Daniel Robin & Associates

Making Workplaces Work Better

Skills for a Better Workplace

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Resources are organized into four categories: 
 

I. Building Relationships	People Skills and Effective Human Relations
II. Getting Things Done	Total Quality Leadership (TQL), Power Dynamics, Transitions, and the Art and Practice of Agreement
III. Developing the Organization and the People in it	Total Quality Culture, Strategies for Leading Change, Resolving Differences and Growing a Business
IV. Specialized Skills	Coaching, Consulting, Negotiation, and Group Facilitation

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Section I: Building Relationships

Collaboration at Work: What's An Elephant Between Coworkers? (029)

What is collaboration and when is it advantageous or necessary for business relations and results?

Collaborative Workplace Advantage (093)

Given that collaboration with others seems to take a lot of time and has inherent risks (disagreements, misinterpretation, broken promises), why do it?  Managers and leaders at all levels will find the answers interesting and useful.

These Seven C’s provide a platform for building a culture where teamwork thrives, people are happy and productive doing their best work ever, and can remain resilient in the face of these constantly-churning whitewaters of change.

Foundation skill #1: Describes how to strengthen rapport and how to respond when you lose it.

How to increase behavioral flexibility in communication. Also helps you take responsibility for the results you get and for learning how to increase your interpersonal effectiveness.

How we tend to "tweek" information (delete, distort and generalize) in our communication, and what to do about it.

There’s a big difference between what you directly observe and what you interpret it to mean. This distinction helps prevent and sort out misunderstandings.

1. What’s Trust Got To Do With It? Plenty! See (086) for how trust affects all your workplace relationships.
2. Where Does Trust Come From? If you don’t know (and few people do), it’ll be hard to get more of it (096).
3. Five Ways to Be Reliable. To get more trust with coworkers, focus on being trustworthy. Here’s how (106).

Does Anger Cause Blindness? (074)

Understanding the purpose of anger doesn’t stop an angry person from getting mad, but it does point to a better way of dealing with it once it arrives. This article offers non-adversarial ways of handling anger that show how to deal with an angry person and how to avoid getting "hooked" by anger of your own.

How well-equipped are you to deal with anger?  Take this short evaluation to find out.

Process improvement approach to dealing with conflicts: confront people in ways that they can hear and understand the substance of what you are saying (so they actually listen). By building a workplace based on agreements, you’ll get more trust, openness, and honesty so that when things go wrong, "confrontation" is no longer necessary. These proven techniques show you how to prevent patterns of defensiveness and increase workplace collaboration.

Do you take your job seriously? Perhaps too seriously? This is a practical guide to remembering that life is supposed to be fun.

Humor is a powerful and fun business tool. Here’s some tips on having a good time without stepping on toes.

Then what the heck is it? Asking "Why" generally gets an undesired response; this article clears up "why" this happens and suggests other ways to get the information you need.

Three-part Series on Boundaries: Exploring the Inner Frontier

1. How to Create and Maintain Healthy Workplace Boundaries (boundaries): Boundaries are limits that are always present, spoken or unspoken, honored or overstepped.  Why are healthy boundaries essential in life and at work?
2. Skills to Set and Maintain Healthy Workplace Boundaries (boundaries2): Setting healthy boundaries at work can be your saving grace; it can also be a daily testimonial to your courage and skill.
3. What's a Healthy Boundary Between You and that Maniac? (boundaries3): Whoa! How do you deal with people who are stressed out, adversarial, resistant and argumentative? Tell them to take a vacation? 

How well do you know your limits?  Take our self-assessment to find out.

Four Pillars of Getting Things Done Through Agreements (4pillars)

In order for people to honor agreements in ways that get the desired result, the following four conditions must be met. 

Eighteen-part series on Leadership in Action

1. Part 1: Fail Often to Succeed Sooner (089): If you’re lucky, and especially if you consider yourself a "lifelong learner," your mistakes could be an endless source of inspiration and growth

2. Part 2: The Quest for Making High-Quality Mistakes (099): More inspiring and motivating than "I’ll never do that again," continuous personal improvement asks "What good can possibly come from this?"

