Human Behavior Articles - Steve On Leadership

What Harry Potter Can Teach Us About Us

J.K. Rowling Photo by Daniel Ogren Sometimes our search for who we are is just plain entertaining. Because of my vintage, I’m sure it won’t surprise you that until recently I knew nothing about Harry Potter. I knew the author J.K. Rowling was a billionaire and that her Harry Potter franchise was huge. But that was it. Then I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast with Shankar Vedantam about sorting hats and personality tests, and I got sucked into the Harry Potter vacuum. A few days after I heard this podcast I actually watched Harry Potter and the [...]

By Steve Wood|2020-05-14T15:38:51-04:00May 14th, 2020|Hiring & Team Composition, Learning Styles & Skills|

Leaders Decide Challenging People Grow or Go

Photo by Anthony Tran One of the most stressful parts of life is dealing with people that have high-conflict personalities. And, if you have to manage one, your life just got worse. It is a leader’s job to manage and decide whether these types of team members can grow or have to go. In a moment, I’ll share a few simple steps for making “grow or go” decisions. Upcoming Webinar. Last year in my article One Narcissist You Want Off Your Team I described one of the worst types of personalities you might encounter as described by Bill [...]

By Steve Wood|2019-11-07T15:11:57-05:00October 24th, 2019|Bullies & Misbehavior, Human Behavior|

Entitled Leaders May Help Homo Sapiens Go Extinct

Photo of Referee Scott Foster by Isaiah J. Downing It has always bothered me how the very leaders who refer to government programs as “entitlements” behave entitled themselves. By entitled I mean they act as if the laws, rules, and ethics they talk about apply to everyone else, not them. And entitled people hate referees, but more about that in a moment. What concerns me today is how our younger generation is being impacted by the increasingly visible entitlement behavior displayed by their parents, politicians, celebrities, wealthy business leaders, and professional athletes. I ask myself, “If we do [...]

By Steve Wood|2019-05-30T12:06:02-04:00May 30th, 2019|Bullies & Misbehavior, Human Behavior, Uncategorized|

When Doing Good was Simple

(Photo by Toa Heftiba) If you are in business or work as a police officer, it is hard to do good today. Between social media and what seems to be lots of angry people and lawyers, no good deed goes unpunished. That is why this cool story from 1959 caught my eye. It happened in the eastern Maine community of Calais, which is right on the Canadian border. The story was shared by Al Churchill, a local attorney there and writer of a Calais historical blog we enjoy and often published at the St. Croix Historical Society website. [...]

By Steve Wood|2019-02-24T10:09:47-05:00February 24th, 2019|Ethics, Human Behavior|

Job Quitting is a Symptom of Low Resiliency

One of the problems with low-unemployment is that young workers find it too easy to quit and find another job. What they do not understand is that quality employers recognize this pattern as a symptom of low resiliency and often pass on hiring them. Photo by REUTERS/Brian Snyder At least that used to be the case. Many employers are getting so desperate today they ignore this symptom and hire candidates knowing they might be short-term solutions. And, of course, all this does is enable the low-resiliency job jumpers unless you add resiliency-building to your work culture. What Can [...]

By Steve Wood|2018-11-30T11:12:24-05:00November 30th, 2018|Human Behavior, Leadership Lessons, Learning Styles & Skills|

Leaders Beware – Google Done Taught Me Everything I Know

I have been a defendant in only one court case. Sadly, that case contributed to my loss of interest in teaching college and is directly related to today’s topic. I’ll tell you that story later. When our founding leaders formed the United States, they wrestled with this paradox – How to protect individual rights and protect individuals from themselves. Well-educated in the history of mankind, these founders knew that humans are naturally social beings and very susceptible to going along with the crowd. They worried how misguided crowds could destroy the great country they envisioned. One social trend that really [...]

By Steve Wood|2018-10-19T09:43:05-04:00October 18th, 2018|Just Plain Interesting, Learning Styles & Skills, Uncategorized|

A Few Reasons We All Lie

Yes, we all tell lies even though we don’t like to admit it. And I think the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves because they often do the most damage to others – quite often unintentionally. On Sunday a rather odd, but timely, thing happened to me. Right after I watched a mother deal with a six-year old child who had told her a lie, I spotted a June 2017 National Geographic magazine on a shelf. On the cover were the words Why We Lie. Of course I was intrigued. In my Blog last week Remember One Thing [...]

By Steve Wood|2018-10-04T08:38:59-04:00October 4th, 2018|Bullies & Misbehavior, Human Behavior|

Remember One Thing You Have in Common with Ford and Kavanaugh

Photo by Quinten deGraaf Today the Senate will have a hearing that will explore an allegation by Christine Ford involving Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Did you know you have something in common with them that you should think about as you listen to their testimony? More about that in a moment. One of my favorite writers is Malcolm Gladwell and now he has a podcast called Revisionist History, which I highly recommend. Recently he did two podcasts that focused on human memory and how flawed it is. One podcast called Free Brian Williams is quite remarkable. In this podcast [...]

By Steve Wood|2018-09-28T09:24:12-04:00September 26th, 2018|Conflict Resolution, Human Behavior, Uncategorized|

Try This One Thing in a Conflictive Conversation

It was two weeks with no hot water in our house and I was frustrated. Almost as frustrated as when I play golf. Two service techs had just left after their third visit and supposedly just diagnosed the final problem. The “on-demand” hot water unit needed an air-pressure control that, of course, they did not have in stock – it would have to be ordered from the manufacturer. And they had already put us through this process when they replaced the other part that was supposed to fix the problem. I needed to talk with a supervisor – someone who [...]

By Steve Wood|2018-08-02T10:38:53-04:00August 2nd, 2018|Conflict Resolution, Human Behavior|

Did Steve Steal $1,000,000 from his Last Employer?

No, I did not, steal $1,000,000, but I got your attention. One thing I learned this week is if I had written that headline using another person’s name and did not say it was true in the article, I would not be guilty of libel. Headlines put in the form of a question, even though they give the reader a negative impression, are not illegal. That’s why you see so many on those magazines in the grocery aisle and in your e-mail. These strategies are at the heart of what you are seeing in “fake news.” And fake news is [...]

By Steve Wood|2017-10-26T06:30:10-04:00October 25th, 2017|Ethics, Human Behavior|