ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My husband asked my help in a situation at his job and I’m turning it over to you, the experts! Two newer coworkers have formed an alliance and …
Yesterday a colleague of mine told me that the company he works for has a rather interesting practice. At the end of every quarter, no matter the company’s financial state, the sales team holds four meetings a day for two weeks. During each, they talk via conference call with the big bosses. The first call …
I’ve just returned from a week’s vacation with my wife, our parents, our children, and our grandchildren—a rambling group totaling sixteen people. Given that we varied in age from seven weeks to eighty-seven years, deciding what entertaining thing to do next was always a challenge. Frequently, as we engaged in a spirited discussion to make such decisions, someone would try to force his or her way onto the group.
Dear Crucial Skills, Recently our company moved some services “offshore” BUT (proudly) we have been able to retain the jobs of all current employees. Unfortunately, there is one employee who appears extremely negative about this situation and has been sending “negative” e-mails about it. We want this attitude and negativity to stop because it seems …
During this last month I did a couple of things I haven’t done before. I went to comedy club with my friends (a first for me) and I had a colonoscopy (also a first). One was a frightening and painful experience, and the other was the colonoscopy. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not as …
Dear Crucial Skills, I’ve recently promoted a person to be my assistant who is a very capable, gung-ho type. He has plunged himself into his new responsibilities with an inordinate zeal and is now micromanaging folks who are not his direct reports. He has an advisory role with them but no line authority. He also …
In my last article, I suggested that employees frequently defer to their boss’s suggestions even if they disagree with an idea or, worse still, if they think the idea is positively moronic. To show how this insane transformation might happen, let me share a personal experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, What does a manager do when a job has outgrown the employee? In this age of rapid growth, often the job a person was hired to do is no longer …
Dear Crucial Skills, I have a manager who seems to be missing in action. In all fairness to my manager, my work is independent and in a different location. Nonetheless, his communication is superficial, and he doesn’t act as if he’s genuinely interested in my performance. He’s difficult to find (always in meetings), fails to …
One day while waiting for my car to be repaired, I asked Leo, the repair shop’s head honcho, why his crew members kept coming to him with questions. “It’s simple,” he explained. “They aren’t as good at diagnosing as I am. Never will be. So every time they can’t figure out what to do they ask me, I tell them, and then they do it. The truth is, I know just about everything there is to know about their jobs and they don’t. That’s why I’m the boss and they aren’t.”
