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Work ethics to overcome

An under two minute audio of one man’s memories from the seventies.

This is under two minutes, but stop and listen to this gentleman speaking.  I always try and find something for the blog that is “authentic”, for you to listen, watch, or read something that is suitable not only for the topic at hand, but also, for language learning.  I think this man, from the Unites States, speaking about his job situation in the past (interview in the 70’s) is a unique example of what I want in this blog.

So… this is very short, but lovely.

Questions that I put forth to you (remember – LISTEN first, without reading the transcript!):

1. Do you have any natural obstacles that others may have had against you at your current – or past job?
   1. How did you overcome it/ them?
   2. Care to share your particular experience?
2. How did Dee get over his problem – careful, it may be a trick question!
3. Have you ever had a problem for being over efficient?
4. What kind of job do you think he had?
   1. Do you think that the person who interviewed him had ever had a similar position?
   2. Do you think it is common for the person interviewing to have ever worked in a similar job to the post they are looking to fill?

Some of these questions may seem a bit off-hand, however, I believe that the topic leads to potentially interesting conversations, so, let’s talk!

Transcript:

Dee Dickson (DD)

Dee Dickson remembers trying to get a job as a shipyard electrician in the 1970s.

(DD): The guy that was interviewing told me I was too little, that I wouldn’t get along with the guys, that they would make life hard for me. He didn’t think I needed to be doing it. And my dad said, “Well, you know, my Uncle Alf is superintendent out there. I can get you on like that.” Finally, at the end of that week I let my dad take me to see Uncle Alf. So, I went the next Monday and the guy said, “Look, I got the word from the top. I don’t like it, but you’re hired.”

Then I went to the ship. And none of the guys would work with me. They said, “These are men’s jobs. You’re taking jobs away from men who have families.” I said, “I have a family and no man and I need money.” It took about two weeks before I started proving myself. And the guys were doing better with it. They would work with me. I had several guys who told me, “You need to slow down — you’re making us look bad.” (Laughs)

You know? And I’m like, “I’m here to work!”

We had to go to school two nights a week. And I was the first apprentice who had ever become supervisor before graduation. And they were mad because I got a raise. And I got a position they thought was theirs. It’s just… I had a knack for getting stuff done on time and getting it done right. Now, I had to do some things a little differently than they did, you know? I couldn’t lift an 80-pound transformer. But I found a way to do the same things they were doing. And it kind of made me better than I probably would have been if I was a guy.

As you know, I don’t like putting up vocabulary lists… but I’m willing to make an exception every now and then, and this, of course, is one of them.  Hans has put together  a list of words which should definitely come in handy.  Not only the words itself, but the use of the vocabulary in the definitition.

Click to original article here.

Author: Hans Mangelschots

Understanding HR Trends; an incomplete list of Techy words (part II)

From my experience it is hard to exchange visions or brainstorm about the future when certain nouns and verbs are being used incorrectly. Sometimes they are not even known at all. Yet we all talk HR. So based on trending HR articles I made a dictionary of 60 words that possibly cross your path when you are rethinking your HR. It might help understand each other.
I ended part 1 with HR Analytics. Let’s move on.

HR automation
HR automation is the process to improve the efficiency of human resources departments through automating the manual human resource processes and eliminating information-centered risks. (Source: Ciowhitepapersreview)

HR Technology
HR technology (human resources technology) is an umbrella term for software and associated hardware for automating the human resources function in organisations. It includes employee payroll and compensation, talent acquisition and management, workforce analytics, performance management, and benefits administration. (Source: Techtarget)

HRIS
See HRMS. (Source: Webopedia)

HRMS
A Human Resources Management System (HRMS) is a software application that combines many human resources functions, including benefits administration, payroll, recruiting and training, and performance analysis and review into one package. (Source: Webopedia)

Internal communications
Internal communications (IC) is the function responsible for effective communications among the participants within an organisation. The scope of the function varies by organisation and practitioner, from producing and delivering messages and campaigns on behalf of management, to facilitating two-way dialogue and developing the communication skills of the organisation’s participants. (Source: Wikepedia)

KPI’s
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organisations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. (Source: Klipfolio)

