J.Ferm's Blog

The Challenge:
Grace, a senior consultant in a highly specialized consulting firm, struggled with the thought that she didn’t quite fit in. Her performance record was outstanding and she was considered an expert in her field, but she often felt like the “odd woman out.” The way she naturally thought about challenges and solving problems seemed [...]

The Challenge:
Joel, an HR Director of a medium-sized organization had a bad experience with a 360 degree assessment process and was reluctant to re-introduce assessments to his organization. The initial 360 process created confusion among participants and was poorly administered and delivered by the vendor. When approached by his new boss to interview a potential [...]

The Challenge:
As the Managing Partner of a fast growing professional services firm, Carol wanted to take her firm from “good to great.” The annual retreat was coming up and this year she knew she needed external help to confront the firm’s most pressing matters. Specifically, the firm had experienced significant recent growth in revenue and [...]

The Challenge:
Rob had known for a long time that he needed to make some tough decisions about his staff. He kept postponing the changes hoping it would get better with time. After an eye-opening call from his most important client, Ron learned that “hope” isn’t an action plan.
Rob was stunned by what he heard. Julia, [...]

The Challenge:
Martina never asked to be a manager. Her technical skills made her star performer, which put her on her boss’s “leadership potential radar,” and last year she was promoted to manage a team of four. Martina was less enthused. She could think of a lot of things she would rather do than deal with [...]

You may have heard the expression: “You MANAGE systems and LEAD people.” To be an effective delegator, you need systems that keep you or­ganized and structured. They will free up time, prevent performance confu­sion, and ensure that your team is working at maximum capacity. Take a moment and check in on your dele­gation skills. Is [...]

Practice Using Upfront Agreements
Now that you have identified areas where upfront agreements can be beneficial, designed best case sce­narios, and checked for feasibility, it’s time to begin practicing your strat­egy. Pick one of your scenarios and best case outcomes. For example, it may be that you want to set an upfront agreement about how to [...]

List a “Best Case” for Each Scenario
Once you have your list of scenarios, brainstorm a best case outcome for each. For example, one of our best case outcomes for collecting pay­ments from clients is to ask them to pay for the invoice in full prior to starting the engagement. This is the suggestion we first [...]

Would you like to drastically reduce the amount of stress, confusion and hassles on the job? If so, you are in for a treat. The strategy I am about to describe is one of the most power­ful and underused ways to take the pain out of managing and drastically improve attitudes and outcomes. It’s called [...]

Step 4. Develop a Directness Ac­tion Plan
Once you have identified opportuni­ties to be more direct, map out an action plan to practice. For example, if you scored yourself lower on being direct when addressing performance issues, practice identifying the core of the issue right up front next time you have to meet with a trouble [...]