360? Appraisal

Feedback regarding performance from all aspects of the job.

Attraction

Favourable interaction between stakeholders/applicants, and the images, values and information about an organization.

Autonomy

The extent to which a job allows employees freedom and discretion to schedule their work and decide the procedures used to complete it.

Bureaucracy

An organizational structure marked by rules and procedures, hierarchy of authority and division of labour.

Commitment

Action. Since all communication and coordination is occurring in conversations between human beings, commitment can best be understood as intentional action in language. See Speech Actions - Requests and Promises below.

Conversations FOR

Coaches distinguish conversations in terms of their intention and outcomes.
* No Possibility
Conversations that are either intentional or habitual and have the effect of closing possibilities through being spoken as truth.

* Possibility
Speculative conversations that open a possibility and shift the relationship with the future.
* Opportunity
Conversations that ground possibilities and provide a “structure for fulfillment” of the possibility.
* Action
Conversations comprised of requests and promises that are coordinated for bringing about something specific in the future. Conversations which ground commitments in time.
* Relationship
Conversations having the intention to alter the quality of relationship in terms of possibility, moods, the future or the past.

* Completion/Breakdowns
Conversations that interrupt or stop the action for the purpose of either creating a “new game” or starting another dialogue about what is missing.

Cooperatives

The joint ownership and management of an organization between its customers and/or employees.

Distinctions

A linguistic phenomenon that creates or opens a domain in which something can be observed. Declarative in nature, the distinctions we have constitute the structure of interpretation we have of the world.

Emergent learning

Learning derived by interaction with evolving situations such as dealing with customers, and used in the formation and formulation of strategy.

Enrollment

The process of engaging others with a focus on obtaining their commitment to a proposal or offer. Distinct from “selling,” it is grounded in the commitments of those being enrolled.

Employee participation

Involves workers exerting a countervailing and upward pressure on management control. This does not, however, imply unity between managers and non-managers.

Ethics

The code of moral principles and values that governs the behaviour of an individual or group with respect to what is right or wrong.

Groupthink

The tendency of members of a highly cohesive group to adhere to shared views so strongly that they totally ignore external information inconsistent with these views.

How We See the Future

Leaders and coaches show us that we normally look at the future as something that can be predicted based on our past experience and that most of us will organize our actions and strategies to cope with or succeed given the future we anticipate. Leaders and coaches allow us to see that we have choices in how we interpret and relate to the world, including the future.

Interpretations

Our interpretation of the world occurs as the narrative we have to account for what we are observing and experiencing. This is necessary for there to be a historical reality. If genuine change is to occur, leaders must develop the capacity for creating new interpretations of everyday events that, while consistent with the past, are not limited by it.

Job enrichment

Processes that assign greater responsibility for scheduling, coordinating and planning work to the employees who actually produce the product.

Knowledge-based organization

An organization that values the collection, dissemination and utilization of new knowledge, with a view to innovation and the development of what is known.

Learning climate

Physical and psycho-social variables in an organization which affect the efficiency of employees in realizing learning potential.

Learning organization

A concept representing an ideal of whole organization learning by all employees, and the use of learning to transform the organization.

Mentor

A more experienced person who provides one-to-one, career-related guidance and encouragement to a less experienced colleague, with a focus on longer term learning and development.

Networking

The process of establishing professional relations with individuals and groups both within and outside the workplace.

Organizational learning

An explanation of learning at an organizational level. Emphasis is placed on the ‘potential’ that individuals and work groups have to learn, and the means – through job redesign, empowerment and changing leadership style – they have to achieve these goals.

Paradigms

Paradigms are usually designed as our models of the world. More specifically, these are background phenomena that are linguistic in nature and are transparent. Paradigms are background interpretations of the world that form the boundaries of our thinking. Consider the distinctions between the models we can think and the structures of thinking that are doing the modeling.

Possibility

A possibility can be anything we can imagine and commit to as possible that is outside our reality. If it can be proven, it is not a possibility: it is an example (and, therefore, an option). Possibilities are created. A powerful place to stand from which to observe what's missing in our world.

Speech Actions

Originally distinguished by Austin in the 1940s, performative verbs constitute actions that alter how we create reality in language. These are distinct from verbs that describe action.
* Assessments
A point of view that is neither true nor false. Commitment to provide grounding or rationale if requested to do so.
* Assertions
A statement that may be “true or false.” Commitment that what is asserted can be witnessed and measured by a third-party observer.

* Declarations
Commitment that something is the case because I say so. Some declarations require social agreement or authority, others do not.
Assessments are a particular kind of declaration.
* Promises
Commitment to satisfy some condition of satisfaction by a specific time in the future.
* Requests
Commitment to receive (accept) some conditions of satisfaction by a specific time in the future.

Strategic HR Development

The process of responding to and influencing organization strategy through learning and development.

Synergy

The concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The condition that exists when a group interacts and learns and produces a group outcome that is greater than the sum of the individuals acting alone.

Tacit knowledge

Knowledge that is gained through doing rather than learned through being taught.

Whistle-blowing

Employee disclosure of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices on the part of the organization.

Work–life balance

The need to balance work and leisure/family activities

Working arrangements

Activities associated with the work–effort exchange: allocation of work, work teams, functional flexibility.