Keep up with the latest news on workplace leadership strategies
A Behavioral Science Approach to Trauma-Informed Dispute Resolution – The ACT Matrix
By Ronald Pizzo and Dr. Dana Lee-Bagley We are social beings with a biological need for connection.. Our nature is to interact and form relationships with others. We are also wired to survive. We are always on the alert for cues that it is not safe to connect, such as in the presence of conflict and disagreement. Trauma compromises a person’s ability to connect, replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection and survival. When we perceive threats, our survival system [...]
Restoring Workplace Teams – What can the T.C. Williams Titans teach us?
In 1971, coach Herman Boone became the first African American head coach for the Virginian high school football team, the T.C. Williams Titans. Also, in 1971 T.C. Williams became a desegregated school amid high racial tensions and protests. The football team was also divided: white players were threatening not to play with their black teammates. Despite these challenges, coach Boone forged a united and diverse team that won the state championship and were runner’s up in the national championship. [...]
Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again – Restoring Teams Post Investigation
A workplace investigation is not a tool for ‘fixing’ broken work environments or healing broken workplace relationships. The after-effects of an investigation can make things worse. Teams stuck in conflict are less productive and less efficient. In this article, I describe an evidence-based process for restoring teams after a workplace investigation: https://irc.queensu.ca/articles/putting-humpty-dumpty-back-together-again-restoring-teams-after-workplace-investigations Ron Pizzo is a certified mediator and certified coach. He is also certified in the Pro-Social Communication Process, based on ACT. He works with teams and leaders to resolve workplace conflict [...]
Five Steps for Increasing Your Productivity at Work – Upping Your Inner Game
Every day, we struggle to get our work done on time. Despite our best intentions, our to-do lists keep growing and we often don’t quite finish what we have to get done. It is even more difficult to stay on task with all the distractions that vie for our attention in this fast-paced world, like text messages, emails, Facebook and LinkedIn. To take control of our time and to stay on task, we need to step up our inner [...]
Burnout or the Winter Blues?
Burnout and the winter blues have common effects. Feeling irritable, lethargic, unhappy and generally stuck by your circumstances, are common to both. I have been working with overworked and tired health care professionals who felt stuck with no way out (with jobs that are just too demanding) in the ACTion program. ACTion[1] is a 10-week phone-based, personalized coaching program to provide workers with the skills and resources to help manage personal, work, and life demands. It is designed to build individual resources and resiliency [...]
A Lawyer Who Likes to Coach: What’s Up with That?
When I tell my friends that I am now a CPCC (Certified Professional Co-active Coach) and that I like to coach professionals, leaders and teams in the workplace, I often get bemused looks, as if I am in the grips of a midlife crisis gone terribly wrong. In many ways, however, what coaches and lawyers do in the work place is very similar, just from a different point of view. Both coaches and lawyers ask many questions. In the courtroom, [...]
#WorkLawWednesday: Conversational Intelligence in the Workplace
We often say you get what you pay for. From this it follows that if you want employees to show up on time and to work harder you have to pay for it. Though offering monetary awards for achieving goals and targets makes intuitive sense for motivating your team, the research does not bear this out. Generally, paying for performance yields very few dividends in terms of overall performance improvements. Paying for performance misses out on the fact that we [...]
Building Respectful Workplaces
If you want to transform your organization’s culture to one that is healthy and respectful, you have to be proactive. You need to identify the things that the people in your organization value in their relationships with each other, and assess the everyday practices of the organization in light of those values. This approach is far more effective than relying only on reactive, punitive measures to achieve cultural change, for example, relying on the complaint and investigation procedures under workplace policies. This message – [...]
A Behavioral Science Approach to Trauma-Informed Dispute Resolution – The ACT Matrix
By Ronald Pizzo and Dr. Dana Lee-Bagley We are social beings with a biological need for connection.. Our nature is... read more
Restoring Workplace Teams – What can the T.C. Williams Titans teach us?
In 1971, coach Herman Boone became the first African American head coach for the Virginian high school football team,... read more