Learning and development
Learning and development, a subset of HR, aims to improve group and individual performance by increasing and honing skills and knowledge. Learning and development, often called training and development, forms part of an organisation’s talent management strategy and is designed to align group and individual goals and performance with the organisation’s overall vision and goals. (Source: HRzone)

Mindset
The established set of attitudes held by someone. (Source: Google search)

Onboarding
Onboarding, also known as organisational socialisation, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours in order to become effective organisational members and insiders. (Source: Wikepedia)

Offboarding
Employee exit management or offboarding describes the consciously designed separation process when an employee leaves the company, for which he has previously worked within the scope of a work or service contract. (Source: Wikepedia)

People analytics
People analytics refers to the process of collecting, analysing and using quantitative and qualitative data about an organisation’s employees, alongside business performance data, to provide insights on business issues, solve business problems and inform business decisions and strategy. (Source: Xperthr)

Performance management
Performance management (PM) includes activities which ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product or service, as well as many other areas. (Source: Wikepedia)

Personalisation
Personalisation, also known as customisation, consists of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. A wide variety of organisations use personalisation to improve customer satisfaction, digital sales conversion, marketing results, branding, and improved website metrics as well as for advertising. Personalisation also is a key element in social media and recommender systems. (Source: Wikepedia)

Preboarding
Employee pre-boarding begins once an offer has been accepted by the new hire and lasts up to the first day of employment. (Source: Talcura)

Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics is a form of advanced analytics that uses both new and historical data to forecast activity, behavior and trends. It involves applying statistical analysis techniques, analytical queries and automated machine learning algorithms to data sets to create predictive models that place a numerical value — or score — on the likelihood of a particular event happening. (Source: Techtarget)

Preselection
To choose in advance usually on the basis of a particular criterion. (Source: Merriam-webster)

Recognition and rewards
Communication between management and employees which rewards them for reaching specific goals or producing high quality results in the workplace. Recognising or honouring employees for this level of service is meant to encourage repeat actions, through reinforcing the behaviour you would like to see repeated. (Source: Business dictionary)

Recruiting
The process of finding and hiring the best-qualified candidate (from within or outside of an organisation) for a job opening, in a timely and cost effective manner. The recruitment process includes analysing the requirements of a job, attracting employees to that job, screening and selecting applicants, hiring, and integrating the new employee to the organisation. (Source: Business dictionary)

Retention
An effort by a business to maintain a working environment which supports current staff in remaining with the company. Many employee retention policies are aimed at addressing the various needs of employees to enhance their job satisfaction and reduce the substantial costs involved in hiring and training new staff. (Source: Business dictionary)

SAAS
(Software As A Service) Software that is rented rather than purchased. Instead of buying applications and paying for periodic upgrades, SaaS is subscription based, and upgrades are automatic during the subscription period. When that expires, the software is no longer valid. (Source: PCmag.com)

Social
Living organisms including humans are social when they live collectively in interacting populations, whether they are aware of it, and whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary. (Source: Wikepedia)

Staffing
That function of management, which is concerned with selecting, developing, maintaining and utilizing the manpower such that the objectives of the organisation are achieved economically and effectively. The objectives of individual employees of the organisation are accomplished to the highest degree possible, serving in the process the objectives of the community at large. (Source: Businessmanagementideas.com)

Stand alone solution
Software that is not a part of some bundled software. A program that run as a separate computer process, not an add-on of an existing process. Standalone program, a program that does not require operating system’s services to run. A portable application, which can be run without the need for installation procedure. (Source: Wikepedia)

Talent Acquisition
Talent acquisition is the process of finding and acquiring skilled human labor for organisational needs and to meet any labor requirement. When used in the context of the recruiting and HR profession, talent acquisition usually refers to the talent acquisition department or team within the Human Resources department. (Source: Quora)

Talent management
Talent management refers to the anticipation of required human capital for an organisation and the planning to meet those needs. … Talent management is the science of using strategic human resource planning to improve business value and to make it possible for companies and organisations to reach their goals. (Source: Wikepedia)

Talent Sourcing
Sourcing is a talent acquisition discipline which is focused on the identification, assessment and engagement of skilled worker candidates through proactive recruiting techniques. (Source: Wikepedia)

Usability
ISO defines usability as “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. (Source: Wikepedia)

User experience
The overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use. “If a website degrades the user experience too much, people will simply stay away. (Source: Google search)

Virtual reality
The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors. (Source: Google search)

Did you recognise any of these words? Good!
These were the final 30, the first 30 you can read in part 1 of this incomplete dictionary of 60 Techy words that are being used in HR and HR innovation. Keeping this list up to date is going to be a challenge. Could you tell me which words do you think are missing in this list?

