DRIVEN Blog
Do You “Stand Under” The Realities of Others?
3 Simple Exercises to Live in Allyship. According to an article published in October 2020 in The Atlantic, “There has never been an anti-racist majority in American history. There may be one today.”
Mindset Shift: Why Replacing Judgment With Evaluation is Critical
Did you happen to catch yourself judging others this past week? Have you thought to yourself or said to others, “You really should…” or “He’s just being…” or “Why can’t she just do it this way”? If your answer…
Pressure Points: Stress and Your Addiction To Being Right
Challenging yourself to resist the temptation to always be right, however admirable, is an arduous endeavor indeed. The sharper perspective and genuine curiosity necessary for such a task…
All The Answers: Releasing Your Addiction To Being Right
Looking back over the first two-thirds of 2019, we at DRIVEN have explored the various propensities and afflictions faced by professionals, and have considered how and why to release…
Are YOU a Control Freak? And Why Does It Matter?
Uncertainty is an uncomfortable state of mind. Most of us wouldn’t mind a career GPS to help us navigate past the bumps and trenches flawlessly. In fact, we prefer the straight, empty highway to the meandering, unkempt country road. And our avoidance of the latter is a testament to our desire for Control…
“I’m Right, You’re Wrong”: Why We’re Resistant To Others’ Ideas, Part 2
“It doesn’t hurt to consider all ideas, even when they’re not your own.” This sentiment may seem tongue-in-cheek, but there’s an important reality behind it that can mean the difference between career stagnation and true accomplishment. In my previous article— the companion to this one, I explored with…
DRIVEN’s Best Blog Articles of 2018, Part 2
Last week, we gave you a sampling of some of our most informative blog articles of the year (if you missed it, link to it HERE). Today, we’re back with four more significant DRIVEN posts from 2018, each offering advice, direction and food-for-thought designed to enhance your career regardless of what stage you’re…
Conversation, Ongoing: The Back-and-Forth Circuit of Workplace Feedback
Making the shift from anxious to excited has revealed itself to be the formula for a curious mindset. Once you’ve made the transformation (which fits into the rare category of simple and easy), your emotions will stabilize, grooming you to receive workplace feedback constructively and without impediment by…
Self-Check Strategies: How To Make Feedback Sessions Work for YOU
Formal workplace feedback can be a tough nut to crack. Considering the contrasting perspectives of the givers and receivers of feedback, the amount of openness to ideas can vary, as can the trust factor between the parties. In my recent article Openness To Influence: The Factors To Consider Before Receiving…
Openness To Influence: The Factors To Consider Before Receiving Feedback
At the very end of my most recent article Listening to Understand: A Social Skills Staple Examined, you were challenged to experiment with four prompts during your conversations to more effectively “listen to understand” and to remain open to influence. Were you able to stand under another’s reality without…
Listening To Understand: A Socials Skills Staple Examined
The essential social skill of Listening is rarely mastered, even by those among us who pride ourselves on being great listeners. In my recent article, Chit-Chat Credentials: Sharpening Your Social Skills with Two Distinct Listening Styles, I offered what may have amounted to a wake-up call for many of us by sharing…
Chit-Chat Credentials: Sharpening Your Social Skills with Two Distinct Listening Styles
Listening is a communications staple and should be utilized more than 50% of the time during conversations. But just knowing this doesn’t seem to guarantee we’ll act on it. For example, I laughed out loud when a colleague once confessed about the way he uses his listening skills: to hear when the speaker is finished…
Snap Out of It!: How Being In-Trance Can Distort Our Social Skills
Because I’m an advocate of full transparency, I must make a confession: I felt a bit like Captain Obvious this month, using the DRIVEN blog to detail the importance of our culturally-embedded social skills….you know, those interactions of professionalism that stand as a “given” in any arena. And yet…
“You’re Not Alone.”: Why Practicing Empathy Requires Going Inward
Understanding the components of empathy and how they connect us emotionally and intellectually is a distinguished exercise in emotional intelligence. Putting empathy into practice is a whole different ballgame and is a true accomplishment for those of us who can pull it off and sustain these skills throughout…
I Feel Your Pain: An Empathetic How-To For Today’s Professionals
Workplace harmony depends upon some specific EQ tenets, not the least of which is the ability of colleagues to Empathize with one another. Such Empathy is the root of inclusion and is essential for creating trust— without which there is low productivity and substandard office functionality. In my recent article…
The Power of Transparency: A Real Case Study In Workplace Trust and Betrayal, Part 2
By now, you may have read the first part of my drama-laden case study featuring Lizette, David and Richard, wherein a workplace assumption lead to a betrayal that amounted to a breach of…
The End Of Assumption: How Genuine Curiosity Can Affect Bias
Building a culture of workplace trust can start with YOU. Yes, you have the ability to leverage your newly-acknowledged Unconscious Bias to build stronger relationships on your team…
I Once Was Blind: 3 Ways That Unconscious Bias Can Be An Eye-Opener
Ah, the deceptive blind spot. Each of us is plagued by a few, which serve as big barriers to clear communications and a workplace culture of trust. That is, unless we actively arrange for those blind…
How Do YOU Show Up?: A Holistic Look at the Trust Equation, Part 2
Intraoffice trust can be grown when you acquire a baseline assessment of your coworkers’ trustworthiness, and combine it with a wide, historical lens through which to view them individually. My…
Sizing Things Up: A Holistic Look at the Trust Equation
Can you believe that you’ve been exploring Trust with me for nearly ten weeks now? My decision to scrutinize this “small word with HUGE consequences” stems from the recognition that a Culture of Trust…