When You Want to Lend a Helping Hand
May 31, 2007
A former mediation student of mine passed away last week and I’ve found my thoughts turning repeatedly to his wife and what she must be experiencing right now. Given David’s special kindness and his natural ability to reach out to others, I imagine that there are many in her community who are now trying to do the same for Allie.
These musings brought to mind a new website designed just for such moments, when many individuals want to help a family in crisis. I’m recalling times when a colleague has been ill or lost a family member, and a group of us has tried to offer solace by helping out with life’s more mundane demands. Lotsa Helping Hands was created to make the act of helping a bit easier: [Read more]
Good Read on Managing Change: Our Iceberg Is Melting
May 29, 2007
Penguins are definitely in fashion. Harvard B School prof and organizational change expert John Kotter certainly hasn’t missed the trend. With Holger Rathgeber, Kotter has penned a delightful, simple and informative change management fable based in an Antarctic penguin colony.
In Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
Read it once through for the fun of the story and the dry penguin wit. You can do it in less than an evening. Then read it again for the change management lessons. Then keep it on your bookshelf for reference, or even better, invite your management team to read and discuss it. Back in my college dean days, it’s the kind of book I’d have asked staff to read before we headed out for our annual retreat picnic.
Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.
Should I confront that conflict? 7 questions to ask
May 25, 2007
Some disputes are worth your effort. Some are worth turning your back and walking away. How do you when to talk and when to walk?
I offer the following seven questions as an informal litmus test for you to use when you’re trying to decide:
- Can I let this go…really let it go? Sometimes you think you can let go of it, maybe even think you have, but the effects creep into your mind, your heart, or your relationship. The walls in home and work relationships build one brick at a time, after all. If you can’t really let go, or try and find it isn’t working, then there’s a message for you in that.
- If I don’t deal with this one, will it eat at a work or home relationship that is important to me? This is a slightly different version of the first question. I recommend considering both of them.
- If I confront this, what are the things I and my relationship with that person will gain? In my experience, folks considering whether or not to try to deal with a conflict have a pretty easy time catastrophizing. Dwelling on all that could go wrong prevents you from giving equal time to all you may be missing if you don’t deal.
- What is the worst that can happen if it doesn’t go well and what specific steps will I take to recover? The other problem with catastrophizing is dwelling in the muck without investing time to determine how you might get out of it. I find that when clients consider the worst case scenario and then consider concrete steps they’d take to recover, it becomes much clearer about whether it’s worth confronting the problem or letting it truly slide away for posterity.
- Are there others who stand to lose if I don’t confront this? Are there co-workers, direct reports, customers, family members, or others on whom this situation has had an impact and who would benefit, directly or indirectly, from me stepping up to the conversation?
- When I imagine myself thinking about this in a month, will this be one that counted? Will I even remember it in a month? Enough said.
- When I’m 100 and looking back at my life, will this be a dispute or a relationship that counted? I call this one my “life review litmus test.” It’s the one I use with myself and with my clients when they’re struggling with taking on a difficult conversation with a loved one or a treasured colleague.
How do you know when to talk or walk?
Lessons from the Cold War: Preparedness for Workplace Conflict
May 23, 2007
I’m still thinking about that 1950s Handbook of Preparedness from Rod’s scrapbook, in part because I’ve received so many notes from readers about it. Apparently I’m not alone in looking back at “duck and cover” with awe at the naivete!
There was another section of Rod’s booklet that offers an idea with merit for conflict resolution and I thought I’d share it with you. The opening paragraph reads,
There are three phases of family preparedness which could mean the difference between life and death in a disaster: home shelter, disaster know-how, first aid.
If we could reduce the draconian approach a bit, these three phases handily mirror the three phases organizational leaders and managers can use to manage workplace conflict effectively: [Read more]
Lessons from the Cold War: How to Clean Up the Fallout
May 21, 2007
Remember “duck and cover”? If you’re in your 40s or older and grew up in the U.S., you probably do. I recall those classroom drills designed to help us survive a nuclear attack by hiding under our desks. Yeah, right.
Rod, a child during the height of the Cold War, was going through old scrapbooks last night and found his 1958 copy of the government-issued “Handbook for Emergencies.” Included were disaster preparedness tips for fire, flood hurricane and tornado…and nuclear fallout.
I found myself particularly drawn to the page excerpted here (click to view entire page), initially for its sheer lunacy: Shower to get the radioactive “dust” off of you, and vacuum up the remainder.
But then I got to thinking…It’s darkly ridiculous advice for surviving nuclear fallout. But it’s not half bad for another kind of fallout, the kind that follows a painful argument with someone important to you. [Read more]
Conflict Management Articles Vault for May 2007
May 16, 2007
The Conflict Management Articles Vault is a monthly feature that dips into the archives and shares still-relevant articles from one year ago:
- Interview: Liz Strauss, Publishing Consultant: Particularly relevant given the proximity of this post to SOBCon!
- Conflict Hack: I Hear You: Good tip for when you think they’re not hearing you at all.
- Certainty in the Asparagus Patch: Conflict resolution in the garden…who knew?
- Email and Communication: In Moments of Tension, Pick Up the Phone: Keyboard is great for a lot, but not so great for this.
- In Difficult Conversations, Avoid the Zax Trap: All these years later and Dr. Seuss is still teaching us stuff. [Read more]
5 Lessons from SOBs
May 14, 2007
I had the chance to learn from over 100 SOBs this past weekend. And true to their SOB-ness, they taught me a lot.
The SOBs were Successful and Outstanding Bloggers and the event was SOBCon ‘07. Attendees were all people who think of themselves in some form as “conversation architects” (with a nod to David Armano for the apropos phrase), online, professionally offline or both. These were folks who taught me something new every time they spoke, and folks for whom connection, community and engagement are really important.
I’m still processing what I learned for use in business, but I’m here today to share my favorite take-aways for engaging your most difficult conversations and building connection with those who really matter to you, at work and home: [Read more]
