Category Archives: Management

Management

Lean Back, Do The Job You’re Capable of Doing

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Sometimes Doing A Job Right Means Leaning Back.

When the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In, she wrote it to encourage women and to argue for a more equal approach. Whether she achieves her objective remains to be seen, but she certainly got a stream of thinking going. Most of the commentary has been positive, praising her for reinvigorating feminism. Some of it has been less favourable, her insights are useful, necessary even in a culture that often assumes that everything is equal between men and women, but hardly original. For me, her book prompted a series of questions that revolve around a central question. Why do people do the jobs they do?

 

Why Do We Stay Or Go?

What makes people stay in positions they find unsatisfying while others will find new challenges?  What makes people climb the corporate ladder while others strike out on their own and start independent businesses? Daniel H. Pink, author of the book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might say that those who leave have met their basic needs and now seek that upper tier of the needs pyramid. They are trying to self-actualize.

Economist might argue that we are not so much reaching for spiritual satisfaction, as we are the more basic needs of food and shelter.  In economies where jobs are scarce people are often forced to start their own businesses out of necessity rather than desire. I’m not sure what the right answer is, but that’s probably because it’s some combination of all of those things. Still, it makes me wonder why some bright capable people are increasingly finding their way to independence while other people who would be better off on their own remain inside organizations.

 

Middle Management Mindset

It would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens at the middle management level. Some leaders discover that they have found their niche and stay in place. Most realize that they are out of their depth, and struggle to avoid sliding backwards or look forward towards still more responsibility. As colleagues and I once noted on seeing the upward trajectory of a particularly incompetent co-worker, the rise in success is often directly inverse to the level of incompetence. In effect, dismal workers will continue to prosper because most leaders would rather promote than fire. Some people just keep moving up as leader after leader palm their hopeless employee off on an unsuspecting department. I’ve seen this in government, high tech and countless other sectors.

The employee quite naturally assumes that they are great at what they do, so they keep doing it. Their confidence grows and thrives and they take on ever increasing challenges. That brings me back around to Lean In. Sandberg notes that studies show that a woman will chase a job if they feel they have an overwhelming number of the skills required to do the job.  While men will chase a position even if they have about half the skills, perhaps even less.  The implication is that women should give themselves an ego boost and go after the big jobs. Frankly, I find that idea disturbing.  Just because someone feels confident that they are ready for more responsibility doesn’t mean they are actually capable of delivering on it.

 

How About Something Completely Different?

I’m all for women having more confidence and tackling the big jobs, but I like their approach better.  That hesitation in the face of opportunity means that when they do leap, they are ready for the role. I wish more men behaved like women. Just for a change, why not have people go after jobs they actually had the skills to perform? I’m not saying that everyone should have one hundred percent of the skills needed before applying, that would be very tedious. I just think  it would be more productive to have employees who knew what they were doing. Leaders who knew what they were talking about. One of the reasons we have so many incapable leaders is because we keep hiring people with an emphasis on their self-confidence and not their core skills. In fact, we place so much emphasis on bravado, attitude or attractiveness that there should be no surprise that we are continuously chasing what it takes to make a great leader. It should be no surprise either that we lose good people to their own or other businesses.

What do you think? Lean in or lean back?

Image courtesy of stockimages/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Communications, Internal Communications, Management

Surprises at Work

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I once had a boss who loved to sabotage meetings.  It wasn’t a question of him not liking his staff or even disliking meetings.  It was more that he didn’t want people to enter into discussions with their minds already made up. His theory was that if we all started from the same point, with the same information, we would produce honest and open responses. So, he habitually called meetings without explanation or gave only the vaguest indication of what he had on his mind.

While this concept might have worked in theory, it was a bit of a bust in practice.  I remember feeling completely lost in meetings, staring across the boardroom table at my colleagues who were equally lost while our boss discussed his newest idea.  Now, I’m all for hearing new ideas, but he wanted a decision about what we thought of his idea right then and there. What we discussed was his idea, his research on the idea, his perspective, his contemplation and of course, his bias. It didn’t go well. Not because he wasn’t smart, but because there was no opportunity for the rest of us to research, test or think about the idea as he had.

