Author: Dr. Dana

Career crisis: Do you have grade snobbery or grade jealousy?

Career crisis: Do you have grade snobbery or grade jealousy?

Posted by | Jul 25, 2017 | , |

For me, a career crisis normally happens each Sunday evening, just as the sun is starting to set, and the gap between my hopes for myself and the reality of my life starts to diverge so painfully that I normally end up weeping into a pillow. – Alain de Botton While I suspect that the gap between your current grade, the grade of others, or the grade you desire does not leave you in tears each Sunday night, I suspect it’s something that crosses your mind time to time. You see, in government, it is not unusual to reference someone’s grade as an...

Read More
Temporary reassignments: Detail benefits to you, us, and them

Temporary reassignments: Detail benefits to you, us, and them

Posted by | Jul 24, 2017 | , |

Temporary reassignments are known to most government employees as details. For the most part, details are seen as an opportunity to meet workforce needs of the agency and a developmental opportunity for employees for hands-on work experience. Unofficially, details are also seen as a way to manage poor performers out of an organization. It’s that third intent that most government employees think of when they hear of someone being detailed. And it is for that reason, that many employees do not see details as a positive developmental opportunity. So, in this post, I cover the broad benefits of a...

Read More
Debunking 4 excuses managers give for sending you to training

Debunking 4 excuses managers give for sending you to training

Posted by | Jul 17, 2017 | , |

In a series of classes I taught about how to develop employees, the managers came up with a plan for how they would develop their high, solid, and low performing employees. With the exception of the low performers, the list of development approaches seldom included training. The managers were apologetic for this outcome. As both the instructor and a talent development manager, the students reassured me that training was important too. What they didn’t realize was that the lists they came up with to develop their employees was exactly what I intended. I wanted them to come to the...

Read More
Coping mechanisms: What Freud didn’t know about bitterness

Coping mechanisms: What Freud didn’t know about bitterness

Posted by | Jul 10, 2017 | , |

Over the last few weeks we have been discussing the idea of bitterness at work. In the last post, we identified the need for effective coping mechanisms for handling anger or bitterness. So in this post we will explore some constructive coping mechanisms that you can use when you find yourself angry or combating that smoldering resentment we sometimes call: bitterness. Anger – is it really all that bad? Anger is one of the core emotions that all humans experience. And, in general, it is a valuable emotion because it brings to the surface when there’s something not ‘right’....

Read More
Does forgiveness cure bitterness? Answers of a high performer

Does forgiveness cure bitterness? Answers of a high performer

Posted by | Jul 3, 2017 | , , |

High performers, counter-intuitively, are more susceptible to bitterness. At the same time, high performers are the first to try to overcome bitterness. This is because they know bitterness can impact everything around them. If you do a quick search you’ll quickly find that forgiveness is the remedy that most prescribe for battling bitterness. But, I have to wonder if that’s the only cure. Or, if it’s the whole answer. In a prior post, we discussed what bitterness is and what causes it. In short, bitterness is smoldering repressed anger. For this post, I interviewed a high performer that has found...

Read More

Pin It on Pinterest