If you want to have an innovative, collaborative, high-performing organization, then you need people with different perspectives who feel comfortable sharing their ideas. But what if those perspectives end up being damaging to your working environment? If performance drops because of the sharing of ideas, doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Open communication in the workplace […]

Every country in Asia has its own culture, but there are a few common elements throughout them, especially within East Asia. One of these elements can be very damaging to your organization’s performance: a lot of people – not all, but many – are very shy about communicating openly, and that’s bad whether we are […]

The folks at Ladders, a career consultancy, shared a recent article called 8 Things Smart People Never Reveal About Themselves At Work. It’s an interesting list, and as much as we want to communicate openly with our colleagues as a way to enhance collaboration, there are some lines it might be best not to cross. […]

I once heard a great philosopher (I think it was Jerry Seinfeld) say that research has shown the #1 fear people have is public speaking; #2 is dying. “That means,” he said, “that most people would rather be the guest of honor at a funeral than the one giving the eulogy.” A bit extreme? Perhaps. […]

Back at the end of 2008 I was asked to give a talk at a Singaporean university about the likely impact of President Obama’s election on international relations. A couple days before, one of the organizer’s assistants wrote and asked me for a bio. She wrote, “I was going to pull something from online, but […]