No matter what genius you call your own, if you really want your ideas to be given a fair hearing, you have to assume people need time to consider and test that idea. No matter your ailment, you probably wouldn’t take medication based on even the best scientist’s suggestion without first knowing some independent testing had been done.  So why would you accept an untested idea any quicker?

So what did we do as a group when my boss presented his surprise idea? We reacted on instinct, impulse and prior bias.  Instead of having an open debate, we ended up arguing over our own biases, perspectives and ideas. The facts had little to do with the discussion. Rather than build on an idea collectively based on our individual expertise, we became little more than the sum of our independent parts.  For those of you who have been taken by surprise at work by unexpected propositions, meetings or changes, you won’t be surprised to know that our meetings frequently ended in tears, anger or frustration – not exactly an ideal or productive working experience. Certainly not the honest and open response my boss had hoped for.

Lessons Learned:

  • No one likes surprises at work.
  • Whether you’re preparing for internal or external meetings, providing a fair warning in the form of a briefing note or clear agenda is central to success.
  • Give participants the opportunity to bring their best thoughts and research to the table and your meeting will prove more fruitful, effective and productive.
  • Taking people by surprise with ideas means that, rather than putting ideas to the test before implementation, at best all you’ll get is the sum of your own parts and some disgruntled colleagues.
  • Even if you’re the best brain on the planet, synergy will always improve on good ideas, not to mention the acceptance of them.
  • Despite the popularity of brainstorming sessions, they have many built in flaws that reduce their effectiveness.
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Management

Do We Remember How To Be Loyal?

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COMMSTORM

The call of the next big adventure can be almost irresistible. As our world shrinks it becomes increasingly easy to see ourselves in different settings. Even if we choose not to wander far from the land we grew up in, we can still tackle a wide array of changes that our parents might not have contemplated.  Or maybe that’s just me. My family has spread out across the globe, all leaving that small warm island in the Caribbean to see what adventures they can find in colder climates. At this point, going to Barbados is the adventure because home is now Canada, The United States, The United kingdom etc..

I was looking at a breakdown of staff time within my organization. Those people who had spent twenty-five or more years in the organization right down to those who had just signed on. The 20 plus category fascinated me. Most people don’t join an organization these days with the expectation that they will still be there on their retirement. I wondered why? Was it the siren call of adventure? Is curiosity so profound that we simply can’t resist the allure of the next thing or is it more that we have no reason to stay? 

Loyalty is a concept that I most commonly associate with small plastic cards and the collection of points. I’m not shallow. How often do we hear about loyalty in any other context?  I don’t think I am being disloyal when I try a new shampoo or when I shop in a new store, yet they frequently offer me loyalty points or bonuses if I stick with them. When was the last time employers did that on a regular basis?  Generally you get a signing bonus, not a staying bonus. In effect, we have moved to a process of rewarding employees for leaving.

I realize that there are sophisticated organizations that spend time and energy on retention. Those organizations that have done the number crunching and realize it is cheaper to keep an employee than it is to replace one, but there are not many of them. Most employers are content if they can get three years from an employee and plan accordingly.  My question is, why? Why does that make more sense then looking for ways to keep employees in the fold? Have we all simply assumed that that’s the way people prefer things? That the next adventure is so appealing that there is little we can do to resist it’s allure.

I’ll admit, I like change. It’s fun to start something new and to explore new ground.  It’s good to switch things up a little, but I also like stability. I have been married for 18 years without feeling the need to switch things up. I expect to be married for at least 18 more years. An interesting thing about that, my husband has a small shop in a challenging  sector and yet he has  employees who have been with him about as long as we’ve been married. Could it be that he understands something about loyalty?

Loyalty isn’t about points collected. I’m not going to buy the same crappy brand of anything just to get points. If the product doesn’t do the job, then I’m not going to stick with it. I stick with a brand because I expect it to perform as promised. I expect consistency. My favorite shampoo is not going to smell like oranges today and coconut tomorrow. It will perform to my expectations and in return I will continue to buy it.  As other products come out from that brand I’ll be more inclined to try them because the brand has earned my trust. Seems reasonable.

