Jasmine Gartner Consulting

About a month ago, I started working with a new client, helping them to create an employee engagement forum. They had put together a group of representatives and I went in to speak with them. When I walked into the room, I could feel the tension, a tight feeling as if everyone were holding their breath. It didn’t take long for the upset to start spilling out: the lack of trust in management, the sense of powerlessness, and the hopelessness about whether a forum like this coul

There are two opposing forces in the workplace when it comes to difficult conversations. The first is a version of our individual will to survive, to do well, to get what we need. And the second is what we've all been socialised to do: get along, don't make waves, don't stick your head above the parapet. Difficult Feelings Make for a Difficult Workplace The result is that when people feel they're in a difficult place, they don't feel comfortable expressing what they're really

Men make their own history, but not under circumstances of their own choosing. Change, by its very nature, is hard for most people. So how do you talk to senior managers about changes that might be affecting you adversely, whether it's redundancy or a shift change? First, focus on potential outcomes - given the hand you've been dealt, realistically, what outcomes can you work toward? Second, ask questions to examine the quality of your senior management team's decision-making

Overcoming Resistance to Best Practice Often, when I enter a room of employee forum representatives who I'm going to be training on Best Practice in organisational change, I'll get a bit of resistance from a small number of people. "The people I represent only care about what happens to them: it's about their jobs, and their wages," someone will say. "I just tell it how it is," growls someone else belligerently, their arms crossed. Actually, a lot of the time, it's the same p