Digital Body Language (with Erica Dhawan)
The key principles of effective remote collaboration.
Digital Body Language (with Erica Dhawan)
Articles about collaboration
How To Captivate (with Vanessa Van Edwards)
How To Captivate (with Vanessa Van Edwards)
The science of succeeding with people.
Dealing With Difficult People At Work
Dealing With Difficult People At Work
Most of the work you do has to be accomplished with others. On this episode, we share three principles for dealing with difficult co-workers and clients.
Quit Your Approval Addiction
Quit Your Approval Addiction
Three key principles for avoiding the "likeability trap".
Dealing With a Difficult Co-worker
Dealing With a Difficult Co-worker
Work would be so easy if it weren't for all the people, right? However, all of us have to deal (from time to time) with difficult co-workers and people who seem intent on making our lives miserable. On this episode, I share a few principles for dealing with those difficult co-workers.
How To Receive Negative (and Unfair) Feedback
How To Receive Negative (and Unfair) Feedback
How do you handle feedback? We need other people in our lives to tell us the truth. If we immediately get defensive when they tell us something we don’t like, we will lose key allies in our journey of growth. If you manage a team, your trigger happy ways will eventually destroy the culture of your team. On this episode, we share a few strategies for dealing with feedback in a healthy way.
10 Things Creatives Wish Their Manager Knew
10 Things Creatives Wish Their Manager Knew
It is a reality that managers and creatives often speak different languages. Each has a different set of responsibilities and perspectives they are bringing to a project, and often the collision of these forces is enough to create massive waves within the organization. With that in mind, here is a list of statements that could begin to spark dialogue between organizational leaders and creatives.
How To Quit Your Approval Addiction
How To Quit Your Approval Addiction
Which do you value more: being liked, or being effective? For many creative pros, they'd say that being effective is their highest ambition, but the reality is that they do many things simply for the sake of approval from others. You can be both liked and effective, but you can't chase both at the same time. On this episode, we share three ways in which you can quit your approval addiction and unleash the work you're capable of.
How To Measure and Monitor Creative Work
How To Measure and Monitor Creative Work
Effective creative leaders maintain both a scoreboard and a dashboard for their work. These tools help them track important aspects of their team’s progress, health, and culture. On this episode, we share how to establish both a scoreboard and a dashboard to help you guide yourself and your team toward brilliant work.
The Road Back To You (with Ian Morgan Cron)
The Road Back To You (with Ian Morgan Cron)
Self-awareness is a valuable asset if you want to lead well, create effectively, and live a good life. However, many people move through life reactively without a clear framework for how they're wired and what truly drives them. On this episode, Ian Morgan Cron shares insights from his book The Road Back To You, gives an overview of how the Enneagram framework can help you identify what drives you, and offers tips for applying that self-knowledge to life and work.
Exactly What To Say (with Phil M. Jones)
Exactly What To Say (with Phil M. Jones)
Have you ever been in a big client pitch, a challenging company meeting, or a conversation with a peer and been at a loss for the right words? What do you say in those difficult situations to improve your odds of success? This episode features Phil M. Jones, the author of Exactly What To Say. He will help us understand the words that will help you achieve your goals, influence others, and connect more deeply with your peers and clients.
Five Myths About Creative People
Five Myths About Creative People
There are several myths that exist about highly creative people, and they can seriously affect how teams are led, how client interactions happen, and how we collaborate with one another. If you believe any of these five myths, it can create chronic issues on your team. And, if you are perpetuating any of them, it can seriously curb your effectiveness as a creative pro.
How To Give Feedback About Creative Work
How To Give Feedback About Creative Work
Have you ever presented a project and been told something like "yeah, that's just not working for me"? Not very helpful, right? How you give feedback is really important to a team's culture. On this episode, we share three key principles for giving feedback to others about creative work.
How To Eliminate 90% of the Tension On Creative Teams
How To Eliminate 90% of the Tension On Creative Teams
Many of the e-mails and questions we get at Accidental Creative revolve around one question. Actually, it’s one question asked from two different perspectives: How can I get them to understand me?
The them in the question is either “my manager” or “my creative team” depending on who is asking the question. There is a lot of time spent lobbing shots across the organizational bow, from both sides, but there is often a significant dearth of real communication.
So with that in mind, on this episode I we share a simple way to eliminate 90% of this organizational tension. It begins by understanding the main question being asked by the other person in any given interaction.
Truth, Lies, and Body Language (with Mark Bowden)
Truth, Lies, and Body Language (with Mark Bowden)
Have you ever been in a business pitch, a conversation with a peer, or an argument and thought "I wonder what they're really thinking?" On this episode, Mark Bowden, author of Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking, will offer advice for how to apply critical thinking to how you interpret body language so that you can better discern what's going on inside someone's head.
Podcast: Aligning Your Expectations With Reality
Podcast: Aligning Your Expectations With Reality
One of the greatest sources of tension on creative teams is when unspoken expectations are violated. This can lead to misalignment with your clients, with your peers, and even with your own efforts. On today's episode, we'll look at three kinds of unspoken expectations and three ways to prevent them from taking root and disrupting your work.
Podcast: Dealing With Difficult Co-workers (with Dr. Jody Foster)
Podcast: Dealing With Difficult Co-workers (with Dr. Jody Foster)
Difficult people can make work miserable. You can control your own work and collaboration, but when there is someone throwing wrenches into the machinery just for fun, it can seriously derail your work and drive you crazy. On today's episode, Dr. Jody Foster is here to talk about her new book The Schmuck In My Office, and help us deal with a few different types of difficult people.
Podcast: Stop Keeping Score
Podcast: Stop Keeping Score
Have you ever felt anxious about your job, but you don’t know why? Everything is going well, or at least according to plan, and there is nothing obvious that should be causing anxiety. Yet, when bedtime rolls around, you struggle to get to sleep, and you have a perpetual sense that you’re falling behind.
Falling behind? Behind what?
On today's episode, I share three ways in which you might be unknowingly keeping "score", and how they can affect your engagement, your collaboration, and your overall drive at work.
Podcast: Busting Ruts and Assumptions
Podcast: Busting Ruts and Assumptions
A key source of this kind of misalignment is assumptive behavior or beliefs that – over time – become organizational ruts. You assume that you and your fellow team members are all on the same page because you’re privy to all of the same information, but how that information is absorbed and interpreted is a very personal thing, and can lead to sharp division if you don’t seek common understanding.
Podcast: Being Liked vs. Being Effective
Podcast: Being Liked vs. Being Effective
Everyone wants to be liked. Given the choice between being liked or disliked, very few (sane) people would choose the latter. However, where does being liked rank on your list of priorities?