by Ji Hyun Lee Admit it. You’ve got one in your office. Perhaps you’ve been accused of being one. The back stabber is someone no one wants to know and unless you’re educated in the ways of tackling one of these energy-suckers, you’re in for a long and painful battle in the tough world of office politics. According to Dr. Mitchell Kusy, management consultant and co-author of Toxic Workplace! Managing Toxic Personalities and their Systems of Power, both male and female workers practice backbiting behavior with equal intensity. In a research [...]

by Ji Hyun Lee If you dread going into work, have anxieties and fears about your workday, it’s probably because you’ve got a bad boss making your workday a living hell. Unfortunately you’re not alone—80 percent of employees leave their jobs because of their bosses. For many people the behaviors of bad bosses begin to affect their mental and physical health, notwithstanding his/her ability to do the job well. “Simply uttering the word, ’boss’ drives an emotional response,” says Andrew O’Keeffe, a human resources executive of 25 years and author [...]

by Ji Hyun Lee It’s hard enough competing in a job market where there are more qualified candidates than there are open positions but what do you do when your biggest nemesis is another woman abusing you to get to the top? According to the Workplace Bullying Institute – Zogby survey, women single out other women 71 percent of the time. Women bullies also liked to enlist others to help target and harass other women. Fifty-three percent of the women being targeted suffered serious mental and physical harm as opposed to [...]

by Paul Meshanko Early last year, I wrote a newsletter titled, “The Art of Being Wrong”, which has gone on to become one of the most reprinted issues since then. The reason, I’m speculating, that it’s been so widely read is that the propensity to defend our own beliefs – as opposed to willingly entertaining new ones – is so easy to identify with. We all do it. Even when we know better, it’s still instinctive to most people to defend first and consider the consequences later. I’d like to [...]

by Paul Meshanko For those in pursuit of increased organizational effectiveness, there’s a new game in town. Respect. And given the demographic shifts impacting the North American workplace, it makes perfect sense. Over the past several years, there have been dozens of articles written that suggest organizations can achieve higher levels of productivity, raise morale and, subsequently, retain more of their best employees when they have cultures anchored in respect. When you’re able to consistently attract and retain the best employees, you become a learning organization. This, in turn, fosters [...]

by Paul Meshanko When you ask people what defines diversity in a business setting, the things that often come to mind are race, religion, gender and age. While an obvious mix of these characteristics in your personnel pool is the most observable measure to claim diversity in your workforce, these descriptors just barely scratch the surface of what truly makes an organization diverse. More importantly, they do not address the critical topics of how diversity is managed and how it impacts business. The trend toward increased diversity in the American [...]

by Ned Parks The above quote by Thomas Watson tells a true story. Mistakes mean you are alive, thinking and doing things. Good mistakes are measured when you look inside yourself, say “oops”, laugh and try again. When I was teaching combat tactics as a helicopter flight instructor in the U. S. Army, I had students flying along looking for the landing zone in the make-believe battlefield. They would get confused, freeze and just keep going, fly right over the make-believe enemy and get “shot down”. The really good students [...]

by Ned Parks It’s been said for several years that respect is an active process. But within that process we are finding both passive and active respect. I was recently working with a group in a workshop I conduct called, “Crash the Barrier; Build the Team”. I was not only working toward helping this team pull together, I was also exploring passive and active respect. During one of the exercises one of the team members was put out of the group as a part of the exercise. Later that person [...]

by Erica J. Pinsky You may be familiar with the 2005 Honda decision, where an employee that was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome was fired for insubordination due to his refusal to submit to a medical assessment from the company specialist. What distinguishes this decision from many others was the amount of the damages award – $500,00 in punitive damages, the highest ever awarded by a Canadian court in an employment case. The case reminded me of a time when I used to write attendance policy manuals. I would put [...]

by Erica J. Pinsky Power and its relationship to workplace culture is something I explore in detail in my upcoming book, Road to Respect: Path to Profit. Employers have traditionally had most of the power in the workplace, but that traditional power balance may be shifting more quickly than many of us realize. I recently discovered eBossWatch, a web site that lets people anonymously rate their current or former boss. A straightforward, respectful evaluation form provides relevant information about management leadership styles. Now job-seekers can go online and look at reports [...]