If our expectations are that high for a shampoo or a toothpaste, what should they be for a job? If a job doesn’t give back as much as it takes, if an employer doesn’t do the work required to make an employee want get up and go to work in the morning, then would they keep going? What about the employee? If the employer is consistent, if they deliver on their promise, shouldn’t the employee remain dedicated? Loyalty is built over time.  It comes from trust and expectations met.  Do we have shorter times in our jobs today because we have forgotten what it means to be loyal or do we simply no longer apply that thinking to work?

What do you think? Do employees need to be more loyal to employers?  Do employers need to work harder at keeping employees engaged? Is loyalty associated with work an old fashioned idea?

Photo Credit: “Girl and Dog” by Vlado from Free Digital Photos.net

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Management

8 Tips For Managing Workplace Bullies

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I’ve never had much patience for bullies and I’ve never thought bullying was someone else’s problem.  Though they were a feature of childhood, somehow I expected that bullies would make fewer appearances in my life as I grew older, so imagine my surprise when I encountered bullies in the workplace.

I can remember one boss who would yell at the top of his lungs at any and everyone. He would start at one end of our very long one-story building and scream as he marched his way down the central hallway to the other end.  He was like some crazed long-haired bull.  His face would get redder and redder as the target of his rage became smaller and smaller. It was pretty awful. It was my first real job and as the receptionist, I sat in the centre of the building able to watch the whole horrible scene unfold from beginning to end. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, which is one of the first impacts the bully has on the workplace. They destroy morale and make people leave.

When I encountered bullies again it was part of the organization’s culture.  It was like entering an alternate dimension where bad behaviour was acceptable and being considerate and polite was a thin veneer worn for public consumption. Thrown chairs, tossed telephones, fist fights in the office and threats riddled with obscenities delivered across the boardroom table, were all part of the weekly operations.  This is the second impact of bullying in the workplace, if left unchecked, it becomes part of the work culture.

Your average garden variety bully has gotten away with their behaviour largely because no one has called them on it. Through intimidation and threats, they have managed to make their way through life and work with no one stopping them. What the rest of us have to figure out is what do we want to do with them, defuse them, ignore them or avoid them.

Here are some things that have worked for me.

  1. Build your network. Don’t let the bully make you feel isolated. Engage your colleagues; give yourself the opportunity to have fun. I have found that eventually, it is the bully who gets left out of activities unless they can behave.
  2. Ignore them. Yup, simply act as if they don’t matter or don’t exist. A non-responsive target isn’t all that interesting to many bullies, a bit like picking on a door.
  3. Avoid them. If you don’t have to engage them, then don’t.  Life is short enough without wasting time on people who don’t know how to behave.
  4. Rephrase. I got into the habit of rephrasing dumb or aggressive requests so that the person delivering them would look foolish confirming the comment or request. “Get me some lunch.” Would get repeated as, “So you want me to postpone the bosses report so that I can get you a sandwich?”
  5. Stay calm. There is nothing quite as disconcerting to a screamer as someone who simply doesn’t rise to the hysteria. By staying calm you also stay in control and demonstrate a level of emotional intelligence that generally shuts down the bully.
  6. Document the bullying. One of my buddies had a terrible bully for a boss.  One afternoon my friend called me close to tears, her boss had sent her a particularly inflammatory email. I told her to forward the email to her boss’ superior with a brief sentence explaining that the tone and language were not acceptable professional behaviour. Her boss was fired by the end of the week.
  7. Tell them to stop. Simply tell them to stop. Tell them you feel bullied or harassed, that their tone, language or manner makes you uncomfortable.
  8. Get out.  Unfortunately, there are situations that can’t be helped and in those cases, your best bet is to make a run for it.

Have you ever had to manage a bully? What do you do to deal with bullies?

 

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Management

Getting Your Focus Back – Is Closer Clearer?

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Getting Your Focus Back - Comm Before The StormLast week I went out with one of our nurses as she did her rounds visiting clients in their homes.  It was a welcome change from what I had been doing, which was planning, printing, publishing,  policy, and promotional work to mention a few of the things on my list.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the tools of my trade and looking at website design, branded items, radio scripts and social media can be fun, but it has to be connected to something. For work to be meaningful it has to be purpose driven.  Getting closer to one of my clients, that nurse and consequently her clients, was a wonderful way to bring another important “p word” back to my work, perspective.

