Five years ago, I took a surprising phone call from one of my peers at another Dale Carnegie office. “Matt,” he said calmly. “We’ve been invited into an RFP by a large local company. We can’t win it by ourselves. Would you be open to collaborating with us on it and we’ll split the revenue?”
Collaboration can make 1 + 1 = 3. But in order to reach that shared gain, there will be trade-offs. Whether it’s at work, at home or in the community, collaboration can sometimes feel like a painful tug-of-war between your needs and the needs of others. Consider the case of John. John is a member
Do you ever notice people’s relationship skills? How well they talk, listen, look, act and sound with different people? And how people respond to their behavior? I’ve been paying more attention to others’ relationship skills since my grandmother passed away this year. Eulogies and tributes can have a certain clarifying effect on what’s most important,
A few hours after a meeting, I received a call from one of my colleagues. “Hey,” he said. “I was a jerk to you in that meeting. I was feeling insecure and protective. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. How are you feeling about it?” His courage to have a hard conversation and
A recent youth soccer match gave me a surprising insight into organizational psychology. The players fell into two categories: the shooters and the passers. When shooters got the ball, they drove toward the goal, regardless of the screams from the coach or wide-open players on the field. Passers’ first instinct, on the other hand, was
After going through six miscarriages, we’d agreed that we should choose our new baby’s name based on what it meant, not what it sounded like. So when we arrived at the hospital six months ago, we were in full agreement that if our baby was a girl, her name would be Matilda Mae (Matilda meaning
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
Leadership is the ability to motivate others to risk, sacrifice and engage. It’s not necessarily a job title or position—there are times when you will have to lead but you won’t have the power structure that generates leverage. So what can you do to influence others in these situations? One strategy is to frame a
Power usually moves down organizational hierarchy and through customers to client-facing teams to support functions. With each pass through level or functional silo, people get further away from the epicenter of strategy and market demand. This distancing pushes people away from the planning process and into need fulfillment. The result is organizations filled with functional
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