management Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Carpenter Smith Consulting, LLC

How Do I Help People Know What They Don’t Know?

May 19, 2014

We received some very nice comments about last week’s post, thank you, and also another question that deserves some thought. “What do you do with people who don’t know enough to know whether or not they are going to hurt the business?” Last week we talked about how to establish the 3-5 rules that, if set, could help guide individuals and teams as they are tackling all the things that come at them day-to-day and week-to-week. The challenge of course,…

How to Identify the “Right” 3 – 5 Rules

May 12, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Thank you for your comments on last week’s post, 3 – 5 Rules. A lot of executives out there resonated with the idea of providing 3 – 5 key expectations or “rules” that can guide their team as they make choices in their leadership and their work. And, many of you asked how to identify the “right” rules for your teams. As we said in last week’s post, the key to developing powerful rules “is to keep them broad enough…

3 – 5 Rules

May 5, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

We are often in the role of providing guidance to those who provide direction to others—executive, managers, community leaders, parents and coaches—and we regularly find that they have many and varied expectations and “rules” for performance. We also find that the people they are directing often report that they are constantly guessing about whether they know the rule of the day. In over twenty years of coaching and consulting, we have found that people are most successful when they have…

Having “Difficult” Conversations

March 17, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

We were recently asked, “What can a new manager do when they need to have a difficult conversation?” As we thought about this, we were struck by how we’d all like to think that it’s just new managers who struggle with this, but in fact, people from seasoned CEOs to soccer coaches to spouses and kids all struggle with having difficult conversations and, as a result, often avoid the important conversations that can contribute to creating greater connection, development of…

What to do When Meetings Derail

March 10, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Two weeks ago, we talked about Creating Effective Meetings and last week we shared the contributions of one of our readers in Beyond Effective Meetings. We trust that you are starting to think more deeply about the meetings that you initiate and the meetings you are in. It is critical to ensure that your meetings are moving your teams forward so that they can create success vs. impeding success. Once you have paused to reflect on the meetings you are…

Beyond Effective Meetings

March 3, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Last week our focus was on Creating Effective Meetings. We heard from a lot of members of our community who said that the post was tremendously helpful and one of our readers provided some excellent ideas to consider. Bill S. in Illinois sent this note: Great ideas on meetings! Let me offer another suggestion: group all meetings in the morning or afternoon to leave large blocks of time available to actually work. I work in Information Technology and it is…

Creating Effective Meetings

February 24, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

As consultants, we hear a lot of complaints about meetings. We hear that there are too many, they eat up the bulk of the workweek, and most of them are ineffective. From our perspective, the only reason to get 3 to 5 or even 10 or more people in a room is so that when they leave, they are able to be more effective. They leave with information that creates confidence, they leave feeling they have influenced decisions that are…

Help, I Can’t Keep Up: Email Management

August 5, 2013

Monday Morning Business Coach

Whether you are working on your Purpose and Vision or you are working on creating a rich and balanced life, one of the most challenging things clients struggle with in their email inbox. Research suggests that most people open their email in the morning and let the contents set their agenda for at least the next hour and often the whole day. We see that in our lives and we suspect you see it in yours. Moving forward on…

The Power to “Give and Take”

April 1, 2013

Monday Morning Business Coach

In our combined 30+ years of coaching, one of the observations we have made is that some people tend to be concerned about giving enough to the organization for which they work, and some tend to be concerned about getting enough from the organization for which they work. The phenomenon peaked our curiosity so we looked around to see if this approach continued over time or was specific to one situation or another. Overall, we found that there is…

Your Meeting Agenda: Recipe for Success

September 17, 2012

Monday Morning Business Coach

As consultants we have been in and observed more meetings than we can probably count and can say without hesitation that the best meetings always, always have a good agenda. The businessperson’s relationship with agenda’s has not been consistent over the years. In the 90’s, many agenda’s went overboard and became dictatorial – they were rigid, tedious and drained all life or spontaneity from meetings. They were born of a zealous need to use those new computer programs to organize…