Client relationships can at times be the most challenging relationships to navigate. They rely upon constant communication, can change quickly and are embedded with high levels of expectation. Despite our best efforts, they don’t always go to plan. And without continual transparency can result in conflict. Conflict, in the course of a client relationship can […]
Chances are at some point in your life you’ve dealt with a disagreement with your coworkers. We all have different points of view, values, and perspectives which makes it nearly impossible to avoid workplace conflicts. These conflicts can cause all sorts of issues like loss of productivity, emotional turmoil, resentment, or an inability to come […]
If you’ve ever come across someone who cannot seem to give up on an argument without being ‘right’, there’s a reason for that. And, in fact, the chances are that you may have done this yourself, even if it wasn’t intentional. Being right may be great, but if we are too focussed on being right, […]
How do you know whether you’ve won a negotiation? When we ask our clients what a successful negotiation looks like, they frequently refer to the goal of achieving a ‘win-win’ outcome. But, in reality, we still see a significant number of people approaching negotiation with a ‘win-lose’ mentality. Where does this pressure to win come from? […]
“Leave your emotions at the door!” This has been the unspoken mantra of the corporate world for so long that it might as well be printed in the induction materials. For many years, I bought into this expectation. After spending five years training my mind in the hyper-rational disciplines of Science and Law, it made […]
Barely a week has passed since the latest Australian leadership spill, and it seems like the dust is settling faster than it has in the past. Perhaps these spills are becoming so commonplace that we barely raise an eyebrow anymore. Perhaps we all just want to get on with our lives. It’s easy to dismiss the change in leadership as a change that had […]
It seems that performance review bashing has become the newest sport in human resources. Recent weeks have seen several major Australian corporates announce that they are scrapping annual performance reviews. These announcements are sending some practitioners jumping for joy – after all, plenty of research shows us that no-one like performance reviews. Before we get […]
What is your ‘fantasy ambition’? Mine is to be a musician. So when I agreed to sing a few pieces at my old law firm’s annual client function, I was secretly hoping that I would be ‘discovered’ and my career in music would take off. But the reality turned out to be a bit different. What happened […]
How do you manage your reaction to something that hits you when you’re least expecting it? I was once hit in the stomach with a basketball that I didn’t see coming. It knocked the wind right out of me, and I instinctively yelled: “I’m going to tell my mother on you!” In my defence, I was eight years old and […]
It was a scathing assessment. Would-be accountants might be good with numbers, but they lack the soft skills necessary to prosper in today’s business world. That was the parting shot fired by Peter Roebuck upon retiring as head of accounting at the University of NSW. According to an article in the Australian Financial Review, Roebuck said that “Poor […]