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Why the NBA’s Attempt to Manage Conflict Failed

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Stressful times spawn stressed-out people, and stressed-out people tend to lash out. Often the drama is played out in private. Sometimes it’s not; sometimes that conflict is played out for the entire world to see. Such is the case with today’s collapse of the National Basketball Association’s labor negotiation. It is hard to debate that […]

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Why First Impressions are Hard to Change

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Relationships strengthen and weaken based on interactions the brain catalogs into three buckets: non-verbal evaluations, voice and tone, and selected words. Therefore a strong first impression goes a heck of a long way toward launching a solid relationship. A weak first impression is very difficult to overcome Researchers at NYU, Stanford, Tufts, and NYU have […]

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How Introverts Can Become Good Networkers

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Workforces are comprised of introverts, extroverts, and personalities in-between. The mix varies from place to place because the nature of a company’s work often shapes its culture. For example, an aggressive sales organization tends to hire competitive extroverts. Methodical, detailed-oriented industries (such as engineering and accounting firms) often skew heavily toward quiet, skilled introverts. It […]

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Why Workplace Rivalries Exist

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Sibling rivalries are good practice for conflicts we later see in competitive arenas like sports, politics, and the workplace. Work rivalries can be good or bad. Good ones inspire healthy competition. Bad ones cause friction, rumors, backstabbing, and emotional backlashes in defense of wounded self-images. While it’s easy to blame disruptive households on bad parenting […]

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Why Silence is Good … and Bad

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I was in a client meeting this morning, the only one born early enough to understand the significance of Neil Armstrong’s July 20, 1969 walk on the moon. The moon really isn’t that far away—only about 240,000 miles—and many business travelers fly farther than that each year. But back in the late 1960s when the […]

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