Blog
Leading with Stability and Hope During Crisis
Dealing with uncertainty creates anxiety for most people. It’s especially difficult when facing a pandemic. Most likely, you are facing tough decisions that impact your company’s bottom line, employee paychecks, and the health of your employees and customers. What your employees need most is for you to lead with a non-anxious presence. A presence of staying calm, not…
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Similarities And Differences Between The Coronavirus and Conflict
As we all face the uncertainties associated with the coronavirus, it made me realize just how much this virus and conflict has in common in at least two ways: 1) Both Perpetuate Fear With the coronavirus, our country and the entire world are facing lots of fears. Fear of becoming infected, fear of how our…
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Are You a Fixer? How to Know When Helping is Hurting
Are you a “Fixer”? By age 11, Maria was writing checks to pay the family bills, by age 14, she started her first job, and by age 19, she owned her first home. Due to the unpredictability in her upbringing from her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s mental illness, Maria said “I’ve been an overachiever,…
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How One Couple Successfully Ran A Business
Family-owned businesses often struggle because sometimes personal conflict spills over into the family business. The result is a work culture with unresolved family issues that impacts how the company runs, its overall productivity, and ultimately its bottom-line results. It’s been no different for married couple, Angelo and Lauren, who are third-generation family business owners and…
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3 Strategies for Standing Up to the Office Bully
“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” ~ Lao-tzu Most people either endure working with a bully or leave their job, even if they love what they do. After all, it’s risky to stand up to a bully due to the possibility of retaliation and the…
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How to Determine if Workplace Conflict Is Taking Its Toll
Are you struggling to get along with a difficult co-worker? You love your job, yet there’s one person at work who makes your workdays virtually unbearable. On one hand, the job itself is great and you’ve worked hard to attain the position you’re in and the respect you’ve earned. On the other, the physical, mental,…
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During Conflict, Do you Give Away Your Power?
Jeremiah could feel the stress building. For months I’d been listening to my boss’s ranting about some production issue that hadn’t gone as planned. I felt responsible as a leader and was genuinely trying to do a good job. I wanted to defend myself and explain my attempt to solve the problem. Suddenly, I realized…
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A leader’s Gift of Second Chances to Inmates
Tom would be the first to admit he wasn’t always comfortable with conflict. In fact, he used to avoid it at all costs thinking that all conflict was bad. So, when he pitched the idea to his senior leadership team about hiring inmates to work at the company’s manufacturing facility, it was one of many markers…
Read More3 Ways to Stop Your Employee’s Bad Behavior
You’re in your office. An employee has come to you to complain about a co-worker. This person tells you the same problematic behaviors he/she has told you before about the other employee. You wonder how much time and energy is being spent on this ongoing conflict that could be spent doing productive work. You’ve tried…
Read MoreA Personal Message from Bonnie
To my e-newsletter followers over the past four years, and those of you who’ve followed me since the start of my business, thank you for being on this journey with me. Shortly after moving to Pennsylvania, I founded A Conscious Choice. I transitioned from my work as a Marriage & Family Therapist to Executive Leadership…
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