So this week I’m back in Ottawa and while I battle everything from old trade booths to persistent computer issues, my perspective has altered somewhat.  The urgency is gone. It’s hard to get heated up about a booth display or a missed meeting with a publisher when you compare it to folks who are trying to ease pain or make someone’s passing a little more comfortable. My tasks will still be waiting for me when I get up tomorrow, so I’ve got to be patient with the resources I have and understand that what gets done, gets done.

I don’t believe I’m alone in getting distracted, it’s easy for anyone to get preoccupied with the tools of their trade and forget about what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. Whether you are a writer who has been spending too much time managing social media, an artist who has been chasing exhibit space or a CEO trapped behind a desk, it can be easy to forget why you do what you do. When you remain removed from the frontline of the activity or more pointedly, when you forget your reason for being, you risk not just losing site of your objectives, but the joy of your work.

Does it feel better to get closer?

The Proximity Principle in social psychology informs us that we tend to form relationships with those in close proximity.  It remains true even in the context of social media. Most people interact online with people they already know. The proximity principle also shares another tidbit, proximity may mean that we learn that the people close to us have traits we detest, in those instances, then familiarity breeds contempt. These are not earth shattering revelations, yet they are an important feature of life that many of us lose sight of over time. I am pleased to say I know who my neighbours are, but how often is that not true? The artificial distance we can place between those close to us and ourselves can mean that we have a difficult time interpreting our reactions and relations with the people around us. It can also make us misinterpret the relevance of those people in our lives.

Do we get better by being closer?

As I have noted before in this blog, I don’t believe that working in an office makes me more productive.  I can be effective or inefficient anywhere, it’s a question of focus and motivation, but I did wonder about what that physical presence might do to us and really what were the pros and cons of proximity. What numerous studies have shown us is that their is a “social facilitation” effect. Co-workers will become more loyal to one another and are also more likely to help each other out. When people work in front of an audience or co-workers, even if their tasks are unrelated, their performance changes. They are more alert, faster and more motivated. That is, they are all of those things if they are working on familiar tasks. If they are working on something new or difficult, proximity negatively impacts adoption.  The presence of others when managing a new task can be distracting and stressful. It can increase inaccuracy and raise physical symptoms of distress.

What do the Proximity Principle, social facilitation and finding joy in work have to do with each other?

1) Getting closer to your audience/clients will reveal amazing things about your work and your focus.

  • Proximity to clients can be invigorating and bring into sharper perspective the reason why you do what you do.
  • If getting closer reveals that clients are exhausting and pull the energy from you, you may want to rethink the context in which you work or focus on the tools. In either instance, you will want to position yourself closer to where you find the joy in your work.

2) Clients are not the only ones to influence your focus. Co-workers will affect your relationship with your work.

  • Be alert to how you feel around co-workers. You may discover that what you like about your work isn’t the purpose, it’s the people. We form intense relationships with colleagues that can affect not just how we work but how we feel about our work.
  • The opposite holds true too. Your colleagues may make you less engaged. If that’s the case, a physical change in location may be all that’s missing to get your motivation back.

How do you get your focus back?  Have you ever worked in an environment where you loved the people, but disliked the job or the other way around?

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Management

7 Tips on Finding Balance

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7 Tips on Finding BalanceDo you ever feel like you’re sliding down a rabbit hole of ever increasing demands? I have, in fact I was recently feeling that way. I was juggling a number of activities and starting to wonder which would drop when instead I decided  to create a little more balance. Although I love many of the tasks I set for myself, they add up quickly and before I know it, I can start to feel as lost as Alice. A touch bewildered and overwhelmed and wondering where that Cheshire cat was. I decided that I would have to make some choices if I was going to meet my deadlines and achieve the personal goals I had set for myself. So here are some of the steps I took to get back my balance.

1) Assess: I had to take a close look at what I had to do each day and week and figure out a way to put it in order so that I wasn’t driving myself mad with activity or guilt because I wasn’t getting things done.

