If you don’t befriend Angie, she can wreck you. And worse, she can cause you to wreck those around you. But, first you have to realize she is part of your organization. It took me many years to bring Angie into the light, and I’m still working to understand how to work with her. Angie … Continued
Last week, I posited that you and I have the ability and choice to be more or less authentic. Occasionally, we consciously decide how much or how little of our “real” selves we will show. But in nearly every relationship and even every encounter, we unconsciously decide how true we will be to our core self, … Continued
This belongs to the general series on the incredible power of partnership — of “paired leadership.” And this is the last for now in the mini-series on “leading a subordinate to partnership.” The first 4 are all available at danmulhern.com/category/reading-for-leading. I have been writing about helping lead a subordinate to become a partner. And last … Continued
In a continuing series on the power of creating partnerships – including with those who are “below” us. Recap: For the past two weeks I have been writing about how it’s possible to turn (nearly every) top-down relationship into a partnership, and that doing so generates greater substantive and relational results for both people. I … Continued
I am in the middle of an experiment in the course I am teaching to Masters in Public Policy students at Berkeley. I share this for two reasons that I hope you will find value in, and which I will explain in the 2 numbered paragraphs below. First, the experiments: I have long subscribed to … Continued
Note: This was originally published on March 4, 2013 Friends, After a lunch on Friday, one of my students told her female classmate, and then told me, “You’re a pusher.” I’m not sure if today’s students understand that back in the day, a pusher, was a drug pusher,* but they knew it still didn’t sound … Continued
This post was originally published on March 25, 2013. Friends, A wonderful recent college grad was seeking advice … about how to give advice. Her organization is one that’s trying to do the right thing by giving the front line (where she is) lots of feedback AND asking for lots of feedback from them to … Continued
I originally published this column in 2008 and got almost 80 reader responses. Thought it worth sharing with some minor revisions… Do you make anything of this? Last Monday I wrote about “managing up.” I got only 4 blog comments, three of which were random attacks on the Governor that were unrelated to my column. … Continued
I led a workshop last week in San Francisco for the Institute for Management Studies, and I was reminded again about how bosses can make their people miserable. This is about how not to do that! Among the 40 or so participants there were about six ghosts, managers the participants had left behind at their workplaces, … Continued
Over the 20 or so years I have been explicitly reading, writing and thinking about leadership, I have tried to see it in simpler and simpler ways. Originally, I was captivated by vision. Whether you lead from “above,” or, from below-where-the-action-is, you can generate power by helping people to focus on just what we are trying … Continued