GELMI - InterPersonal Development

How should we give and receive feedback? we wonder. How much, and how often, and using which new app? How hard-edged and fearlessly candid should we be? Behind those questions, however, is another question that we’re missing, and it’s a crucial one. The search for ways to give and receive better feedback assumes that feedback is always useful. But the only reason we’re pursuing it is to help people do better. And when we examine that—asking, How can we help each person thrive and excel?—we find that the answers take us in a different direction.

The Feedback Fallacy For years managers have been encouraged to candidly praise and criticize just about everything workers do. But it turns out that feedback does not help employees thrive. First, research shows that people can’t reliably rate the performance of others: More than 50% of your rating of someone reflect...

A lot of companies struggle with two apparently unrelated problems: disengaged younger workers and a weak response to changing market conditions. A few companies have tackled both problems at the same time by creating a “shadow board” — a group of non-executive employees that works with senior executives on strategic initiatives. The purpose? To leverage the younger groups’ insights and to diversify the perspectives that executives are exposed to.

Why You Should Create a “Shadow Board” of Younger Employees Shadow boards can help companies with two pressing issues: Millennial workers’ dis-engagement and executive teams’ inability to keep up with changing market conditions. They can help with business model reinvention, cultural transformation, and process redesign. Best practices include not leavin...

Motivating employees seems like it should be easy. And it is — in theory. But while the concept of motivation may be straightforward, motivating employees in real-life situations is far more challenging. As leaders, we’re asked to understand what motivates each individual on our team and manage them accordingly. What a challenging ask of leaders, particularly those with large or dispersed teams and those who are already overwhelmed by their own workloads.

Instead, consider the emotional balance sheet: The better employees feel about themselves and their work, the more motivated they remain over time. When we step away from the traditional carrot or stick to motivate people, we can engage in a new and meaningful dialogue about work instead.

Motivating Employees Is Not About Carrots or Sticks Leaders often rely on the carrot vs. the stick approach to motivate employees, where the carrot is a reward for compliance and the stick is a consequence for non-compliance. But this is an outdated approach that never really works well. Motivation is less about employees doing great work and more ab...

In this interview with John Golden, we explore the “uncommon sense” of human interaction in leadership, teamwork, and customer relations. We highlight how often-overlooked factors like emotional intelligence, active listening, and presence can transform professional relationships and team dynamics.

Key Topics:

The Power of Active Listening:
Engage deeply by eliminating distractions and reflecting on what’s being said. Active listening builds trust and understanding, strengthening relationships.

The Emotional Balance Sheet:
Positive interactions act as deposits, while negative interactions become withdrawals. Prioritize actions that leave a lasting, positive impression.

Intentional Communication:
Set clear intentions and align non-verbal cues with your message. Intentionality fosters clarity, trust, and connection.

The Myth of Multitasking
True productivity comes from single-tasking and focused effort. Avoid task-switching to maximize efficiency and minimize errors.

The Power of Silence
Embrace pauses for reflection and deeper understanding. Silence encourages thoughtful and impactful communication.

Uncommon Sense in Leadership and Teams with Thomas Gelmi Introduction (00:00:00)John Golden introduces the episode and welcomes guest Thomas Gelmi from Switzerland.Thomas's Background (00:00:36)Thomas shares his ex...

The employee who seeks the quiet zones of an open plan office may not be shy nor sulking. They could be highly sensitive and taking time out to process a lot of information most of us are unaware of. When people work to their preferences for sensory-processing sensitivity and sensation seeking, workplace productivity and well-being are likely to improve, find two experts in the field.

High sensitivity ("sensory-processing sensitivity") is an innate trait found in 15 to 20 per cent of people. It reflects a particular survival strategy - being observant before acting - and, as Dr Elaine Aron discovered in years of research, it is different from shyness and introversion even though it may seem like these at first glance (30 per cent with the trait actually are extroverts). Sensation seeking is about how much variety and action people need.

"The two traits determine [an] optimum level for performance at work. We perform at our best when we are sufficiently stimulated but not overwhelmed," Janine Ramsey says. "Sensitivity style underpins the way in which an individual relates to and behaves in the work environment. It's a key predictor of how a person will perceive and experience the physical environment and the behaviour of others."

Sensitivity can be workplace gold - NZ Herald Latest breaking news articles, photos, video, blogs, reviews, analysis, opinion and reader comment from New Zealand and around the World - NZ Herald

Saying no to unnecessary commitments can give you the time you need to recover and rejuvenate. Saying no to daily distractions can give you the space you need to focus on what is important to you. And saying no to temptation can help you stay on track and achieve your health goals. In fact not being able to say no, is one of the most biggest downfalls that successful entrepreneurs claim as their own key mistakes.

