Business Management Consultant Tips

As a clinical psychologist turned business management consultant, taking the psychological vantage point into the workplace is a fun challenge. This is where the rubber meets the road; where I get to help leaders and business managers understand how their staff works, do team building and executive coaching. 

One might think people are inscrutable, but they make lots of sense to me. Even their emotional states make sense. Through the years consulting I’ve been asked similar questions over and over again. Why do people act that way? Why don’t they just do what they’re asked? Do we need to be more supportive or do we need more rules?

These and other questions led me to believe that businessmen and women need a fundamental framework for understanding their people. Business leaders are trained in a technical field and/or in business management. They do not go to school for a degree in psychology.

But I did get the degree. That’s why my partner, Lee Hersch, and I set out to distill the key principles that every leader and manager should know. We came up with six principles. Now you can find them in our new book, The People Side of Business: Six Psychological Principles.

Given my training and because I hate boring lessons, we decided to write the book as a story that would help provide meaning and context for the six principles. So the book is written about a new CEO who has people problems in his business. He decides to understand the problems and learn the principles simultaneously. Creating the characters and storyline for the book was quite a challenge. I don’t write novels for a living. Interestingly, my joke for years has been that I have been watching/reading people novels 10 pages at a time through my clinical and consulting practice. Funny enough, they are quite realistic.

In my coming blogs, I’d like to share these key principles and the tips that derive from them. I will be interested in your reactions.

Tom DeMaio, PhD