Link to original article

Would this management strategy work in your establishment? Why or why not?  do you see this appropriate only for large companies, or on the contrary, better for small companies?   I’d love to see your thoughts, and any questions of use of the vocabulary!

Note, this is directly from the Harvard Business Review, so the vocabulary and spelling is American.  Can you tell which words I’m referring to?

Let me know at:  empresas@metodoelingua.es  or, of course, leave comments.

Give Your Team the Freedom to Do the Work They Think Matters Most

Since at least the time of Frederick Taylor, the father of “scientific management,” control has been central to corporate organization: Control of costs, of prices, of investment and—not least—of people.

Control, even a perception of it, can be comforting. Moreover, it feels like what a manager should be doing: Setting targets, monitoring adherence to procedures, directing, shaping the future of the business. Control feels essential—especially if you are the boss.

Except it turns out that far from being vital, top-down control carries serious costs, many of which have been hiding in plain sight. What is more, there is an alternative. And not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy conjured up on a whiteboard, but a real, working alternative. It has been practiced to varying degrees in companies around the world for decades. And in France in particular, it is taking on the character of a movement. Companies as large as Michelin and Carrefour are questioning their control structures and seeing real results from replacing them.

This alternative has never had a name because—fittingly, as you’ll see—it hasn’t really had a guru. Its principles have been passed from business leader to business leader like samizdat. But more recently it has started to come into the open. We call it corporate liberation.

The idea can be stated simply enough: A liberated company allows employees complete freedom and responsibility to take actions that they—not their managers—decide are best for their company’s vision. That doesn’t mean that these firms are unmanaged. On the contrary, the specific actions that we observed in close to one hundred liberated companies prove the opposite.

For example, every morning, a liberated company’s manager would ask whether there is anything preventing her team from doing their best. That may not sound unusual, but here’s the first twist: When her team shares a problem or an opportunity with her, she will not offer a solution. Instead, she asks them to find their own—after ensuring that there isn’t something she’s doing that would get in the way.

When a new project comes in, the manager does not devise a plan to complete it. Instead, she asks the team to do so. In making these choices, she accomplishes two vital things. She places herself in service of her team, rather than above them as a supervisor, and this in turn has a direct impact on the behavior of her team: It starts to liberate them to act on their own initiative, rather than passively awaiting direction from above.

At Decathlon, a sports equipment retailer with 80,000 employees, their form of corporate liberation is strongly supported by the CEO. Yet, since corporate liberation is a philosophy and not a model, he gives latitude to the directors of each of Decathlon’s business units to co-create their unique, freedom-based organizational environment. For example, the director of one of their largest warehouses asked 150 employees to determine the “playing field” for which they have responsibility. He then asked them to transform—in teams—the organizational practices they thought were preventing them from being responsible in that field. Managers transitioned to the role of coaches in service of their teams, giving away their formal authority. As a result, today all warehouse teams manage the order fulfillment by themselves, and many teams set their own work schedules.

The results have been impressive. When Decathlon launched their workplace transformation, it had already been a leading privately held multinational with $9.11 billion in revenue in 2013. By 2017 it had grown organically to $12.79 billion worldwide. In 2017 and 2018, Decathlon was ranked the #1 Great Place to Work in France.

Michelin, the global tire manufacturing giant—with 114,000 employees—has also embarked on a corporate liberation campaign. In one of its German plants, teams self-direct most activities and managers have transitioned into the role of coaches without formal authority. Operators set their work schedules and their vacations, design and monitor their own performance indicators, do their own maintenance, and are consulted on the choice of new machinery. Michelin is a huge company in a relatively mature industry, but it has still managed to nearly double its free cash flow since 2015, to €1.509 billion ($1.75 billion) in 2017 compared to €833 million in 2015. In 2018, Michelin was ranked the #1 America’s Best Large Employer.

