Why “I” is the Most Important Letter in “Team”

We’ve all heard the old cliché, “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.” It’s an adage frequently shouted by gym coaches across the world, and it’s a philosophy that has been widely, if not explicitly adopted in the corporate culture. I personally can’t speak to its effectiveness in sports (when a ball is thrown at me, my natural reaction is to duck); however, when applied to the workplace dynamic, this philosophy is dead wrong. [Read More]

The Real Workplace Family

Many companies today try to foster a sense of community (and employee loyalty) by claiming to be one big happy family. The irony is that even without the company’s efforts to create a sense of family in the workplace, we do experience our professional environment as a family. Of course, the family our company resembles is our family, complete with the same dysfunctional dynamics we experienced growing up. [Read More]

Professional Relationship Blueprints
[Excerpt from The Relationship Handbook: How to Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life]

Our professional relationships draw on two sets of relationship blueprints. The Authority Blueprint governs our relationships to authority figures, as well as our relationships to our subordinates when we are in a position of authority. The Sibling Blueprint governs our relationships to our co-workers. [Read More]