Learning Center

Bad bosses are an unwelcome, but all too common, feature of the American workplace. Work environments have an abundance of stressors, but having a bad boss may be the worst. Consider the fact that approximately 50% of American workers have left their jobs in order to get away from a bad boss. Furthermore, according to Gallup’s 2017 State of the ...

One of the most irritating, and unfortunately too common,   injustices of the contemporary workplace is seeing an individual with less competence and an inferior work ethic advance ahead of a more skilled and hard-working person simply because they are more adept at office politics. When the wrong people are getting promoted for the wrong reasons organizational productivity and morale eventually ...

We tend to focus on resolving conflicts and not on what happens much farther upstream.  Forget about resolving conflict, what about those of us who have a hard time facing conflict at all, and when we are forced to, feel furious and awful. For many of us, due to a complex mix of upbringing, temperament, and experiences, disagreeing with someone ...

I can’t cite a source for the widely circulated statistic that “ten percent of conflicts are caused by a difference of opinion and 90% are caused by tone of voice” but my EAP consulting work supplies a steady stream of examples demonstrating the primacy of emotional tone in business communications. Whether a difference of opinion ends up leading to a ...

We spend a high percentage of our waking hours interacting with our work colleagues. Conventional wisdom has it that coworkers don’t have to like each other; they just need to do their jobs. According to some very interesting research coming out of Carnegie-Mellon and M.I.T. (not exactly epicenters of the “touchy-feely” school of business management) conventional wisdom, once again, turns ...

A recent article in the New York Times detailing the arduous demands Amazon places on its employees has put a spotlight on the subject of working long hours. The authors contend that Amazon, an amazingly successful company well on its way to become the world’s first trillion dollar retailer, is conducting a Darwinian experiment in “how far it can push ...

One of the most valuable classes I took as an undergraduate college student was a debate class. The professor took the time to uncover beliefs that we felt strongly about.  He then surprised us by having us debate the opposite position.  We were forced to develop and deliver a compelling argument that went exactly counter to what we felt strongly ...

Many organizations try to boost employee productivity by using traditional analytic approaches which focus on strategic planning, goal setting and process efficiency measures. These methods reflect the belief that better systems, planning and processes lead to better employee performance. Other organizations emphasize improving employee benefits, perks, compensation, and schedules as a means to increase productivity. This approach reflects the belief ...

What happens when you have a winning product and/or business strategy but your managers have poor people skills? Lost opportunity is what happens. Failure to capitalize is what happens. Your business loses is what happens. Even the best business strategies do not implement themselves. They require communication, coordination, alignment, and efficiency. In other words, they require leaders with strong people ...

A new research study from Stanford University and the Harvard Business School has named workplace stress as a contributor to at least 120,000 deaths a year and up to $190 billion in health care costs. 120,000 mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and coworkers who die prematurely, in part, due to work environments that are allowed to remain toxic. ...

Meetings are important. For better or worse, most organizational decisions are still made in groups. Meetings are a ubiquitous element of organizational life even as teams are now often geographically dispersed and collaborating online as well as in person. A productive meeting energizes, coordinates and galvanizes a team. Dysfunctional meetings, on the other hand, lead not only to bad decisions, ...

People who have a persistent propensity to complain, find fault and judge others harshly can sap your energy and optimism if you are not careful. One of my EAP clients recently compared the effect of a colleague’s unrelenting negativity to a toxic cloud of second hand smoke: irritating, suffocating, and pervasive. It got me thinking about how challenging it can ...

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) provide organizations and their employees an array of  counseling and supportive services to address the negative effects of workplace stress. This is an extremely important mission, and EAPs are uniquely positioned to deliver on it, but I think we should be doing even more. We should be going beyond simply repairing the damage caused by organizational ...

Advances in brain imaging technologies are extending the reach of scientific comprehension into the complex and fascinating recesses of human motivation. By studying detailed pictures of the brain’s responses to different situations neuroscientists are changing our understanding of why people act the way they do. Business leaders have an opportunity to translate these discoveries about human motivation into organizational cultures ...

It was about an hour before I was supposed to “run” my first therapy group. The clients, ranging in age from 20 to 60, were in various stages of recovery from heroin addiction. I was 26 years old, had never run a group by myself, and was suddenly feeling a little panicky about the assignment. Among them, the group members ...

“Anger impedes our ability to be happy, because anger and happiness are incompatible” -Unknown Anger is a combustible emotion which leaves a trail of regret in its wake. The inappropriate expression of anger can destroy a marriage or a career. Unexpressed anger, on the other hand, leads to a different, but equally toxic, set of problems. It can fester and ...

“A skilled [feedback] giver is great, but mostly our lives are populated by everyone else, folks who aren’t so skilled, have their own issues, or are too busy to really give us the time we need. If you’re going to take charge of your own learning you’ve got to get good at learning from these people too. A skillful and ...

In my role as an EAP consultant I have a front row seat for observing the damaging effects of workplace conflict on individuals and organizations. Destructive conflicts should not be confused with the constructive process of conflict that often propels creativity and innovation. Constructive conflict is based on a spirited competition of ideas and strategies and aims to improve the ...