Human beings have certain universal psychological needs: The need to be treated as intrinsically equal, the need for personal growth, and to exercise self-direction. Each of these needs is frequently and systematically denied by traditional command-and-control managerial hierarchies. Perhaps the most important benefit of liberating an organization—because it leads in turn to all the other benefits—is the creation of an environment that feeds these universal needs, rather than stifling them.

Thus one of the most striking findings about liberated companies is the extremely high level of engagement and intrinsic motivation among employees. According to a 2017 Gallup Employee Engagement survey, 33% of U.S. employees are engaged, 51% are disengaged, and 16% are actively disengaged. Freedom-based companies, by contrast, can typically boast that more than 70% of their employees are “engaged,” according to Gallup’s data. Indeed, in liberated companies, there remain very few disengaged employees and the actively disengaged—the difficult and productivity-sapping sort that seem to be a fixture in modern corporations—leave by themselves. The collateral benefit of this high engagement is that the liberated organization outperforms the traditional one. The reason for it is not in some top-management talk about serving the “whole person.” It’s simply that feeding psychological needs lead to higher engagement and—as a consequence—to higher team productivity and initiative and increased corporate performance.

While Decathlon and Michelin are relatively new to the liberation game, the phenomenon, as noted, has been quietly under way for more than half a century. Almost all of the older freedom-based companies we have studied—such as W.L. Gore, Sun Hydraulics, USAA, Quad Graphics, and IDEO—have been competing at the top of their industries for more than two decades. But liberating a traditional company isn’t simple. Some managers make the transition into leaders serving their teams easily. Others need training to gain the skills required to abstain from telling people what to do and to listen to them instead, or to meet employee needs of trust, growth, and self-direction. Training may not suffice in some cases, where egos or heavily ingrained top-down behaviors get in the way.

We’ve studied several dozen such transformations in businesses of all sizes, industries, and geographies. If you manage a business or plan to do so, here are practical steps to build a freedom-based workplace in your own company right now.

Steps for building a freedom-based team

Lose your ego. Your employees won’t believe you trust their intelligence if you are always the one with the “best solution.”

Share the company’s vision. This isn’t specific to building a liberated workplace. Yet, given the discretion allowed in freedom-based companies, a shared vision is fundamental since it provides a common criterion for the teams to make their decisions. Qualified people don’t need to be told how to do their jobs, but especially when you set them free, they need to know why they’re doing what they’re doing—so they can do it better.

Create the respect tide—the climate in which most manager-leaders show through their actions that they respect and trust employees.  It requires the manager-leaders to remove the obstacles preventing teams from doing their best.

Ask your team what’s in their way. If any organizational practice or structural element is mistrusting their intelligence, limiting their growth, or hampering their self-direction. If yes, ask them to redesign it. Be prepared to see the majority of control practices and structures—both in the hierarchical and in the support functions—gradually replaced. The respect tide will stimulate teams’ willingness to set their own work schedules or to make their own hires, and these demands affect organizational processes.

Become the guardian of the liberated team. When teams assume more responsibilities and make more decisions on their own, fewer remain for all levels of managers. Managers who accept this will be busy serving their teams while abstaining from using their formal authority.

Your employees will be willing to come to work every day to do their best, your manager-leaders will spend their days revealing employee potential, and you will enjoy dinner every night with your family knowing that your business is succeeding.

Brian Carney is Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications of Rivada Networks, an American wireless-technology start up. Brian was a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe’s editorial page. His forthcoming co-authored book is Leadership without Ego: How to Stop Managing and Start Leading.

Isaac Getz is a professor of leadership and innovation at ESCP Europe Business School in Paris, France and an international speaker. His co-authored book Freedom, Inc.: How Corporate Liberation Unleashes Employee Potential and Business Performance has been instrumental to the corporate liberation movement involving hundreds of companies worldwide

The suggested additional activity that you may send to:  empresas@metodoelingua.es

• This is a straight out vocabulary list.  do you employ any of these terms in your daily activity? If you wanted to delve into things, you could write me a sentence for each word or expression, and we can check if you are using it properly.
• do you have an opinion about the use of anything? If you have something to comment about, send me the comments to correct!  Whatever works for you:)

Link to the original article.

