think it does have an impact on
“The longer I’m a leader, the more I’m convinced that the key to my success is discerning who to disappoint and what I can’t get done.” The executive who said this has a point. I work with someone who has the ability to disappoint people, and it’s made her extremely valuable to the company—because she
A colleague noticed the vibe of a leadership team conference call getting tense. One of the leaders was asking implicating questions to other leaders in an attempt to shift the blame for his issue onto them. He ultimately succeeded in doing so, and those he singled out quickly shut down, feeling frustrated. After the call, one
Show me a transcript of all of your emails, meetings and conversations this week, and I’ll tell you what you really value. Emails, meetings, deskwork…much of what I do each week feels productive but really isolates me from others. These activities are usually more about getting things done than about connecting with other human beings.
Does your mind sometimes have a “mind of its own”? Last Thursday night mine thought obsessively about work while I wished it would think of questions to ask my kids about their day. On Valentine’s Day, it wanted to stay up late watching a movie that I knew my wife wouldn’t enjoy. My mind is
Last week, I offended a colleague. I know this because, in the presence of others, he told me he was personally offended when I disagreed with him. Afterwards, when we were alone, the full story came out: “I’ve heard you don’t trust me — that you think I have a misguided perspective on our business.”
Many Baby Boomers are thinking about their legacy, and part of that process is positioning their material assets—businesses, cabins, money—for transfer. What may seem straightforward and impersonal on paper, however, is almost always something else entirely in reality. These assets are being transferred from and to human beings, and the fact is, humans are emotional
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE