Nobody likes to be micromanaged and we usually associate it with an overbearing boss who just likes to stick his nose into everyone’s business. Micro-management, however, does have its rightful place in many workplace situations. Recently I was meeting with a regulatory and compliance officer for a technology firm and she shared about the challenges she faces in influencing her colleagues about the importance of her role. Sure, she can be a pain in the butt, she admitted, but her...

A few months ago, I found the room spinning when I went to get up out of bed. It only lasted 15 seconds or so but after 4 days of it, I thought it best to see my physician. He diagnosed me within a few minutes as having “‘benign paroxysmal positional vertigo,” (it’s always good to see benign in a medical diagnosis.) The treatment is pretty straightforward for this form of vertigo and involved seeing a vestibular physical therapist who...

We’re in Canada this week with our family traveling between Montreal and Quebec City. Canada and the US celebrate independence during this first week of July with our Northern neighbors commemorating the formation of the Dominion of Canada. In 1867, the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada (eventually Ontario and Quebec) came together as a “kingdom in its own right.” Full independence occurred some 60 years later. Given the British lost their US colonies 90 years earlier,...

I ran into some youth baseball players having pizza with their parents. They had just finished their game and were down. One of the dad’s shared that they had won two games yesterday and they were all feeling good about their victory, but their personal and group self-esteem took a downward hit as their team was vanquished in today’s tournament. Self-esteem is our own subjective opinion of our own self-worth. Have a good day and we feel good. Have a...

In one organization I worked with, I was facilitating a meeting where the team was reviewing their weekly dashboard report that consisted of mostly green dots indicating that all was moving along well. The head of the group stated that everyone was verbally reporting to her that they were having trouble keeping up with the work demands yet there were no yellow or red dots on the report. Most everyone was silent until we probed the team a bit and...

We were in New York last week celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary when we headed off to the Broadway half-price ticket window and bought tickets to a new and mostly unheard of show called Hadestown. This musical recalls the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and their journey to dark reaches of the underworld. The play is presented as if it appears in a New Orleans jazz club with an onstage 7-piece band. The show picked up 8 Tony...