Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Sexual Harassment at Work

Bloomberg News: "Sex harassment at work gets weirder scarier" - commentary by Susan Antilla http://bit.ly/9KGaWD

Monday, August 23, 2010

Wearing Many Hats

Yesterday I was quoted twice in Brett Graff's Miami Herald's front page Money section article "Overqualified for your job? Use it to your advantage."
"Back in 2008, a South Florida financial executive found himself firing each of the 70 employees reporting to him. Then, he, too, became a casualty of the crumbling economy. The executive asked for some anonymity in exchange for his honest account of what followed."
Read the rest of the article here.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Irony of a Bad Communication Day

Just one day after I wrote about communication breakdowns at work, a fed-up flight attendant makes his get-away. The attention he is receiving tells us how much pent-up rage is out there in the workplace. Read it and weep! Not so much because of what he did but for the opportunity that now awaits him in publishing opportunities and other kinds of public appearances sure to net him a tidy some. Not that I am advocating his kind of behavior - at all - but since no one was actually harmed as a result of his behavior, human nature via Facebook and other media, is celebrating this example of bad communications and reactions gone "good" - at least for him!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

To Say or Not to Say is NOT the Question - How to Say Is

It seems more people are contacting me these days to improve their managerial communication skills or they know someone who needs to (like it's becoming an "on-the-job" problem!) and they get referred to me. Workplace communication problems run the gamut from the "absence of" when there is a problem to blowing one's top. Either way the consequence has both a lateral and longitudinal effect meaning there is an impact on the employee-manager relationship laterally, and longitudinally the entire office or department suffers because of a low-grade "fever" of malcontent or aggravation permeating the atmosphere.
Sometimes it is something minor, especially in the case of a new manager who simply doesn't yet possess the managerial skills either learned on the job or because they had no training in advance.
For example, the administrative director of a nonprofit organization here in Miami learned that one of her long time employees had been fired due to performance and logistical issues even though she was well-liked and respected. Budgeting cutbacks and the employee's inability to adapt to workplace changes proved no longer to be a good fit for her nor her department. Someone else was hired and would be starting shortly.
My client reported she didn't know how to communicate this firing to the rest of the staff. Her thoughts were to announce this at a regular staff meeting but she was afraid she might embarrass this employee. Not knowing what to do and feeling guilty about the firing - even though she understood the rationale for it - she avoided the whole thing for a couple of days, including this employee.
Now to some this may sound like a small thing but this kind of undercurrent due to non-communicated messages goes on in the workplace all the time!
What should she do, she wondered? I suggested something simple: "Why not ask her how she would like the staff to be informed?" You would think I had just handed down the Ten Commandments.
This allowed my client to begin a conversation with her employee which led to a more satisfying and meaningful interaction between them.

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Friday, August 06, 2010

Miami's Women of Action

I read this article last week in print but this morning I saw it again on the homepage of Miami Herald's Business section. I was fortunate enough to cross paths with one of the women, Marjorie Weber, on a number of occasions. One time she generously helped me and members of my condo board at Midtown Miami figure out how to read our proposed budget and another time she gave me invaluable feedback on a project I was working on called "Integrity Miami." We should all be so lucky to have trailblazers like Marjorie Weber as a mentor and inspiration.

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