3. Part 3: False Responsibilities and Its Remedies (109): "False responsibility" is when we take charge of things that don’t belong to us, such as other people’s feelings, mistaken assumptions about who is responsible for shared outcomes, or when circumstances change but we don’t.

4. Part 4: Fix Systems, Not People (129):  When things go wrong, it is a natural reaction to blame the agent of that problem, to assume that it a person's fault.  It simply works better to presume that the system is the source of the trouble (even if the person is clearly to blame) as it sets up a non-defensive and cooperative environment. The system can always be improved, but the person might not want to be "fixed." 

5. Part 5: The Nerve to Serve (030):  The mistake is to expect service from others, when an essential aspect of leadership is to be "in service" to the needs of the organization and its people.  Here we dispel two myths of modern leadership.

6. Part 6: Knowing When to Get Out of the Way (040):  When does leadership require that you get out of the way and lead by example, rather than by directive?  This story captures a prime example on an overcrowded Golden Gate Bridge party.

7. Part 7: Measuring Mirth (050):  Business people are obsessed with measurement.  Here's a way to have more fun than your traditional measures of return-on-investment and profitability:  your "humor quotient." 

8. Part 8: Healthy Assertiveness: Pushy or Passionate (070):  Leadership that’s born of passion –blending skill and intensity with well-orchestrated flurries of activity – can be inspiring to others as a sign of commitment and strength.  But when that leadership is tinged with hostility, becomes passive-aggressive, or relies on heavy-handedness … there’s a price

9. Part 9: Speaking Up about Put-downs (080):  Hallucinations, distortions and generalizations can lead to escalation of minor problems into emotional outbursts and twisted metal; ironically, such aggressiveness both causes and results in further distortions, when the triggering event could have been easily nipped in the bud. 

10. Part 10:  Four Steps to Handling Aggressive Impulses (090):  Here are four steps to dealing more skillfully with anger impulses.  If it’s “habit anger” that’s running your show (that is, you’re angry most of the time), this process may still help, but also consider seeking outside, professional assistance.

11. Part 11:  Dealing with Aggressive Leaders - One Dirty Look at a Time (100):  Ways of ensuring that patterns of overly aggressive or abrasive leadership in others are met with a combination of compassion, skill and extremely clear boundaries.  Interpersonally, a key is knowing when to stand your ground, push back, buy time, or walk away.

12. Part 12:  Control Isn't Even for the Birds:  Nature's Leadership Lessons (021):  How control is not a two-way street.  We all tend to like being in control, but others don’t like being controlled, yet nature has a lesson or two for us (control doesn’t happen in nature … it self-organizes).

13. Part 13:  Dealing with Differences (081):  A process for dealing with adversarial behavior in others.  This article outlines easy steps for keeping the conflict manageable and dealing with differences in a healthy context – before they become energy-drainers.

14. Part 14:  The 'Grit' of Integrity (022):  When integrity becomes a committed, daily, active practice, we uphold the standards that are the mark of great leaders.  The article provides a design opportunity so you are poised for coming from integrity, making even the most sticky situations less gritty.  Nobody is perfect, so a willingness to use everything as feedback and learning is also key to integrity.

15. Part 15:  Working With Integrity – The Art of Being Your Word (042): Keeping one's agreements is a challenge for leading with integrity, but the greatest obstacles are Speed, Greed, and Creed. This article presents each and offers a plan for dealing with each.

16. Part 16: The Link Between Ethics and Culture (102):  Character and culture clash in a discussion of workplace "situational ethics."

17. Part 17:  Business Ethics as Common Sense (122):  

18. Part 18:  Building an Ethical Workplace Culture (023) 

19. Part 19:  The Sustainability Ethic at Work (033)

Note:  these last three parts will be included in our E-letters; register to receive it.

