You can never learn too much.
We have all been there: the online meeting is already quite intense, and there’s this one colleague who scores the hat trick of annoying habits. Or maybe there’s no colleague who is like this… maybe it’s you and you don’t even know! Read on to check if you might be annoying your colleagues without even knowing…
Nonviolent communication (NVC) as developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s is an approach to human interaction based on the assumption that everybody is capable of empathy and compassion, and that conflict only arises when your own needs are not met. NVC is bigger than your workplace – for some, it’s more like a world view, and there are also parenting strategies based on NVC. It basically can be applied to any system or organization, because it’s so universal – that’s the beauty of it!
There are many, many things that you have to learn once you become a team leader. It’s basically a lifelong
Boy, I wished that I hadn’t heard this sentence in real life from a manager – but I have. Learning and developing your team still is news to some people in a leading position. If you are one of them, please take a few minutes and read on. I’ll promise to make it short! Here’s five good reasons why you should encourage your team to learn, even if you’re really not interested in their development.
No matter whether it’s due to the pandemic or because you already had an established remote team – if there’s one thing that we can all agree on, it’s that remote meetings just don’t feel the same as meetings in person. That may be in a good or in a bad way, and it is definitely something that also depends on your personal preferences. While some of us love meeting remotely, some others will always find it somehow inconvenient. However, you may not have the choice. And while your team members have the freedom to just hate it, you as their team leader will always have two hearts in your chest: Your personal preference, which might be one way or the other, and the necessity to make it work and get the most out of it.
If your company worked fine during the pandemic-induces lockdown, you now have a very strong counter-argument for your My team cannot work remotely speech. Additionally, just forcing everybody back to the office of course would be possible, but is a misuse of your power which at least some of your team members will not forgive easily. It’s up to you whether you think that you want to go down that route…
Close your eyes and think of someone you really, truly trust. I bet it’s neither your boss, nor a colleague, right? It may be your spouse, your parent, your best friend, or your child. If you’re spiritual, it could be your God. However, you will most often hear this sentence from your boss or colleague. Let’s figure out why.
Have you closed your company or department during the Corona pandemic? I bet you didn’t. I bet, suddenly, it was possible to work from home. If you didn’t close your company, if your whole team (or a high percentage of your team) worked from home during the lockdown, you just created the strongest counterargument against yourself – congrats, and welcome to 2020!
When discussing bias and prejudices with colleagues, I have more than once heard the sentence: This is not a problem for me. For others, yes, but I am free of bias… I think. Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning: No one on this planet (and to my knowledge in the whole universe) is free from bias. There is a pretty simple explanation for this: Because we all have a brain. As a team leader, our most important job is to be aware of this fact, accept it, and act as independent from it as possible.
