Jo McDermott

jomcdermott

  • Break the Rules? Only After Careful Consideration.

    Rules Have Reasons Rules in organizations are there for a reason.  Someone at some time figured out that there needed to be guidelines in place to govern the situation.  These rules can be formal–procedures written in manuals that have multiple… Continue reading

  • Get a Mentor. Use a Mentor.

    Get a Mentor I know you’ve heard it.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve heard it from me.  You need a mentor to help your career.  Easier said than done, right? Typical questions about mentors and mentoring are: What… Continue reading

  • Stephen Covey and his Gifts to Business People

    All business people owe a lot to Stephen Covey, who died this week at the age of 79.  Covey wrote his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in 1989.  There were no earth shatteringly new concepts in it—to… Continue reading

  • Onboard Yourself

    Onboarding Onboarding is the process that organizations use to get their employees up to speed enough to do their jobs.  Another term for it is “organizational socialization.”  Organizations have informal and formal methods for the knowledge transfer or processes, tools,… Continue reading

  • Trust me, damn it!

    Demanding Trust Doesn’t Work I once had a boss demand that I trust her again.  We can talk later about how I made the mistake of letting her know that I didn’t trust her (not a good career move, and… Continue reading

  • Promoted to Manage Your Peers? Awkward.

    They’ll Hate Me! If you spend enough time climbing the corporate ladder, or if you work in a small organization, eventually you’ll be promoted to manage your peers.  This is one of the toughest developmental experiences there is.  It’s hard… Continue reading

  • Multiple Intelligences: IQ, EQ, SQ and the other SQ

    What kind of intelligence do you have? We’ve all heard of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) which measures our ‘intelligence.’  Most of us have  heard of EQ (Emotional Intelligence), first mentioned by Wayne Payne in  1985 and made famous by Daniel Goleman… Continue reading

  • Become a Great Leader

    Do You Want to Become a Great Leader? How you think about leadership has a profound affect on your success in becoming a good leader.  We all have our individual idea of what a good leader is.  Then we assume… Continue reading

  • Flip the Switch

    A Story I’m going to tell you a story so that you can learn an important lesson without having to go through what I went through to learn it.  How’s that for a deal?  Then you’ll be able to do… Continue reading

  • Is That Smoke Smell Your Burnout?

    Are You Burned Out? Here are the symptoms: Everything looks bleak You don’t even have enough energy to care Your tolerance of other people is very low You feel unappreciated You feel like you’re going through the motions It doesn’t… Continue reading