Conflict

The very idea of conflict is awful. It causes discomfort, sometimes pretty intense discomfort.

 If I give in to a contentious person, or back off because I don’t want to get into an argument, I feel like dirt afterward – the doormat syndrome. Anyone who witnessed the attack and defeat/retreat may well sympathize, but they often lose respect for me anyway.

The Second-Best Motivator

 Other than one’s own self, there is no workplace motivator more powerful than good management.

Good people love to work for good managers, and their work shows it. Not-so-good people may or may not go for good management, but it is their best hope of support for improvement.

What They Don't Tell You about Stakeholders

I’d love to meet some of Andy Crowe’s Alpha Project Managers, the ones who perform so superbly at this most difficult of professions.

Can they really be so calmly proficient? Are they really so good at command and control over all those battering and befuddling problems that entangle most of their peers? Are they superior beings?

Andy’s organization, Velociteach, published the Alpha study of 876 project managers and their associates. The subjects provided input and information that turned up the 18 project managers who were highlighted in the Alpha Project Managers book. It is spot-on for what it does, but there’s an underlying reality that it touches upon only peripherally.

Inoculating against Interruptions

Maybe it’s really an interruption, and maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s your job.

Maybe much or most of what you do every day could be considered interruptions. The general nature of it might be unplanned, but it’s not unintentional. Your job is the way it is because people – including you – decided to make it that way.

That doesn’t mean you sat down and created a helter-skelter strategy for your work. Strategy usually isn’t done that way, however much we may try. Our habitual performance in the workplace is, for each of us, the product of countless decisions about what to do in response to competing priorities.

Interruptions & Disruptions

Visualize this: You’re finally into some complicated and challenging thing, and you’re making headway. Then a co-worker heaves into your cube, urgent with deadline-induced desperation. You care about the person, and you have the necessary answer.

The rescue may take just a few minutes, but you can almost physically feel the momentum being sucked out of your workday. When you wheel around to resume the more-important work, you face more than just reconnecting with the loose pieces. You have to reset this matter as a priority, and you have to patch a hole in your confidence. Can I EVER get anything done?

When Conflict Strikes

Who likes conflict, enjoys conflict?

We all know people who relish it, or seem to. Most of us don’t want anything to do with it. We dread it.

We fear even the possibility of conflict, and typically make every effort to avoid it. If there is some possibility it will occur, we depart the scene. We recoil when it erupts, flee it when we can.

Everything's a Problem

To a practical optimist, everything’s a problem. That’s why that kind of working optimist is so good at solving them.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Problems are bad, not good. Problems mean things aren’t working, and there’s cost and damage. If you see everything as a problem, you’re a pessimist, not an optimist. Right?