Contagious Commentary by Monica Wofford

Archive for the ‘Contagious Coaching’ Category

Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:15 — 3.9MB)

Wouldn’t it be nice if difficulty in your work and life were only in your rear view mirror?

If you were on Facebook last week you may have seen the talk about Make Difficult People Disappear and the fact that the first off the press copy arrived in my office last week! When I took a look at the contents a surprising and unintended theme appeared that I hadn’t seen before. There are chapters about shifts, maps, and wheels and those are what will help you DRIVE away office difficulty. You still make it disappear mind you, but this happens to be 3 steps to quickly drive that process. Read the rest of this entry »

Think of the format of a Master Card commercial. In dealing with difficult people we have insanity, what’s typical, and then the priceless solution… or in this case 4 priceless solutions. So, there’s insanity, or dealing with difficult people in the same old way and expecting them to do something different. There’s our typical response of labeling difficult people for easy description when we talk about them and then there’s the priceless solution: using new labels that remind you to treat them in new ways so that you get different results!

So the priceless solution is for you, not the difficult person. We all know that the only person’s behavior you can change is yours so keep that in mind here and use these new labels to remind yourself how YOU can adjust your behavior when dealing with others you’ve decided are difficult.

There are four new ways of describing them: Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:00 — 3.7MB)

As leaders, I think we’ve all had moments of motivation, as well as days of ardent determination, but which one do you need to succeed as a leader? Much as you must manage some days and lead on others, or both in the same hour span, the answer is you need both motivation and determination, but what’s the difference? Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:00 — 4.6MB)

Have you ever had someone talk down to you in a way that left you feeling utterly silly? Has your boss ever been the culprit who caused you to feel that way? What would those you lead say about you? While intuitively, we know that others don’t make us feel a certain way, the truth is we don’t believe what others say unless we already, to some degree, believe it to be true. So what do you do or believe when your boss “talks down” to you? Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:15 — 4.8MB)

Are you leading with a complaint, comment or question? Only one will get the results you’re looking for.

As someone who has recently written a book called Make Difficult People Disappear and is designing conference curriculum for the same issue, I’ve spent a lot of time recently focusing on complaints and how difficult people have a LOT of them. But, if you’re the leader in your organization and you are complaining regularly about those you lead, these efforts may not change the behavior and even worse, they may land you in the Human Resource office. Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:05 — 4.7MB)

According to my recent research, the greatest source of inefficiency and profit loss in organizations lies in ineffective working relationships. In fact, several sources on the cost of what is commonly called “people problems” indicate the following statistics:

• For Managers who are not prepared to handle it or help in the resolution, 20-25% of their time is spent in day to day team member conflict
• For each issue that requires disciplinary action, an average of 13 days are spent, invested, or what many would refer to as lost.
• If that disciplinary issue escalates and requires additional follow through or formal documentation up to an including termination, the average additional investment of time is 9 days.

What could that 25% of time and 13 plus 9 days of productivity be put toward instead? Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps this a question with more than one variable to factor into the answer. However, knowing self-esteem and confidence is an essential ingredient of effective leadership, the larger question is do you help someone rise up out of failure if they are not leading or managing well or do you sit back and watch them fail? Read the rest of this entry »