From my experience, it is hard to exchange visions or brainstorm about the future when certain nouns and verbs are being used incorrectly. Sometimes they are not even known at all. Yet we all talk HR. So based on trending HR articles I made a dictionary of 60 words that possibly cross your path when you are rethinking your HR. It might help understand each other.

Agile HR

Designing HR to support and organization that works according to agile methodologies. Designing the people practices to support agile ways and methodologies of working, the agile organization model and the agile cycles. … We can use Scrum, Kanban, Lean Startup or SAFe as a philosophy and methodology. (Source: Peoplegeeks)

Analog

Analog probably became the word of choice after its use in analog recording (as opposed to digital recording technologies such as CDs) and analog watch (as opposed to digital watches). In both cases it was appropriate because the smoothly varying analog signal was a direct contrast to the quantized digital experience. (Source: English stackexchange)

Applicant tracking

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment needs. An ATS can be implemented or accessed online on an enterprise or small business level, depending on the needs of the company and there is also free and open source ATS software available. (Source: Wikepedia)

Application suite

A application suite is as a group of different but interrelated software programs that are combined and packaged together. … An application suite is also known as a software suite, utility suite or productivity suite. (Source: Techopedia)

Artificial Intelligence

The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. (Source: Google search)

Augmented reality

A technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. (Source: Google search)

Blockchain

A digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly. “we can actually have a look at the blockchain and see evidence of what’s going on”. (Source: Google Search)

Candidate Attraction

“Candidate attraction” refers to the tools and techniques that an employer uses to attract potential applicants to fill a vacancy. (Source: Xperthr)

Candidate Experience

The Candidate Experience is the collective result of ALL the interactions you have with candidates in the recruitment marketing and hiring process. (Source: Smashfly Blog)

Career Owners

Career ownership is defined as an ongoing process involving self-trust, responsibility, and personal accountability.” … In viewing themselves as managers of their own careers, your employees will increase their value as employees as well as enhance their own career success. (Source: Careerinsiders)

Cloud solutions

Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on shared computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. … The services are delivered and used over the Internet and are paid for by the cloud customer on an as-needed or pay-per-use business model. (Source: Webopedia)

Collaboration

Collaboration in the workplace is when two or more people (often groups) work together through idea sharing and thinking to accomplish a common goal. It is simply teamwork taken to a higher level. Teamwork is often a physical joining of two people or a group to accomplish a task. (Source: Study.com)

Consumerisation of HR

Consumerisation of HR refers to creating a social, mobile, and consumer-style experience for employees inside the company. … The lines are blurring between HR and marketing, real estate, communications, and IT. (Source: Forbes)

Data

Information, especially facts or numbers, collected to be examined and considered and used to help decision-making, or information in an electronic form that can be stored and used by a computer. (Source: Cambridge dictionary)

Design thinking

Design Thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex problems, and find desirable solutions for clients. … Design Thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systematic reasoning, to explore possibilities of what could be—and to create desired outcomes that benefit the end user (the customer). (Source: Creativityatwork)

Digital Employee Experience

Digital employee experience is the sum total of the digital interactions between a staff member and their organisation. (Source: Steptwo.com)

Digital HR

Digital HR is the foundation for organisational transformation to make it future-ready. Digital HR is a technology-enabled way of work that leverages new age sciences to make HR transactions and decisions intuitive, informed and inspiring to enable organisational effectiveness. It is an integration that embeds HR activities with business on a real time and real impact basis. (Source: DigitalnewsAsia)

E-assessments

Electronic assessment, also known as e-assessment, online assessment, computer assisted/mediated assessment and computer-based assessment, is the use of information technology in various forms of assessment such as educational assessment, health assessment, psychiatricassessment, and psychological assessment. (Source: Wikepedia)

Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy is the promotion of an organisation by its staff members. A business may ask employees to actively promote the organisation, often through social media, as an element of their jobs. However, the most compelling employee advocacy consists of freely-offered communications on the part of the workforce. (Source: Techtarget)

Employee centric

Creating an employee-centric workplace does not have to be complex, however, it should be based off data-driven observations and assumptions. A company can improve by simply listening, taking action, and letting their employees be people. (Source: Business.com)

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. (Source: Forbes)

