This guidance recommends a straightforward way to diffuse tension around, and overcome, objections others have to your ideas.

What do you do when someone – particularly a direct - disagrees with an idea you’ve shared, or a suggestion you’ve made? It’s actually a good idea to agree with them. A little.

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This guidance tells you how to prepare for meetings where politics are going to play a role (which is to say, ALL of them). ;-)

Most folks don’t do any preparation for the meetings they go to, unless they’re presenting something. This is a mistake, particularly when we’re meeting with folks who are more senior, or who are outside of our team. In either case, you’ll be far more effective if you know who wants what and who likes whom.

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This guidance recommends knowing where decision makers and influencers stand on proposals and decisions that matter to you and your team.

Your organization is MUCH more political than most of us realize. For those who know it’s political, some say, I’m not going to play that game. Either state of being – not seeing the politics, or ignoring them, is unfortunate. Professional Life is HUMAN life, and that means it’s emotional, and therefore political. Engineers, software designers, technical people take note: hate those marketing and sales people all you want, but they’re gonna end up being your boss unless you recognize the value of political, or put differently, non-rational, decision making.

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The third part of our guidance on working with HR – involve HR early.

Mark used to say he hated HR. Now he says, he hates bad HR. Many companies are too small to have HR. Managers in companies which are big enough to have an HR department, sometimes wish they didn’t. When you want help, they won’t give it, and when you don’t want help, they want to tell you about a bunch of rules that make your life harder.

HR does have an important role to play in organizations – a company doesn’t get very big before someone decides someone needs to handle all that ‘HR stuff’. How do you work with them effectively?

PLEASE NOTE: The podcast feed link to the show as originally published was incorrect. If you delete the podcast in iTunes, then refresh the feed, you'll get the correct show. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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The second part of our guidance on working with HR – involve HR early.

Mark used to say he hated HR. Now he says, he hates bad HR. Many companies are too small to have HR. Managers in companies which are big enough to have an HR department, sometimes wish they didn’t. When you want help, they won’t give it, and when you don’t want help, they want to tell you about a bunch of rules that make your life harder.

HR does have an important role to play in organizations – a company doesn’t get very big before someone decides someone needs to handle all that ‘HR stuff’. How do you work with them effectively?

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The first part of our guidance on working with HR.

Mark used to say he hated HR. Now he says, he hates bad HR. Many companies are too small to have HR. Managers in companies which are big enough to have an HR department, sometimes wish they didn’t. When you want help, they won’t give it, and when you don’t want help, they want to tell you about a bunch of rules that make your life harder.

HR does have an important role to play in organizations – a company doesn’t get very big before someone decides someone needs to handle all that ‘HR stuff’. How do you work with them effectively?

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This guidance recommends greeting all of your directs when you first interact with them each morning, and how to do it.

This guidance ought to be unnecessary, but sadly, it isn’t. The short answer is, you’re never so busy as to be able to get away with ignoring your directs.

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We believe this podcast, while a Career Tools cast, is of particular interest to our Manager Tools listeners as well. So, we're providing this as an additional cast for our Manager Tools listeners and Individual Licensees – The conclusion of our guidance on how to obtain the requirements you need when working as an internal support provider.

The relationship between internal support providers and their customers has to be one of the most frustrating in the corporate world. The provider NEEDS x and y and z before he can solve the customer’s problem. The customer just wants a thing, that does ‘you know’, and just works. Both are hampered by corporate policies and processes.

There are ways of making this relationship go more smoothly. But as an internal support provider you will need to change your perspective in order to make this work. You might find this hard to hear, to take and to make the changes we recommend. We’re dedicating this cast to the Atlanta January 2012 conference attendees who found it hard to hear, but thanked us for telling them anyway. We hope you’ll feel the same way.

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The conclusion of our guidance on how to obtain the requirements you need when working as an internal support provider.

The relationship between internal support providers and their customers has to be one of the most frustrating in the corporate world. The provider NEEDS x and y and z before he can solve the customer’s problem. The customer just wants a thing, that does ‘you know’, and just works. Both are hampered by corporate policies and processes.

There are ways of making this relationship go more smoothly. But as an internal support provider you will need to change your perspective in order to make this work. You might find this hard to hear, to take and to make the changes we recommend. We’re dedicating this cast to the Atlanta January 2012 conference attendees who found it hard to hear, but thanked us for telling them anyway. We hope you’ll feel the same way.

  [Play in Popup]

We believe this podcast, while a Career Tools cast, is of particular interest to our Manager Tools listeners as well. So, we're providing this as an additional cast for our Manager Tools listeners and Individual Licensees – Our guidance how to obtain the requirements you need when working as an internal support provider.

The relationship between internal support providers and their customers has to be one of the most frustrating in the corporate world. The provider NEEDS x and y and z before he can solve the customer’s problem. The customer just wants a thing, that does ‘you know’, and just works. Both are hampered by corporate policies and processes.

There are ways of making this relationship go more smoothly. But as an internal support provider you will need to change your perspective in order to make this work. You might find this hard to hear, to take and to make the changes we recommend. We’re dedicating this cast to the Atlanta January 2012 conference attendees who found it hard to hear, but thanked us for telling them anyway. We hope you’ll feel the same way.

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