"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." — Albert Camus
My first blog post.
I attended an interesting event at Alliant last night; the focus was on politics in the workplace, and the impact of bullying on individual and corporate psychology. The guest speakers were:
Dr. Gary Ranker, Executive Coach, Corporate Politics
Dr. Gary Ranker has been an executive coach since 1989, making him one of the pioneers in the field.
He has been listed in Forbes magazine as one of the top five executive coaches. He has also been selected by the Financial Times to be one of 50 worldwide Thought Leaders.
The unique specialty Gary is best known for is for coaching clients to analyze their corporate political environment and develop concrete strategies to achieve goals. He is the co-author of “Political Dilemmas at Work” – a practical resource book helping managers better navigate through the conflicting agendas of corporate politics. It is for this expertise that he is well known and respected. His clients include GE, Goldman Sachs, Sony, AIG and many other companies around the globe.
Gary helps managers to better understand the effects of their interpersonal behavior and coaches them to more effectively leverage strengths and improve developmental areas – all with an objective of increasing productivity.
Prior to his current international coaching and lecturing work, Gary was CEO of Hallmark Cards Germany, Co-in-charge of Hallmark United Kingdom, Marketing Director of Hallmark Cards Europe (in charge of sales, marketing and distribution for ten operating companies of Hallmark in Europe), CEO of two Textron, Inc. companies in Australia and New Zealand. During his career, Gary has lived and worked on four continents. He has appeared in Who’s Who in Marketing – International.
In addition, he had a relationship with the University of Southern California for many years, where he taught within the Marshall School of Business Administration. His specialty was the required course, “Strategic Decision Making and Policy Analysis”, an investigation of management styles and study of how decisions are made by senior management.
Gary received his Ph.D. from The Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California in Human and Organizational Development with an emphasis on future societal and corporate trends. He also holds a Graduate Degree in International Management from Thunderbird, Phoenix, Arizona and a B.A. Degree from the University of Redlands, Redlands, California.
Above all, Gary is best described as having a global mindset and as an expert in corporate politics.
Keryl Egan, Specialist Coach for Bullying and Harassment
Keryl is a specialist consultant to organizations in the areas of bullying and harassment, including political bullying. She works both organizationally and individually on the prevention of bullying and on the change process when bullying has already occurred. This includes organizational stress assessments, individual coaching, 360º processes and teamwork for both bullies and bullied.
Bullying is a serious workplace safety issue that affects mental and physical health. Symptoms in targets of bullying include:
- Loss of confidence in abilities and judgment
- Withdrawal from friends and colleagues
- Fearfulness, insomnia and physical symptoms
- Inability to concentrate or make decisions, memory loss
- Post traumatic Stress Syndrome with avoidance, numbing and nightmares
- Severe depression and work-related suicideBullying often results from poor leadership skills, particularly in the areas of emotional self management, communication and political skills. To change bullying behavioral problems, Keryl provides a customized individual leadership program based on assessment of capabilities in the following areas:
- emotional intelligence
- communication skills
- conflict management and negotiation
- the constructive use of power, politics and influence
- leading teams through the adaptive challenge of change programsKeryl has worked with a range of organizations within the public and private sectors including higher education, health, the media, professional services firms, not-for-profit organizations, manufacturing and unions.
I found the topic intriguing, because of my own experiences with bullying in families. I imagine that much of the literature surrounding workplace bullying coincides with research into child abuse and domestic violence.
