When it comes to writing a blog, one of the unfortunate realities you have to deal with is addressing online plagiarism (for those who aren’t familiar, online plagiarism is when someone posts your content on their site without proper attribution for who created it). In most cases, this occurs because some malicious site owner wants to use the content you created in order to increase traffic to their own site.

However, as is the case with most interactions, sometimes the line isn’t so clear and it’s hard to know whether the offending act was done intentionally or merely out of a lack of awareness. It’s this kind of situation that a friend and fellow blogger recently found herself in and which she sought my advice about to figure out what she should do to address it.

In this case, my friend had come across a website which had taken a recent post of hers and re-published it in its entirety on their blog without her permission. What’s more, the only attribution given for the post was a vague ‘article source’ link – something few readers would bother to click on in order to find out who wrote the piece.

Following our conversation about this situation, she contacted the site owner and thankfully, ended up with a satisfactory resolution for both parties.

Of course, bloggers and others who create content online are not the only ones who have to deal with this problem. Indeed, most of us have at one time or another faced a similar situation of having someone take advantage of our contributions or worse, taking credit for the work itself. And unfortunately, few of us are lucky enough to see these situations resolved in an amicable fashion that reinforces our sense of teamwork and fair play.

So how do you address a co-worker whose taking credit for your work without creating a new source of conflict within your team and workplace? Here are three steps you can take to ensure a successful and mutually-beneficial outcome. Click here to continue reading »”How to Handle A Credit-Stealing Co-Worker”

How do we stop or curb drama in the workplace? That’s the basis of the conversation I had with Marlene Chism in the fifth episode of my leadership podcast series, “Leadership Biz Cafe”.

Marlene is a speaker, author and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology, an eight-part empowerment process to increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. Marlene has a master’s degree in HR Development from Webster University and is the author of “Success is a Given: Reading the Signs While Reinventing Your Life”, as well as recently published “Stop Workplace Drama – Train Your Team to Have No Complaints, No Excuses and No Regrets”

Over the course of our conversation about how to manage workplace drama, Marlene and I discuss the following:

• Learning to appreciate the difference between the drama that arises at work and the drama that comes out from your reaction to that situation.
• How a lack of clarity leads to workplace conflict and what we can do to regain clarity when our perspective about what’s going on around us becomes obscured.
• How to identify the gap between your goals and where your team is and the relationship this gap has in creating drama in the workplace.
• Why we need to take responsibility for what we can control in order to resolve workplace conflict.
• That workplace drama in itself isn’t the real problem; that it’s something more personal and more within our control that we can address.

As I mentioned at the end of the show, Click here to continue reading »”Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast #5 – Marlene Chism on Stopping Workplace Drama”

There’s a common saying that the one thing we fear the most is speaking in public. Given the number of conflicts we’re seeing between various parties in sports, business and political circles, it’s not hard to imagine that the next thing most of us would dread is having to negotiate a deal.

Indeed, it seems that most negotiations today tend to erupt into conflicts between the vested parties, thanks to there being a greater interest in escalating talks towards a showdown than focusing on trying to ascertain where some common ground can be found on which to establish an agreement.

According to William Ury, co-author of the best-selling book “Getting to Yes”, the reason why we’re seeing more conflict in negotiations today is due to the fact that “we’ve been used to a pie that was expanding. Now it feels like the pie is shrinking, and that engenders finger-pointing, unproductive behaviors and lose-lose-lose outcomes that make things worse for both sides and for the surrounding community.”

Ironically, those who are most successful at negotiating understand that it’s not about proving that your position is right, which understandably leads to defensive posturing from the other party, if not also allowing for escalating emotions to enter into the fray. On the contrary, to be successful in your negotiations requires one to be attentive and aware of the needs or concerns of those you’re negotiating with and understanding how your own position impacts those factors in order to create a mutually-agreeable solution.

So how can we keep conflicts out of our negotiations so that both parties can achieve what they’re after from the interaction? In her article “You Want What? Four Tips for Civilized Negotiating”, business strategist and author Barbara Findlay Schenck shares four steps to take to ensure both a conflict-free and successful outcome from your negotiations.

Disclaimer: My blog is a part of an online influencer network for Business on Main. I receive monthly incentives to share my views on content I find noteworthy and relevant for my audience.

Several weeks ago, I received a review copy of Dr. Brenda Shoshanna’s latest book “Fearless”. Dr. Shoshanna is a practising psychologist and therapist and has made appearances on national television networks ABC, CBS, and MSNBC, as well in numerous publications including Boardroom, Mental Health News, and Publisher’s Weekly.

Although her book looks at managing fear from the lens of personal self-improvement, I found that many of the ideas and concepts she shares in her book relate directly to the issues leaders face in managing their organizations. As such, instead of writing a review of her book, I invited Dr. Shoshanna to discuss with me some of the ideas she shares in her book and what leaders and businesses can learn from them.

TN: In your book “Fearless”, you write about changing our perception of fear and of the resistance many of us create, consciously or otherwise, when faced with the idea of change.  In fact, there’s an interesting line you wrote about change – “Change is a gift. Change is a friend” (p.35) . I think not just in personal life, but in business, change can be hard for many to openly accept.

People are programmed, deeply programmed, to want to keep everything the same. And that gives a sense of security, but really it’s a false sense of security because while you’re trying to keep everything the same all the time, life is nothing but change. It’s a kind of rigidity. The way to be most successful in your business and your work is learning how to be resilient and spontaneous and fluid; to be able to really live with change, to flow with circumstances, to be present for what’s happening right now. That’s the real art of it.

And when you’re flooded by fear, or when you’re flooded by anxiety, you can’t be present for what’s really needed right now in this moment. You might be living in the past or living in the future, or strategizing how it’s going to work out. But the real way to succeed is to be here fully and see what’s needed, what’s happening, and respond in a way that’s really on target.

TN: From a rational, intellectual point of view, I think most of us can agree that change is a natural part of life and business, and how being highly adaptive is a key trait for success. And yet, many still struggle with change, even when Click here to continue reading »”Managing Fear and Change in the Workplace”