But how do we actually get past the urgencies of everyday life and avoid distraction, so that we can focus the things that are really important to us?

A Scientific Guide to Saying No: How to Avoid Temptation, Distraction How do you say no if someone offers you that cookie or wants to "pick your brain"? The latest research shows saying no could be easier than you think.

For a variety of reasons, scholars have mostly studied the worth of CEOs and the efficacy of various management practices. But a new study suggests that front-line supervisors are far more important than many have thought.

In fact, replacing a poorly performing boss with a top-notch middle manager is roughly equivalent to adding one more worker to a nine-member team, the study concludes. “These bosses do matter, and they earn their pay,” says Kathryn Shaw of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and a coauthor, along with Stanford GSB’s Edward Lazear and the University of Utah’s Christopher Stantonopen in new window, of a working paper called “The Value of Bosses.”

Researchers: How Much Difference Does a Boss Make? Image Discussing work in San Francisco | Reuters photo by Stephen Lam Middle managers don’t get lots of respect in the workplace. And for a variety of reasons, scholars have mostly studied the worth of CEOs and the efficacy of various management practices. But a new study suggests that front-line ...

Focus matters enormously for success in life, and yet we seem to give it little attention. Daniel Goleman’s book, «Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence», explores the power of attention. “Attention works much like a muscle,” he writes, “use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows.”

To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need three kinds of focus.
- Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions.
- Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives.
- And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world.

A (person) tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, “Your focus is your reality.”

Why Focusing Is So Much Harder Now Despite the advantages of everything being only a click away, our attention span is suffering.

A primary task of leadership is to direct attention. To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention. When we speak about being focused, we commonly mean thinking about one thing while filtering out distractions. But a wealth of recent research in neuroscience shows that we focus in many ways, for different purposes, drawing on different neural pathways—some of which work in concert, while others tend to stand in opposition.

Grouping these modes of attention into three broad buckets—focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world—sheds new light on the practice of many essential leadership skills. Focusing inward and focusing constructively on others helps leaders cultivate the primary elements of emotional intelligence. A fuller understanding of how they focus on the wider world can improve their ability to devise strategy, innovate, and manage organizations.

The Focused Leader Reprint: R1312B Attention is the basis of the most essential of leadership skills—emotional, organizational, and strategic intelligence. And never has it been under greater assault. If leaders are to direct the attention of their employees toward strategy and innovation, they must first learn to f...

In the not-too-distant past, the majority of work was conducted either face-to-face or through real-time conversations in the office, factory, at meetings, or through customer visits. These personal interactions allowed people to get to know each other and create human connections. They also fostered a basic degree of courtesy since it’s awkward to have continuing contact with someone who is rude, obnoxious, or unpleasant to be around.

But for many people today, the majority of communication is neither face-to-face nor real time. The net result of this shift is that much more of our work today is conducted impersonally, which may mean that there may be less pressure to observe social niceties.

Bring Courtesy Back to the Workplace Communicating may be easier, but we have to work harder to do it with respect.

A hundred years ago, when people like Frederick Taylor were pioneering the field of scientific management, motivation was pretty easy. The idea was you could switch people from an hourly rate to a piece-rate system to do a set of repetitive tasks, and it would incentivize them to do the tasks faster.

It was a rudimentary idea, but in some organizations it’s still the philosophy behind how pay — especially incentive pay — is set. And there’s actually a decent amount of research that incentives like that can work to increase motivation when there is a really clear understanding of exactly what tasks must be done to earn the reward.

But in a knowledge work or creative work economy, those easy-to-understand, repetitive tasks are becoming more and more rare.

The 3 things that keep people feeling motivated at work Keeping employees engaged and excited isn’t about free lunches and massages (although those are nice). Here are the factors that can really make a difference in their daily satisfaction, from…

When it comes to how we feel about our work, who we work with plays a crucial role. Recent research, including a survey from employee engagement platform Ten Spot, has found that managers are playing a key role. In fact, 46% of participants said they currently have a manager who makes them want to quit their job. And even among respondents in managerial roles, 81% said they were considering leaving because of their own managers.

The choices we make as managers have a direct impact on workplace culture and attrition.

The authors of this article asked their community to share with them their experiences with managers who negatively impacted their workplace culture, and what they wished they’d done differently. Which of these things has a manager of yours done?

9 Manager Mistakes That Damage Workplace Culture - Thrive Global The people we work with can have a direct impact on our happiness and our overall well-being.