Peter Vajda notes that there seems to be an ever-increasing number of people who use their social skills to create workplace relationships purely to climb the rank-related workplace ladder. They possess all the aplomb and niceties that go along with creating and maintaining relationships, but use them almost solely in the workplace. Only later do they discover they don’t know who they are and recognize what they have lost. But it’s never too late.

‘Management by Making the Numbers’ — today’s fashionable choice amongst the macho and the greedy — produces a debased kind of leadership. We can only keep a working environment worthy of a civilized nation by valuing some things more highly than making the numbers. That means accepting ‘the numbers’ won’t be achieved — should not be achieved — if the price paid is the loss of honesty, dignity, integrity and humanity as guiding principles of corporate life.

One of the differences between a happy and an unhappy organization is how well its structures and processes match its objectives. John Fletcher calls this ‘coherence’ — a coherent organization is one which is organized and managed in a way that embraces its objectives, rather than just not getting in the way. Fitting the structure to the organization’s purpose is essential to create a civilized workplace again.

If, like many people, you focus mostly on what you haven’t got, what you haven’t done, and how your life doesn’t match your hopes and dreams, those negatives can easily come to dominate your thinking. Not only will this depress you, it will block your way towards all the things you do want to achieve. Don’t waste energy looking for gaps and deficiencies. Sure, you have some. Everyone does. Try using that energy to celebrate and build on what you do well. It’ll give you a far better payback.

“Hurry, Scurry, Worry, Work” — President Truman’s words during the MacArthur crisis — pretty much continues to sum up many people’s experience of life and work. Doug Ross argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. Each one of us needs to find our own way to the Holy Grail that is integrity and wholeness. Like King Arthur’s knights, we need to enter the forest, each in our own way at our own time, to take up the search for the ultimate answer to “what’s in it for me?”

How many times have you regretted an impulsive action — but realized the error too late? How often have you found that, after jumping in like that, you maybe didn’t get the whole story or see the complete picture? Are you obsessed with the feeling that you need to do something, so you shut down collecting information in favor of acting on the little you already know — or think you do. Peter Vajda has some important questions to ask anyone with a knee-jerk, reactive response to engage in some way, rather than take enough time to listen first.

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In another podcast, Coyote deals with an unfortunate outbreak of BS that threatens the smooth running of his part of the world. When Badger gets confused and Owl suffers from toxic contamination, it takes someone like Coyote to sort it all out — and have some fun at the same time.

Helen Major has some dispiriting news for anone trying to curb a bully: don’t expect either the HR department or your union to be of much help. Current interventions do not produce positive outcomes, either for the individuals or the organizations. Good intentions abound, but they aren’t enough. It will take leadership and commitment by the whole organization to do the job of stopping work place bullying.

As someone who has been in the professional workforce for the entirety of the “work-life balance” debate, Nina Simosko says she has never agreed with the notion of achieving some kind of balance between competing segments of life. For her, life is a continuum: while there are clearly times when work-related responsibilities demand more of the 24 hours available in any given day, there are also times where personal matters rightly claim the lion’s share. The answer is to focus on outcomes, not some illusory and theoretical balance.