Business Learning Coach Blog : Succinct yet informative original articles on leadership & management

Everything You Need to Know about Servant Leadership You Learned from Your Mom

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. In a previous article I discussed servant leadership and the behavioral characteristics of practitioners of this approach. While one can refer to that article for a more complete explication of servant leadership, let me briefly recap this leadership approach. The concept of servant leadership was first put forth by Robert Greenleaf [...]

Effectively Dealing with Workplace Conflict

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. In their 2008 study Workplace Conflict and How Business Can Harness it to Thrive, the leadership development firm CPP found that on average employees spend upwards of ten percent of their workweek dealing with some form of conflict. Further, a quarter of all respondents said they “called in sick” to avoid [...]

Did You Hear About Harry? The Corrosive Effects of Workplace Gossip

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. “Did you hear about what happened to Vinnie at the company party?” “What do you think about Jon and Wendy always going to lunch together?” “Can you believe management did that?” No doubt these or other such conversation starters have been uttered in your workplace. And if you are like 99.999% [...]

Stages of Grief When an Entrepreneur Steps Aside

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. Tony loved his business– it was his baby. He loved it so much that he knew running it had outstripped his capacity to grow it any further. He lacked the managerial capacity and financial wherewithal needed to get his business to the next level. So, when Effinity Capital took an equity [...]

Stop Scapegoating Your Boss!

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. Jon was braced for a difficult meeting with Larry, his manager. But, he didn’t know how difficult it would actually be. For the past six months his team consistently failed to deliver against their assigned metrics. Today was reckoning day. After what seemed to Jon like an infinite tongue lashing, Larry concluded [...]

Promoting Positive Organizational Change through Appreciative Inquiry

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. Appreciative Inquiry is a change technique that approaches change from a positive vantage point. The underlying presumption of AI is that focusing on positive events energizes and engages individuals, thus leading to more effective and enduring change. According to AI founder David Cooperrider: “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search for the [...]

Providing Effective Feedback… The Gift that Keeps on Giving

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. Workplace feedback involves providing employees information relative to their job performance as well as how effectively they are integrating with their work team. Feedback takes two basic forms. Redirecting feedback is used to change behaviors that are incorrect, counterproductive, or otherwise diminish performance. In contrast, reinforcing feedback is given to encourage [...]

Overcoming Change Resistance

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. The previous two articles in this series suggest that the most effective way to deal with change resistance is to avoid it in the first place. The underlying argument is that effective planning a priori is the key to mitigating resistance. Unfortunately, all the planning in the world will not completely [...]

Avoiding GIGO in Organizational Change… Macro Sources of Change Resistance

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. The previous article was the first in a three part look at organizational change. This series focuses on planning for and mitigating resistance to change. The first article explored some individual-level causes of resistance, which include protecting one’s self-interest, misunderstandings and trust issues, disagreements about the speed, scope, and scale of [...]

Avoiding GIGO in Organizational Change… Reasons Individuals Resist Organizational Change

By Jim Grinnell, Ph.D. Putting organizational change in motion is a relatively easy undertaking. It’s keeping it on track that takes lots of skill and hard work. It is unfortunate that there are far more leaders who thrust change upon their organizations than there are who successfully usher the change through to success. (Estimates suggest [...]

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