Monthly Archives: November 2013

How to Give Your Boss Bad News

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My first job was in the office of an insurance company at the ripe old age of 14. It was the Easter break and I spent two weeks filing and finding files for people. One day, one of the agents sent me to find a file for a particular client, and I couldn’t find it.

I reported this back to the agent, who needed it desperately to present to his boss. He glanced over to the bosses office and saw him berating a fellow staff member. The door opened and out cam a tearful secretary. The agent then told me that I had to tell the boss that I couldn’t find the file, because the boss was in a bad mood, and it was my fault anyway… Not knowing any better, I did so. Got an earful and left the boss’s office with a ‘flea in my ear’. It turns out that I did the exact opposite of the DARN approach. But I was 14 at the time. I meet clients almost daily who need to deliver bad news… so go ahead and darn it:

 Or, perhaps you trusted your team and now you have empowerment run amok.   You don’t want to blame… but you’re mad too.  And worse, she might have to tell her boss.  How do you tell your boss the bad news?

See full story on letsgrowleaders.com

Image courtesy of letsgrowleaders.com

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How to be in rapport with others

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The wonderful Ready to Manage folk have another great article for you. Building rapport with others. What to do, and how to do it:

Building rapport is the process of establishing a harmonious relationship with someone so that the relationship feels as close as possible to being a friend. Good rapport can therefore be helpful in a range of life circumstances including work, home or play situations. But once learned, this is a powerful skill that must be used with care and integrity as it can be misused to manipulate someone. We must take care to use it only where our intention is to help them get something they will thank us for later.

In simple summary terms, rapport is best built progressively using the following broad behaviors:

  1. Think of other people as being worthwhile and value their diversity.
  2. Notice body language, breathing, personality style, tone, language etc.
  3. Treat the other person with respect and integrity.
  4. Practice Active Listening at all times.
  5. Ask questions gently and sensitively to show that you care about the other person.
  6. Avoid matching negative emotions – you will both feel bad.
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Left brain – Right brain? Myth busted! Or is it?

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Are you left brained or right brained? If you are predominantly logical, you are meant to be left brain dominant, the creative types… well, they are right brained. Or are they? Research out of the University of Utah shows NO EVIDENCE that your brain is as lateralized as you might believe…

Aug. 14, 2013 — Chances are, you’ve heard the label of being a “right-brained” or “left-brained” thinker. Logical, detail-oriented and analytical? That’s left-brained behavior. Creative, thoughtful and subjective? Your brain’s right side functions stronger — or so long-held assumptions suggest.

But newly released research findings from University of Utah neuroscientists assert that there is no evidence within brain imaging that indicates some people are right-brained or left-brained.

For years in popular culture, the terms left-brained and right-brained have come to refer to personality types, with an assumption that some people use the right side of their brain more, while some use the left side more.

Following a two-year study, University of Utah researchers have debunked that myth through identifying specific networks in the left and right brain that process lateralized functions. Lateralization of brain function means that there are certain mental processes that are mainly specialized to one of the brain’s left or right hemispheres. During the course of the study, researchers analyzed resting brain scans of 1,011 people between the ages of seven and 29. In each person, they studied functional lateralization of the brain measured for thousands of brain regions — finding no relationship that individuals preferentially use their left -brain network or right- brain network more often.

Results of the study are groundbreaking, as they may change the way people think about the old right-brain versus left-brain theory, he said.

“Everyone should understand the personality types associated with the terminology ‘left-brained’ and ‘right-brained’ and how they relate to him or her personally; however, we just don’t see patterns where the whole left-brain network is more connected or the whole right-brain network is more connected in some people. It may be that personality types have nothing to do with one hemisphere being more active, stronger, or more connected,” said Nielsen.

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