1) Familiar. Grapple with the anxiety, rage, hopelessness or sadness in letting go of the familiar role or predictable past. The big question: Who am I? Remember, sometimes your former niche of success now has you mostly stuck in the ditch of excess. There's a critical crossroad ahead. 2) Future. Clearly the horizon appears cloudy and threatening, lacking direction and clarity. Just because your past or traditional roles a...

In today’s 24/7, merging, consolidating, “do more with less” work environment, the letters “HR” could as easily stand for “Hub of Reorganization” as for “Human Resources.” In fact, it’s the intersection of the two organizational dynamics, human exchange and systemic change, that accounts for the challenge and performance pressure for the HR manager and other human resources professionals. A person, over time, is confronted...

One sure source of short-term distress and a potential source of burnout in the long run is denying, minimizing, avoiding and/or resisting the realities of a changing organizational climate. A capacity for modifying mindsets and operational policies and procedures is essential. A defensive or dysfunctionally self-protective posture winds up draining valuable mental and emotional energy, constricts risk-taking and creative p...

What happens when you add a new staff member who is highly competent, but her colleagues find her arrogant, someone who talks down to them? This person is more capable and knowledgeable than her peers. Is it just a matter of jealousy and things will eventually settle down? However, what if the new person complains that others are now excluding and ignoring her. And what if other department managers have also remarked ab...

Today’s “do more with less” world, whether the result of reorganizing, merging, downsizing or my favorite – FRIGHTSIZING – surely poses a myriad of challenges for professionals and companies in the meeting planning industry. And based on extensive training and consulting experience with an array of profit and non-profit organizations grappling with a variety of major change processes, two reorg challenges and actions quick...

Springtime for Meeting Planners. As much as the cherry blossom buds, meeting and conference buzz fills the landscape and mindscape. Unless, as the eleventh hour approaches, the buzz feels like a buzz saw, and now you fear being sliced and diced and spread way too thin. From rates of attrition to contract negotiation, from indemnification and acts of terrorism, is springtime morphing into stresstime?Have no fear…for sprin...

I just got back from leading a half-day workshop for a dozen or so chiropractors in San Antonio. The program focus was "Transitional Stress to Transformational Performance." These mind-body doctors were working with a company that helps professionals build a business, that is, the company will help these chiropractors go from practice clinician to corporate CEO. And clearly, anytime you make a major professional and pers...

Warning: This satire may be hazardous to the ironically-impaired.In this era of organizational restructuring or downsizing, or better still, right-sizing, or most on target, what I call "fright-sizing," the challenge for top management is having the savvy and guts to gut much of your workforce while still maintaining survivor productivity and team morale - that "esprit de corpse." While some advocate a market- or politics...

In our 24/7, wired and always on world, that constantly cycles between upgrading and downsizing it’s no surprise that employees are increasingly feeling exhausted. Some, alas, are showing signs of burnout. Let’s get a handle on this “b”-word:Burnout is the gradual process by which a person, in response to prolonged stress and physical, mental and emotional strain, detaches from work and other meaningful relationships. Th...

As a training contractor for Fairfax County Government (in Northern Virginia; home of America Online and the "Software Valley") I’ve been leading bimonthly "Dealing with Stress, Loss and Change through Humor" and "Managing Anger and Conflict" workshops. Over the last two years, I’ve interacted with hundreds and hundreds of individuals who have been terminated, downsized and outsourced. Some of these folks have been dislod...