Three-part Series on Fear:

1. Is Fear Useful, or Just. . . Scary?  (037)
2. Fear is Nothing to be Afraid of (047)
3. Three Faces of Fear at Work (057)

1. Personal Tools for Leading Transitions (036)
2. Interpersonal Strategies for Leading Transitions (046)
3. Organizational Pathways: Strategies for Leading Change (056; see Section III)

1. Power Plays with People, Part I (035): Defines positional and personal power, and explores using your personal power to establish healthy boundaries and get results.
2. Fun Things to do with Power, Part II (045): How to equalize power and address conflicts when one person doesn't want resolution. This is key to moving forward.
3. Hidden Sources of Power at Work (039): The greatest power comes from collaboration … from skillfully going inside our differences and working cooperatively toward building something better than we had at the start.
4. Practical Power (049): This article we’ll get into practical applications of shared power and focus on situations where you’d want to resolve a conflict, influence an outcome, or shift a power dynamic.

1. Difficult Behavior, Pt.1 ("Who Me?") (difficult)
2. Dealing with Negativity, Pt. 2 (Whose Stuff is It?) (difficult2)
3. Difficult Behavior, Pt. 3 (difficult3)

Section III: Developing the Organization and the People In It

Vision, Mission and Goals in the Healthy Workplace (027)

We hear a lot about the importance of having shared vision, written objectives, and a clear sense of purpose. Aren't these all basically the same thing? This article describes the differences, common mistakes to avoid, and shows how each can be used as a powerful decision-making tool to build organizational effectiveness.

Leadership Out of Control: Accessing Organizational Leverage Points (118)

Building a Workplace Based on Agreements (016)

Successful workplace cultures are based on agreements. Here's some suggestions on how to get "from here to there."

How to build a workplace based on clear and complete, voluntary agreements

1. Containment (058): Negativity is a trance, often accompanied by a state of agitation or depression – a predictable reaction to adversity or change … in the workplace, as in life, the key is to not get stuck there.
2. Gripe to Grip (078): At best, skillfully dealing with negativity in others can be challenging and fun – if criticism, crankiness and complaints are shaped into a constructive forum for change. At worst, if left unstructured, such negativity can be frustrating and painful to be around.
3. Ending the Blame and Shame Game (088): In most workplaces, when there’s a problem, a person or team automatically takes the heat. This article is about accepting responsibility without buying into the Blame Game.

Reflective Learning: Learning How to Learn (094)

Organizational Pathways: Strategies for Leading Change (056)

Part III of a three-series on leading workplace transition; focus is on how to take advantage of the opportunities created by change while handling and minimizing the risks.

Part I: Overview of the tools of "alternative dispute resolution" (ADR) and how it applies to a Healthy Workplace.

Part II: Definition of the tools of ADR – mediation, negotiation, and arbitration – how to obtain and apply them.

This article invites you to assess your present workplace, and check that it fits with your chosen profession and purpose.

Helping with the Emergence of Co-operative Work (065)

Survey of the trends affecting management styles, and a call for interpersonal tools for collaboration and coaching others.

What happens when you make a simple mistake on the job? Do you get chewed out, or do you get constructive and useful feedback on how to do better? Here's some ideas to help with your growth. 

IV.a. Coaching

The Benefits and Advantages of Coaching (bencoach) A brief summary f the advantages of coaching for the coach and the person being coached.

The Eight Essential Skills of Coaching (075)

Closing the Gap Between Manager and Worker with Coaching (087): There is an age-old gap between management and those managed.  Roughly 90% of the time, a coaching approach – asking rather than telling, collaborative problem-solving, open and direct communication – will make a huge difference.

IV.b. Negotiation and Conflict Resolution 

Turning Opposition to Understanding Through Aikido (025)

How the martial art of Aikido applies to the business art of getting things done.

Useful attitudes and assumptions to help resolve interpersonal disputes

A comprehensive model to interpersonal conflict resolution and effective workplace negotiation.

How to overcome competitive, win-lose scripting to negotiate with power and grace.

Tools to balance and integrate competitive urges with the need to cooperate.

Secrets to successful conflict resolution and negotiation: learn how to disagree respectfully and at the right times. 

Team-Building Tools for Effective Groups (facilitate)

Highlights the contents of a toolkit for leading groups, available workshops and seminars, peer coaching, and the Five Qualities of Effective Teams.

Meeting Expectations (059)

A company’s meetings are where the cultural "rubber meets the road," and the espoused theories about "who we think we are" become practical demonstrations of "who we really are." 

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