Monthly Archives: February 2010

3 Motivators at Work

By chipscholz | Published: February 25, 2010
Most companies have it all wrong. They don’t know how to motivate their employees. What about yours? Are your people at work motivated, I mean really, from the inside out? Are you? The most employees are quite enthusiastic when they start a new job. But in about 85 percent of companies, research finds employees’ morale […]
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Power Plays

By chipscholz | Published: February 16, 2010
Some workplaces encourage everyone to act competitively. Enron, for example, had an organizational culture in which winning and making the numbers counted more than relationships. People like basketball coach Bobby Knight and Terrell Owens got away with more than would be tolerated in normal circumstances because we embrace clichés like “winning isn’t everything; it’s the […]
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Rules of Engagement for Non-Jerks

By chipscholz | Published: February 12, 2010
What can we do to help prevent jerks at work? I agree with Robert Sutton and his book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Warner Business Books, 2007). If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Perhaps companies should be clearer about what it takes to keep a […]
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Secondhand Jerk Effects

By chipscholz | Published: February 10, 2010
Engaging in joking and sarcasm will get you a few chuckles. Lord knows we need humor to get through some workdays. But there’s almost always an element of negativity in funny remarks. It’s hard to be funny and not cross that fine line into backstabbing. Like everything in life, it’s the way that you do […]
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It's Easy Being a Jerk

By chipscholz | Published: February 8, 2010
I’ve been rereading The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Warner Business Books, 2007). Stanford Professor Robert I. Sutton argues that variations of terms like creep, jerk and bully don’t carry the same impact as the A-word, and he may be right. But I wonder if it becomes too […]
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The Brain Science of the Quarterback Pass

By chipscholz | Published: February 5, 2010
Years ago, scientists were studying nerve cells in Macaque monkeys’ prefrontal cortices and found that specific cells fired when the monkeys threw a ball or ate a banana. To their surprise, these same cells fired when the monkeys watched another monkey perform these acts. Fast forward to SuperBowl 2010, and you’ll find millions of fans […]
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Do You Put People in Boxes?

By chipscholz | Published: February 3, 2010
How well do you listen to your colleagues? Or for that matter, your close relationships in your family? Really? Maybe not…We don’t actually listen because we think we know someone so well, we already know what they’re saying and thinking… or so we think! As a result, we mistake insecurity for arrogance, fear for stubborness, […]
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