Deborah Grayson Riegel

Meetings should educate, motivate, and develop your people. The late, great fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld once remarked, "I don't do meetings." And if you were Karl Lagerfeld, you didn't have to. For the rest of us, however, meetings are a part of getting work done, even if they often feel like an interruption of our real work. No matter what you think of meetings in

You may be thinking about time management all wrong. Despite the ubiquity of technological advances, for many of us, time management is more of a problem than ever. Whether you keep postponing finishing your client presentation because your boss keeps throwing new projects at you, or you can't schedule your family vacation because you have too many high-priority tasks,

You want to be compassionate without philosophizing When you see your friend or colleague at work, you hopefully get a warm smile, a friendly hello, and maybe a little chat about your favorite TV show that was on last night. But at times, as soon as you see him, you know something's wrong. His shoulders are slumped,

You can't change someone else's behavior, but you can change your mindset Working with a difficult person (and, often, more than one) is as expected in the workplace as attending pointless meetings. We've all desperately tried to get a colleague to behave better, like the one who complains every time a change is announced, or who nitpicks at every

You may be scaring people rather than inspiring them When you think about your annual physical exam, you may be worried that your doctor is going to criticize your choices (like eating too much steak and not enough salad), deliver disappointing news, or find something frightening. Those are the kinds of concerns that prevent people from reaching out to

You can't improve without specifics. Most of us think about feedback as negative: being told by our manager that we've fallen short of a goal, or that our work processes need work, or that a behavior needs to change. And yes, negative feedback delivered thoughtfully and constructively, is critical to helping us make progress. Let's not overlook

Your idea is only as good as your ability to sell it From ride-sharing to co-working spaces, and from Netflix to 3D printers, all of these were, at some point, brand new ideas. And each of them had a person (or people) behind the idea who saw the business potential in turning their idea into reality. But generating cutting-edge concepts isn't

'I'll do it' may be costing you your career Most of us hope that our colleagues and bosses see us as helpful. Helping in the workplace has been recognized as an important and desirable organizational behavior for decades, from both an interpersonal relationship perspective as well as a business productivity perspective. When we're helpful, we contribute positively to the social and

Blowing up can have a lasting impact if you don't address it as soon as possible. Author and business leader Margaret Heffernan once remarked, "For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate." Nevertheless, many of us would rather not engage in conflict, argument or debate (and maybe even avoid human interaction altogether). We work hard

Being liked is fleeting. Here's what matters more There's nothing wrong with wanting to be liked at work. According to Tim Sanders, author of The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams when your colleagues, direct reports and bosses like you, you have a better chance of getting promoted, being assigned special projects that interest

A dispassionate leader isn't inspiring anyone. When we think about effective leaders, many of us picture someone who is calm, cool, and collected under stressful conditions. We envision someone who is reliably even-keeled in the best of times and the worst of times, who can assuage anxiety with a placid demeanor during change and transition and is unruffled when

Your mindset matters more than you think. When it comes to evaluating success for salespeople, it's often focused on one thing: the win. Asking for the customer's business and getting a quick and enthusiastic "yes!" seems, at times, to be the only thing that counts. This mindset, and the aggressive behavior that it drives, comes at a cost. According