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Personal Styles -- Time-Waster or Useful - Should You Join The MBTI Shuffle?
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Written by Robert Bacal
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You can find them almost everywhere. Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams, leadership styles, learning styles, communication styles, teaching styles, conflict management styles...all designed to classify or label people so they can better understand themselves and others. More and more training vendors are using style questionnaires as a basis for training and development. The question is: are they really useful, or are they just fun exercises |
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Those Darned Motivational Speakers
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Written by Robert Bacal
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They stand tall in the saddle, and they ride in on white horses announcing to one and all they can change people's lives. Or at least boost their levels of motivation to get work done. Sometimes quirky, almost always charismatic, and proclaiming themselves as gurus, experts or even geniuses, they are the motivational speakers who travel around, getting huge dollars from companies to magically tweak their employees. And beyond a day or two at best, they contribute almost nothing to the organization except to lighten the corporate bank account. |
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Can Motivational Speakers Cause Harm?
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Written by Robert Bacal
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In a previous article I mentioned that most motivational speakers cost good money and achieve nothing more than very temporary increases in "motivation" and morale. That's a best case scenario. The poor ones don't achieve anything at all. There's another question though. Can motivational speakers cause harm to individuals and organizations? |
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Management Fads - Things You Should Know To Not Get Suckered
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Written by Robert Bacal
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It may be my imagination, but it seems to me that we are being increasingly inundated with new management buzz words, and fads.
We've had:
. One-Minute Management
. Total Quality Management
. Learning Organizations ................ |
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The Problem With Pop Psychology In The Workplace
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Written by Robert Bacal
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More and more writers are publishing books on psychology for the general public. These books (and also videos and tapes) help authors and psychologists get their theories and ideas out to a broad public, hence the term "pop(ular) psychology". The good news is that people unschooled in psychology can learn from these kinds of books even if they unlikely to read psychology textbooks or professional journals . The bad news is that people unschooled in psychology can learn from these kinds of books even if they are unlikely to read psychology textbooks or professional journals. |
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A Quick Guide To Employee Orientation - Help For Managers & HR
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Written by Robert Bacal
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We would not be understating the case if we said that orienting employees to their workplaces and their jobs is one of the most neglected functions in government. Countless horror stories exist about how a new employee has received a ten minute talk with the manager, and directed to his or her office position, with no further guidance or instruction. Not only is this exceedingly stressful for the employee, but it virtually guarantees a very long period of unproductiveness for the employee. |
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Going To Training? Some Hints
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Written by Robert Bacal
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People attend training for a lot of reasons. The obvious one is to learn some new skills to use on the job or to further one's career. There are other reasons too. Sometimes training sessions provide an opportunity to visit with people you don't ordinarily see and find out what's going on elsewhere. Or, sometimes, it's just a pleasant (hopefully) break from the usual routine. |
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Personal Styles -- Time-Waster or Useful - Should You Join The MBTI Shuffle?
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Written by Robert Bacal
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You can find them almost everywhere. Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams, leadership styles, learning styles, communication styles, teaching styles, conflict management styles...all designed to classify or label people so they can better understand themselves and others. More and more training vendors are using style questionnaires as a basis for training and development. The question is: are they really useful, or are they just fun exercises akin to astrology? |
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The Educated Training Consumer - Why Is Training Undervalued?
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Written by Robert Bacal
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If you are hesitant about investing in training, you should know that your concerns are probably well founded. The training field is full of well-meaning but ill-equipped trainers, even in prestigious firms. Unfortunately, less competent trainers give the field a bad name, but rest assured there is a lot of good training carried out by skilled professionals. The trick is to identify them, and their strengths. |
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The Value of Values Clarification - JUST STOP THAT NAVEL GAZING
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Written by Robert Bacal
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We walked in, individually, and in pairs. Like many other branches, we had interpersonal conflicts, and many of us felt that even in with our small size, we weren't all pulling in the same direction. It just seemed we were not on the same page of the book |
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Training & Learning 
