By Carter McNamara on December 6, 2016
Different people are motivated by different things. It’s very important to know what really motivates you. Otherwise, the quality of your work will suffer. When helping another person, it’s very important to know what really motivates them, as well, so that you can build those motivators into your work with them. Consider from among the […]
By John Dupre on April 14, 2013
Years ago, I remember going out on sales calls with one of the partners in our consulting firm, Marv Weisbord. We would most often be asked in to help a leadership team that was struggling. So, we’d be sitting with a group of managers listening to them talk about their difficult issues. I’d find myself […]
By Carter McNamara on January 30, 2012
Why It’s Important for Us to Know Our Paradigms, Theories and Models Paradigms, theories and models – we all have them and work from them. Many of us don’t know it. But we really should. When we practitioners in human development (consultants, coaches, trainers, etc.) come to conclusions about our clients and their organizations, we […]
By Jim Smith on March 19, 2011
(See Part 2 of 3) Warren Bennis taught me to ask three questions: What’s So? So What? What Now?” How we handle uncertainty and how we deal with it personally is critical in how we manage change. Given the uncertainty and complexity in our organizations, dealing with ambiguity is a critical skill for consultants. This […]
By Jim Smith on February 25, 2011
(See part 1 of 3.) The personal development lessons come from putting myself into what Richard Leider called “The Land Of I Don’t Know. “ Putting myself into a total situation where I literally do not know how to survive on my own or I literally do not know what is going on half the […]
By Jim Smith on February 16, 2011
(Part 1 of 3) I have been in Africa for the past month. I am still in re-entry. About once ever 12-18 months my partner and I take teams of people into developing nations to work in villages to build clinics, or schools, or other projects to assist the local community as a whole. We […]
By Jim Smith on December 16, 2010
The news is filled with the exploits of more than a few examples of dishonesty and greed, leaders who purposefully worked in their own behalf, rather than from a sense of responsibility for institutional integrity. We know the list and it keeps getting bigger. For the last 50 years it has not been fashionable to […]
By Carter McNamara on December 10, 2010
Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, asserts that, as a consultant, you should not be contributing more than 50% of the effort in a consulting project. Your client should work the remainder. You should never be doing what your client can do in a project. This is especially true for external consultants. Internal consultants might […]
Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organizational development, consultant training and Action Learning services, and is developer of the Free Management Library. [Read more ...]