Employee Experience

The Employee Experience is the sum of the various perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organization in which they work. (Source: Decision-wise.com)

Employee Experience Design

Employee experience design is the application of experience design in order to intentionally designing HR products, services, events, and organisational environments with a focus on the quality of the employee experience and organisationally relevant solutions. (Source: Wikepedia)

Employee Happiness

The happiness that workers feel when they are satisfied with their job and work conditions, used as one way of measuring a company’s success. (Source: Cambridge dictionary)

Employee wellbeing

That part of an employee’s overall wellbeing that they perceive to be determined primarily by work and can be influenced by workplace interventions. (Source: Personalltoday)

Employer Branding

Employer brand is the term commonly used to describe reputation as an employer, and its value proposition to its employees, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers. (Source: Wikepedia)

Enterprise Social Networks

Enterprise social networking focuses on the use of online social networks or social relations among people who share business interests and/or activities. (Source: Wikepedia)

Feedback

Information or statements of opinion about something, such as a new product, that can tell you if it is successful or liked. (Source: Cambridge dictionary)

Gamification

The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service. Source: Google search)

HCM

Human capital management (HCM) is a set of practices related to people resource management. These practices are focused on the organizational need to provide specific competencies and are implemented in three categories: workforce acquisition, workforce management and workforce optimization. (Source: Gartner)

HR analytics

Human resource analytics (HR analytics) is an area in the field of analytics that refers to applying analytic processes to the human resource department of an organization in the hope of improving employee performance and therefore getting a better return on investment. (Source: Techopedia)

Did you recognise any of these words? Good!

These were the first 30, there are still 30 more to come. In part 2 I will start with HR automation and end with virtual reality. In the meanwhile please tell me which words do you think are missing in this list.

Complete Article:

https://hbr.org/2017/09/could-your-personality-derail-your-career?referral=00060

Everyone has a part of them that needs some working on, especially when it comes to teamwork.  This is a nice little listening exercise with pertinent vocabulary which enables us to think a bit of how each one of us acts, and how we could act.

What are you like?

Suggested homework:

Remember, before listening, write down a few questions that you should look for in the video (who, what, where, why, when, how…?).  Only after watching and thinking about it should you watch the video with the transcription.

Have you ever done a course which involves looking at these matters?

Transcription

When we are at work, we like to focus on our strengths. But some characteristics that seem like advantages can have unintended downsides.  Phycologists Robert and Joyce Hogan created an inventory of downsides.

Created an inventory of “dark side” traits. Like being imaginative, diligent or reserved that can be damaging when carried to extremes. Although most people display at least three of these eleven qualities 40% of people exhibit one or two traits so strongly that their careers may be at risk. Stressful situations like facing tight deadlines or working in groups can draw out these dark side traits. For example, colleagues Neha, Alejandro and Connie run into conflict while creating a presentation to show their boss. Neha doesn’t think any of her teammates’ suggestions will work and shoots down ideas before they have a chance to develop. Neha is skeptical, a dark side trait associated with cynicism and negativity. It’s one of the distancing traits that push other people away. Meanwhile, Alejandro frequently talks over his teammates dominating the conversation. He also responds dramatically to Neha’s objections, escalating the conflict.

Alejandro is colorful, he seeks attention and has a tendency to interrupt. This is one of the seductive traits. They’re intended to pull people in but can result in flying too close to the sun. During these interactions, Connie is silent and uncomfortable. She hates conflict but won’t get a manager involved in her team’s problems. Connie is dutiful, loyal and reluctant to disagree. Being dutiful is an ingratiating trait that prevents Connie from stepping into strong leadership.

How can this dysfunctional team resolve its disagreements? First, Connie speaks up to share her concerns with her team members. She recognizes that helping her team succeed is more important than avoiding confrontation. Next, Alejandro curbs his colorful side by allowing someone else to take centre stage. He cedes the primary presenter role to Connie. Finally, Neha makes an effort to give her teammates’ ideas a chance. She intentionally seeks out a part of the project that excites and interests her. The team is able to create a great presentation for their boss. Everyone wins.

Left unchecked, dark side traits can cause chaos in the workplace. Many of us are susceptible to overindulging these aspects of ourselves. But with a little self-awareness and thoughtful action we can temper our dark side traits.