What do you do when a teammate says, "I won't stand in the way of the team accepting the proposal." and when asked directly whether they will support the proposal, they hem and haw without clearly saying "Yes."?

In response to my post entitled Check the Box where I suggest that you choose not to argue with your manager about doing a task whose primary purpose is the furtherance of a PR campaign with their manager, my colleague Bob Lee writes "How much Fantasy Experienced As Reality is building up above?"

You have heard repeatedly that an agenda is a vital ingredient to a successful meeting. But little is ever heard about safety in meetings—the environmental variable that determines whether people participate or merely observe. How do you measure safety? What actions are available to leaders for creating a safe meeting environment?

Twenty percent of the participants arrive late to the weekly meeting you lead.

What do I recommend you do?

Are you overwhelmed by a mountain of email?

I suggest you take a page out of the playbook of my colleague Eric Sperley who knows how to ask for what he wants.

What do effective project managers realize?

Several of my friends who work for the same large organization tell me they are bored with their job. I hear about them waiting for management to complete the process of setting a new direction for the organization.

What opportunities are available to employees when management is in the process of setting a new direction?

What vital element of business communication is the most forgotten?

"You're too good of a speaker." I've heard those words and they depressed me. Now they put a smile on my face.

I had a nightmare last night. I was reliving a workshop that I took during a prior job.

I think the nightmare was triggered by a box of material I found in a storage area that contained documents from that job. I noticed the box was labeled "The Dark Years."