The manager (or consultant) who practises Edgar Schein’s “gentle art of asking” drops the old-fashioned humiliation-averse managerial stance in favour of actively humbling oneself to tap into their team's resourcefulness. Schein describes Humble Inquiry like this:...
Today, the most enlightened parents know that they've “got it right” when they can talk to their children in such a way that their children feel free to talk back. Surprisingly, many businesses seem to have neglected this basic truth; if managers can’t talk to people...
Last time, we began our tour of David Cooperrider’s “Three Circles of Strength” framework: if Circle 1 involves elevating strengths, Circle 2 progresses to multiplying them into – in Cooperrider’s words – “macro combinations and configurations.” Let’s look at an...
A large company generates 2000 measurement systems for assessing problems, including exit surveys to study turnover, an annual low morale survey and focus groups with its most dissatisfied customers. Result? 80 per cent of management attention is focussed on fixing...
In a seminal paper of 1978, the social psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen argued that normal scientific assumptions couldn’t be applied to the study of human relationships; they simply couldn’t achieve the prediction and control they’d accomplished in the so-called “hard”...
There is a peculiar fact about positive thinking: it tends to evoke a “shadow” of “negative” thoughts and feelings. If I am reminiscing about a lost loved one, I may find myself bathed in feelings of warmth and affection; however, sadness over the loss and even anger...
