Let’s unpack that crocodile-soothing intervention of President Roosevelt that I described last time and relate it back to organisational change. Roosevelt, of course, had no knowledge of the powerful role of the amygdala in human fear responses. However, as a polio...
Last time, we concluded with the core finding from the Haas Business School study: power can be beneficial for individual performances but can sabotage team performances. That’s quite a paradox for leaders, who want their teams to be as effective as possible as...
People often ask good questions; but that they ask questions is rather less important than how they ask them. Case Western Reserve University Professor David Cooperrider puts what is at stake when asking a question rather deftly: “We live in the world our questions...
Conventional wisdom holds that leaders who “walk the talk” – who demonstrate consistency and congruence in what they say, do and believe – set the best examples for others. There’s a lot of truth in this, but I’d like to make a plea for the opposite: talking the walk....
In 1909, Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote a book entitled The Principles of Scientific Management. The management approach now known as “Command and Control” was born. This has dominated vast numbers of businesses for decades. Taylor’s approach was the first to bring...
We’re so accustomed to thinking in terms of the problem-solving mentality that we can be blind to what’s working well in our lives and our organisations. That statement lies at the core of a new, Gestalt-inspired approach to organisational development, dubbed by its...