– No, I am not going to reveal the agenda. Before a management team development activity, participants often like to have a schedule or daily program of events. Although I obviously don’t respond as harshly as the opening comment above, I do insist that I don't want to provide a detailed daily program. The reason? Well, if the purpose of the exercise is to transform a management team so that it is equipped to achieve its goals, a predetermined schedule is counterproductive. T

After asking me this question, it felt like my supervisor stared me out and my pulse quickened. It was 2008 immediately after graduation, at the beginning of my twelve-month-internship to eventually become a licenced psychologist. In my mind's eye I scanned through all the courses I had taken in group, industrial and occupational psychology, but after a long, silent pause I felt I had no choice but to say I did not know. Before we go further with this story it is only right t

– It will cost millions and you will have to deal with the aftermath for years to come. This ominous prophecy of mine came up in a conversation with a manager working in an organisation that is in the middle of a significant process of change. I made this prediction with a certain degree of emphasis in my voice. I have met far too many change leaders, project managers and managers who have become angry or discouraged to the point where they feel there is no other option than

Have you ever had a conversation and truly felt like you were being listened to and taken seriously? Then there’s a good chance that the person you were speaking to had used one or more of the methods I’m going to explain below. The reason why I’m addressing this topic is that I recently had a coaching client who was afraid of being perceived as someone uninterested in other people's feelings and opinions. The truth, of course, was that she is interested but wondered how she

– I can’t stop thinking… do I still have a job? We can only imagine how much courage she needed to summon up in order to be able to put that question to her manager at the beginning of the change process. And we can only imagine how much speculation there had been behind closed doors amongst her colleagues, asking themselves the same question. The manager bit his lip, realising his previous communication on the matter had not been so clear, after all. I was recently hired to

Today I am going to discuss how the history of a team can impair its functioning. As demonstrated in the following two real-life examples, productivity and job satisfaction might be lowered to alarming levels. Management team #1. When I for the first time met the head of the team, I contemplated whether a diagnosis of burnout syndrome hid behind my client’s weary face. She likened the team meetings to a black hole. When I later met the entire team, I asked each member, in chr

Imagine you are sitting on a motorcycle and revving the engine while applying the brakes on the front wheel. The rear wheel keeps spinning but the motorcycle is not going anywhere. To move forwards, would you keep the brakes on and rev the engine even more, or would you ease off the brakes? If you chose the latter option, you have just embraced the principles of force-field analysis. The method in a nutshell: In relation to a goal, there are driving forces and there are restr