Own Your Armor

"I love my job, but the culture here stinks ..." "I work with some seriously difficult people ..." "Managing 'people issues' is the hardest part of my job as a leader ..." Working with other people is supposed to make accomplishing goals more efficient, but when there's bad team dynamics, undercurrents of tension and poor communication affect everyone's motivation and productivity. Bad dynamics are notoriously hard to change. Even the most capable leaders struggle to manage...
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"I love my job, but the culture here stinks ..." "I work with some seriously difficult people ..." "Managing 'people issues' is the hardest part of my job as a leader ..." Working with other people is supposed to make accomplishing goals more efficient, but when there's bad team dynamics, undercurrents of tension and poor communication affect everyone's motivation and productivity. Bad dynamics are notoriously hard to change. Even the most capable leaders struggle to manage tense relationships on their teams because conflict eats leadership skills for breakfast. The same skills that help create visionary, productive and efficient organizations (like forward action, decisive problem solving and driving accountability) don't make a dent in changing the interpersonal defensive cycles that gum up collaboration. In her groundbreaking new book, Own Your Armor, executive coach and psychologist Dr. Michelle Brody presents a dramatically different and proven way to improve ineffective workplace dynamics and repair toxic cultures. She shows our "people dynamics" problems in pictures - engaging and instructive illustrations that are memorable and mindset-changing - you will never look at workplace drama the same way again. In the refreshingly lighthearted pages of this book, we find the levers to changing tense team situations: by understanding the armor that everyone wears when things get tough. Passive-aggressiveness, micromanaging, and resource-grabbing are all forms of armor that good people sometimes resort to when under threat. Once people start armoring up, mistrust in a team grows, causing more need for armor, and locking up the culture even more. For a team to take off armor to restore good communication, armor has to be owned.Brody explains the 10 principles for "owning armor" in the workplace and offers a practical path for moving a team toward greater health. Owning armor allows teams to defuse vicious interpersonal cycles, build trust and unlock individual and team strengths. "A master class on team dynamics in a picture book -- yes! Only someone with Michelle Brody's experience and wisdom could do that! Read this book and learn from the best!" -- Amy Hayes, Global Head of Learning and Development at Meta (Facebook)