Dear Crucial Skills, I’m president of my church choir’s advisory council. The choir has long had a “slush fund” that is used for various choir-related expenses, but it is not administered by the advisory council. I would like to change this, but am unsure of how to approach the “owners” of the fund. These are …
Dear Crucial Skills, I have been doing a job for 14 years, making improvements and reevaluating each year to make it more efficient and produce better results. The two teams I have been dealing with have always expressed satisfaction with my work. We now have a different management team with a different philosophy; they want …
During the month of July, we publish “best of” content. The following article was first published on September 20, 2009. Dear Crucial Skills, My supervisor often gives me leadership responsibility for projects involving multiple departments. However, my position is not viewed as one of authority. As a result, I struggle to get results from others …
Dear Crucial Skills, My department is in the midst of reorganization. While I am trying to remain positive, the change I am having the most difficulty with is my friend and coworker becoming my manager. We had an open and honest conversation about how we don’t want this to affect our friendship, but I can …
I have a very hard time getting my children to do their chores. They often volunteer to help people outside of the house but, rarely make extra effort to help out at home. Growing up, my siblings and I saw what needed to be done around the house and just did it. My kids don’t seem to have any motivation to do anything. When asked to do a specific task, the normal response is to do the bare minimum (not always a good job at that) and not an iota more. While I’m sure it’s my fault that they are this way, I don’t know where to start to change things. Help!
I am the manager of a small intensive care unit. I struggle to get staff to commit to using a tool that would make our patient care rounds more efficient and ensure that we cover all aspects of care. How do I hold sixty-seven crucial accountability discussions?
My husband was terminated from his job last June because he was told it was “not a good fit.” He worked from home and I could tell that during conference calls he was usually either blamed for not getting a job done on time or was defensive about the work he did. It’s now March and still no job prospects. He is very defensive when I suggest job opportunities, networking, or re-training. I am to the point where I am shutting down because of his attitude, but finances are becoming critical. How do I talk to him about real solutions for job hunting and networking without him getting so defensive?
What do I say to a boss who consistently steals credit for my work on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis? If a question comes from a client and she doesn’t know the answer (which is often the case), she asks me to help her out. She then turns around and delivers my advice to the client as her own. She strenuously objects if I suggest that we call the client together—even more so if I contact the client—all in the name of “teamwork” of course. She also secures all of my suggestions for improvement of company processes and procedures and presents them to upper management as her own. I know all about “documenting” but I don’t feel like I should have to do that. A good boss would freely give credit where credit is due, as I myself have consistently done throughout my career. By the way, the “clients” are all internal. I have been with the company for over ten years and she has been with the company for less than a year.
I try to use crucial skills in my workplace but have struggled to sound genuine and have even turned people off with my approach. I’m no actor and I sometimes have to take a moment to recall some techniques. However, I’m worried that I might still be coming off as too calculated because of some of the formulas I generally follow.
Here in Australia, we are currently undertaking a safety culture change initiative in my company using your Influencer model. I have an opinion leader who is quite negative about most things, including the Influencer strategies. This opinion leader was involved with the creation and rollout of the Vital Behaviors Roadmap and his positive support would lend great credibility to the program within his crew. How can I harness this person’s passion for positive influence rather than negative?