2) Prioritize: Next was taking a good look at what had to be done and figuring out what I could delay or cancel.  Bye-bye went my Saturday Morning Chit Chat posts (for a while any way) and slow, slow went the transformations I was doing on the house.

3) Simplify: Simplifying was looking at all the steps in the processes around me and determining if I could remove some.   I love following different blogs and providing comments, but for those blogs that post multiple times a week can be a difficult time juggle, so I decided to visit once a week and look at all the post from that week then. Less chaos and a nice treat when I get there.

For the day job, simplify meant taking the travel out of the job. Working from home means I get more done. There are less interruptions  but, I also get some of those home tasks done because I’m not spending that extra 40 minutes in the car. If you can’t work from home consider asking colleagues to give you a little alone time. Set specific hours to help you  get through some of the bigger or more complicated tasks you have at work.

4) Automate and Standardize: Next I started to look for tools that would help me to bring order to my growing flock of responsibilities. Most of those changes involved using technology to reduce the burden of activities I was carrying at work and home.  That activity is still in progress, but I have high hopes. It also means getting the electronic calendar organized so I’m not moving like a ping pong ball from activity to activity.

5) Acknowledge:  Acknowledging that many of the juggling acts I was facing were brought on by me was a big part of finding some calm. I’m not a rut kind of girl. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again indefinitely so I am always looking for the new idea, challenge or approach, you name it, I’m on it.  I’m occasionally overwhelmed by change, but I’m rarely afraid of it.

If I’m going to take on new challenges, then I have to accept that some of the things I love won’t get done. It’s my job to ensure that the important jobs are completed and the less critical work is what slides.

6) Strategy: Whatever the solution might be, I know I need the space to think strategically about it. If I’ve taken on a series of activities or been given too many additional responsibilities, I need to get to the root of the problem and deal with it. This may mean putting aside a couple of hours to determine what’s causing the chaos and how I might address it.  It could mean taking a couple of days or weeks.  Whatever the challenge, taking the time required to resolve the situation will inevitably be more productive, cost efficient and sane than trying to manage the impossible.

7) Exercise: It’s important to note that when the time crunch started to be felt I added more, not less exercise to my schedule and I’m looking to incorporate more still. I’m not a fitness guru by anyone’s stretch of imagination, but exercise helps me to stay more alert and agile mentally and physically.

So how do you find the balance between doing what you love, loving what you do and finding time for those you love? 

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Management

Label Blindness – When You Become Trapped By Your Title

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Have you ever worked with someone and thought, that guy is brilliant, I wonder where he’ll end up? Only to find out later that the person has been sitting in the same low-level position for years. Have you ever found yourself struggling for recognition and getting no response or acknowledgement of your efforts?  It never fails to amaze me when talent goes to waste, so I rarely stay quiet when I see it in play. I have argued with a boss to give one of my reports a raise because they were working well above their pay grade, while poorer performers were making more money. I have suggested to others that they would lose talent if they didn’t do something to acknowledge the contributions of loyal employees.

Sometimes circumstances mean that there simply isn’t a tangible way to thank staff members, either there’s no money, no way to give a promotion or change their title and so while they are verbally thanked, they get no other compensation for their efforts.

Then there are those occasions when a special kind of blindness happens that makes bosses, colleagues and even school systems unable to see a true performance or recognize intelligence. Scott Barry Kaufman speaks about this challenge in his book Ungifted. In it, he explores some of the challenges we face when we place labels on people.   What those labels do to our ability to assess intelligence and performance and how we can stifle ourselves by not looking past the label. Labels are handy and they help us to navigate, but they can also blind us to potential and deafen us to cries for help.

Barry challenges traditional intelligence assessment tools and looks at an array of other indicators that emphasize the importance of adaptation to task demands as the essence of intelligent functioning. More importantly for this discussion, he looks at personal goals and passion.  These can have a tremendous influence on performance.

