by Franklin Wordsmith | Feb 10, 2021 | Leadership
Confidence Versus Competence The Universe made me write this article. This morning, I saw these two things in quick succession: A LinkedIn post from workforce and career agility expert Marti Konstant on why the most qualified candidate doesn’t always win the job...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Feb 3, 2021 | Leadership
It Can Be a Great Organizational Change Tool or a Cultural Slippery Slope This started out as a missive on the “boiling frog syndrome.” You may have heard of it. In an experiment, a live frog was dropped into boiling water and it jumped out, because it...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Feb 1, 2021 | Leadership
Using Improvement and Decision Rights The board of a large professional association was struggling with transparency. The directors asked me to do a workshop on how to have difficult conversations. Here was their issue. Over the last few years, the board had moved...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Jan 20, 2021 | Leadership
Don’t Just Listen for Content It was the ultimate in honesty. I was on a Zoom meeting. We reached the point of discussing next steps. One participant said, “Excuse me, but could you repeat that? I wasn’t paying attention.” We all laughed in...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Jan 5, 2021 | Leadership
Start Rebuilding Social Trust Unlike other established democracies, in the last 50+ years, people in the U.S. have become less likely to trust each other. That means we’re talking about something much bigger than polarization. It’s called social trust: our...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Dec 8, 2020 | Leadership
I used to think I was pretty good at this communication stuff. People would come to me for counsel on how to handle difficult conversations. Or create rapport, connection and trust. Or motivate their teams to work together. Then came the day when my mother, who has...
