Bill Treasurer

Many employees hear:

“Whatever you do, don’t screw up!”

“If you drop the ball on this, you’re toast!”

“Everything is riding on this presentation. Don’t let us down!”

Does this sound like your boss—or like you? 

Too many managers obsess about the possibility of failure instead of building the safety nets that promote success. They spend far too much time reminding people about the consequences if things go wrong instead of clarifying what things will look like if they go right.   But why? Many people get promoted into the management ranks because of their critical-thinking skills, particularly in industries like consulting, engineering, and technology. Such skills allow for accurate problem-solving, and they help uncover flaws and mitigate, minimize, and control risks. The danger occurs, however, when critical thinkers place a disproportionate amount of attention on “all the things that can go wrong.” When managers continuously obsess about all the bad things that must be avoided, they end up injecting workers with so much anxiety that it creates an untenable amount of performance pressure, undermining their confidence and creating, ironically, an unsafe situation.

Joining us for our discussion Workplace Safety Net is Bill Treasurer who is calling in from his Asheville NC office.  Bill Treasurer is a workplace expert, courage pioneer, and author of Courage Goes to Work: How to Build Backbones, Boost Performance, and Get Results. Founder of Giant Leap Consulting, a consulting and training company specializing in courage-building, he advises organizations—including NASA, eBay, Lenovo, Saks Fifth Avenue, Spanx, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Pittsburgh Pirates—on teaching workers the kind of courage that strengthens businesses and careers.  Welcome to Mastering Your Money, is Bill Treasurer