In January 2011, a football commentator found himself unceremoniously fired after he made a remark about the appearance of a female match official, and questioned whether another was capable of understanding the ‘offside rule.’ Many called his comments sexist and ‘prehistoric.’ However, there were also some people that suggested the commentator’s termination was a result […]
Read More… from Political Correctness Helps Expression in Mixed-Sex Teams
To an extent, all negotiations involve a certain level of deception; participants almost always withhold information as a self-protective strategy. After all, revealing all of your cards may leave you vulnerable if your opponent takes advantage of your honesty. But are there any differences in the way male and female negotiators hold back information? Does […]
Read More… from Gender and the Use of Deception in Negotiation
CEOs are often put under the spotlight, with everything from how they spend their time to their leadership style closely scrutinized. But what about managers and supervisors lower down in organization hierarchies? These are the people that most employees directly work with, yet their ‘value’ is less discussed, which is surprising considering more often than […]
Executives cannot afford to ignore the dangers posed by acting overconfidently. Numerous examples in recent history can attest to this, from the inflation of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, to the housing boom pre-2008. Fortunately, overconfidence is not a universal problem; it is only likely to be a problem in certain situations. Identifying […]
Read More… from Advantages of Confidence and Dangers of Overconfidence
There are two basic types of exchanges employed by people when forming new relationships: incremental exchanges and constant exchanges. In the former, we ‘test the water’ and build relationships gradually through incremental steps of commitment; in the latter we take ‘leaps of faith’ in each other and relations gets off to a quick start. So […]
Read More… from Business Relationships: Test the Water or Take a Leap of Faith?
Leaders can have a ripple effect through their company, particularly those in the C-suite; their actions reverberate throughout the organization, with followers sometimes even mimicking them. The CEO of BAE Systems learnt this quickly as she noticed a dozen women in her office imitated the way she tied her scarf after her first day on […]
Is organizational politics good or bad, or does it even exist? This seems to be a debated topic, with many executives (especially women) finding office politics difficult to embrace. Female executives seem to be particularly uncomfortable with incorporating political skills/behaviours into their repertoire. But it’s not just females that view politics negatively; in general, political […]
Read More… from How Women Can Be More Politically Savvy at Work
‘Damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ — this is usually the unfortunate impression/management dilemma faced by female executives. If they adopt male behavioural traits typically associated with strong leadership, they are devalued for appearing too masculine. Yet if they favour a more vulnerable stance, they are dismissed as less competent to their male counterparts. […]
Read More… from The Effect of Feminine Charm in Negotiations
Companies have spent increasing amounts on social media and ICT (information and communication technology) in recent years, demonstrating their interest in keeping up with the rapid pace of technological development. However, are they also dedicating equal effort to understanding the factors that actually drive an individual’s willingness and ability to share knowledge? Apparently not, according […]
Read More… from Building Knowledge Sharing Networks in Organizations
Emotional intelligence (EI) has been conceptualized as a key predictor for success at work and job performance in a number of studies. Salovey and Mayer’s definition describes EI as an individual’s capacity to appropriately regulate his/her emotions, which involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and […]
Read More… from Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Behaviour
