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How To Deal With Difficult People

Over the holidays a friend (I’ll call her Linda) who works in retail took me aside to vent about one of her colleagues. This individual (let’s call him Stan) managed to press every imaginable button on Linda’s personal control panel.



First of all, he was very talented and he knew it. Stan ranked among the top team managers in her firm. His mastery of particular product lines was unassailable. Everyone looked up to him for his expertise. Therein was part of the problem. Stan could not… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on September 22, 2010 at 12:13pm — No Comments

Converting Enemies To Allies: How To Build Alliances That Work

Not long ago a director of a mid-sized consumer goods retailer asked me to help her resolve a conflict between two of her managers, Sarah and Carl. Sarah was focused, driven and had a reputation for getting what she wanted, no matter what. Her most important project was in jeopardy. Despite her sincere efforts at negotiating in good faith, she could not get Carl, the manager of IT for her region, to support her. Her project required a significant level of teamwork. Everyone in the region would… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on September 22, 2010 at 12:00pm — No Comments

What Really Motivates People At Work? How To Move Beyond Carrots And Sticks

For anyone who manages staff, getting the best out of your people can be a continual struggle. How can you reward good performance in a way that will guarantee continued improvement? How can you ensure that poor performance is turned around? Even during a recession, fear of losing one’s job at best only leads to compliance with minimum performance standards. Sullen compliance is no substitute for enthusiasm and excellence. Fear is not very good as a motivator of discretionary effort.… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on September 22, 2010 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Viral Leadership: How Can You Create Positive Change in Your Organization That Spreads By Itself?

Ellen, a business owner in the service sector with a staff of 40 employees, was overwhelmed by my question: “What could you do to create momentum about the changes you want to see around here without spending money or taking people away from their jobs?” The two of us were near the end of a long meeting on what she could do to improve her bottom line. The issues of falling revenue, customer dissatisfaction, aggressive competition and poor teamwork were welded together like sheet metal in a… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on September 22, 2010 at 12:00pm — No Comments

How To Run Effective Meetings

I once had to watch the executive team of a large pharmaceutical firm slog through a two-hour business-update meeting. Sounds dull? If you weren’t a shareholder in this company then yes, that meeting was painfully dull. But if you were a shareholder, then you would have been totally infuriated. These executives bickered, didn’t listen to each other, failed to make any decisions, avoided key issues, got lost on tangents and wasted a lot of time. As I was sitting next to their HR director, I… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on September 22, 2010 at 12:00pm — No Comments

The Science and Art of Great Interviewing

As the so-called ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery continue to pop up, many businesses, both large and small, may need to hire more staff to cope with increased customer demand, or so we all hope! This could mean that managers and business owners might be doing a lot of interviewing.



Conducting effective interviews – interviews that result in finding the right people for the right price – is an incredibly important action for driving business success. A lot of benefit – and risk –… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Make These Recession Survival Strategies Work For You: Courage and Entrepreneurship

Whether you are a business owner, an employee or a solo entrepreneur, you will need to be at your best to survive this recession. Victim behaviour, blaming others, the bunker mentality and obsessive cynicism are all strategies for failure. Regardless of your own financial predicaments, the best person to get things moving is patiently waiting for you in the mirror.



There is more than enough gloomy news to discourage everyone. We all know the script: Bank failures, stock market… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Accepting the Gift of Business Failure: Resilience

Occasionally in my own training and coaching business I have had to gag on the bitter taste of failure. For example: A client turns down a proposal I slaved over for days… an existing client decides on a whim to go with another supplier ... I misjudge a client’s situation and present a seminar that is off the mark ... a large chunk of potential coaching business that I was counting on for future income inexplicably evaporates ... negative feedback from one participant causes a client to cancel… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Managing During Tough Times

To say that these are very tough times to be a manager, entrepreneur or business owner, no matter what the business sector or size of organization is more than just an acknowledgment of the obvious. It is to say that the game has changed. What worked before may not work anymore.



First there are the client issues: canceled orders, plans for expansion put on hold, decision-making processes that seem forever caught in limbo, pleas for special deals on pricing, protracted negotiations,… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Are Inter-generational Conflicts Hurting Your Business?

Last year I was asked to go into a mid-sized technology firm and deliver a conference presentation on Intergenerational Communication. When I started asking questions to find out exactly what they meant and what they wanted, a familiar pattern emerged: Employees of different generations, working together but not understanding each other and assuming the worst about each others' intentions.



The business impact of this lack of trust and poor communication was that the firm’s external… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Catch Your People Doing Something Right: How to lead an organization or a work team based on each person's individual strengths.

In organizations across the country, management continues to exhort their employees to identify and overcome weaknesses in order to achieve optimum performance. The Holy Grail of career success, we are told, is to be found in the heroic language of struggle, overcoming challenges, breaking through barriers and working ceaselessly to develop a broad portfolio of competencies.



Peel away the jargon and we find that most workers are still being told that if only they could get better at… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 29, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Transactional Selling or Strategic Partnerships: Which is Right for You?

Years ago I delivered a basic sales course that started with an exercise on negative experiences from the consumer’s perspective. The participants had many complaints about sales reps who offended them. It was as if I had unleashed an evil genie into the room. Their list of villains was a roster of the usual suspects: Door-to-door sales people, real estate agents, car sales reps, telemarketers, commissioned electronics sales reps, mutual fund promoters and so on. No one in sales was spared… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 27, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

What Leaders Need to Know About Delegating Work

When I worked for a bank years ago, I had two memorable managers. Gail was wonderful. She always seemed to know how to get me to do my best work. I didn’t know how she did this and to be fair to her, she didn’t know either. Our working relationship seemed trusting and respectful. I enjoyed my job and felt as if my work mattered.



The less I have to remember about working for Harry, the better. He used a passive-aggressive style of leadership and complained about me behind my back.… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 27, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Where Does Innovation Come From? How To Get More Great Ideas At Work

Business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs wrestle with seemingly intractable problems all the time. The best of them realize that the solutions to their problems often can be found among those who know their businesses best: their employees. Their challenge is: “How can I get my people to help solve these problems that are holding us back?”



Developing innovative ideas that can overcome huge business challenges is not like implementing a straightforward action plan. You… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 27, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

The Basics of Giving and Receiving Feedback

Everyone needs to be able to give and receive constructive feedback in a clear, positive way. In an ideal organization, feedback should be seen as a gift, not an attack. Why a gift?



Feedback tells us if our actions are effective. Feedback shows us how our actions are helping us get the results we want. Feedback also tells us how are actions influence others.



Suppose your actions are getting in the way of your ability to get the results you want. Suppose these same actions… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 27, 2009 at 4:00pm — No Comments

How To Create Stronger Teams At Work

Last year I received a call from a manager of a design team at a hi-tech firm; this manager complained that his people were a team in name only. In practice they were really a collection of 9 very bright solo contributors that were herded together for organizational convenience. All of them preferred to work on their own or in small cliques, collaborating across the team only when absolutely necessary. But their company needed them to work closely together and speak with a unified voice to… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 27, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Workplace Coaching

When my father joined the workforce, the idea of hiring a coach to help him develop his job skills would have seemed utterly absurd. His boss would have regarded such a suggestion as beyond lunacy. Why spend a penny on one-on-one coaching? You either quickly learned on the job what was expected of you or you were fired. After WW II, both public and private sector organizations began to invest substantially in staff development. The ruling model was classroom training. New employees were shipped… Continue

Added by Bill Templeman on July 21, 2009 at 9:30pm — No Comments

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