When I argued with that old boss to recognize the contribution of a colleague his initial response was, she’s an assistant, she can’t make the same money as an executive assistant.  When I asked him to break down the responsibilities of the two titles and demonstrated that not only was my assistant performing similar tasks as an executive assistant, but in fact was performing beyond them he eventually had to relent and give her a raise, but he was reluctant.  She was by far more engaged, she enjoyed her work, she was not phased by the more mundane aspects of the job because they were part of the bigger challenge. The same could not be said about her colleagues.  In fact, the very behaviours that marked her as superior were spurned by her colleagues as “beneath them”. She easily our performed them. But her title made everyone blind to what the collective impact of her work was. So while titles seem like the least of the things you should worry about, they can have a profound and stifling effect on your career progress.

When labels become the predominant way you assess employee value it is not only limiting for the employee but can be devastating for an organization.  To put it bluntly, it’s a morale killer.  It sends a message to employees that they need not try if they don’t have the right title. It also gags those with the title who need help. Just as we can develop biases that make it impossible for us to see capacity.  We can also create unrealistic expectations because someone has a title, degree or another label. When that person needs additional support, they can feel pressured not to ask for it because expectations are so high.

The real challenge with using titles to define how we see people is that they make it impossible for us to actually see the person.  A label reflects a time and place, a specific set of circumstances and their outcome.  Labels rarely capture the essence of a person, their will, creativity or drive.  When I’m passionate about something and fully engaged, I show a dedication and focus that bears little to no resemblance to me when I’m uninterested or unimpressed.

There are a couple of things that you can do to avoid label blindness.

As an employee:

  • Learn to speak up for yourself. There are no magic job fairies.  It’s up to the employees to ask for that raise, promotion or recognition.
  • Build the ask into regular negotiations.  Set clear goals for yourself with your boss and when you meet them, ask for recognition in a form that suits you. It may seem like a hard thing to do, but it gets easier with time.
  • If despite your best efforts you’re still not recognized for your contribution then you have a few choices.  Accept it, be persistent or move on to another job.  Waiting too long rarely pays for itself and can lead to frustration, disappointment and disengagement.

As an employer or supervisor:

  • Remember that you hire the whole person not just the skills needed for the job that is currently open.
  • Employee resumes should be reviewed on an annual basis but more importantly, a fair and mutually established performance review with metrics should be used as well.  Consider compensation.  What can you do to acknowledge good performance?
  • If they are performing above their grade at your request, you need to acknowledge that work in some way or you will pay the high cost of turnover.

Have you ever had label blindness or been affected by it? What solutions do you find useful?

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Communications, Management

Six Tips for Managing Difficult Conversations

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difficult conversationsGetting started is the hardest part.  It’s getting past that awkward pause before you begin or worse still, explaining why you want to talk. Part of the challenge is that often by asking for the conversation, you end up having the conversation before you’re really ready. That’s something to avoid. No good comes from having the conversation when you’re not prepared. Of course, you could always hijack the other person into a discussion they didn’t anticipate. If that seems unfair, it’s because it is. You are also likely to end up in a defensive and angry discussion when resolving, revealing or relieving the issue  should be your first priority.

Some phrases to consider:

  • I’d like to talk to you about – but first I’d like your point of view.
  • I need your help with something. Can we talk about it soon?
  • I have something to discuss with you that I think will help us work together more effectively.
  • I think we have different perceptions about __ and I’d like to hear your thinking on it.

Pick your location wisely. Where a difficult conversation happens is often as important as how the conversation happens. It will hardly make the process easier for you if the setting is full of distractions. So start by ensuring that you are prepared to speak and that the setting is conducive to clear communication. In an office scenario I ask people out for coffee to avoid any possibility of being overheard. Being the centre of office gossip is only interesting on TV. I’ve sent someone away from their desk because their boss was having a discussion about them within their hearing. I then told the person having the discussion that others, including the subject of their discussion, could hear them and could they keep it down or move. I don’t think much of private discussions held in public.

There are always two people in a discussion. Remember that any discussion is a two-way activity. Although what you have to say may be weighing on your mind, you won’t know what is on the mind of the other person unless you give them room to speak.  Open the floor; ask them what they think about what was said and if they can think of a way for you both to resolve the issue. You may have a great idea, but they may have a better one.

Don’t spend too much time in a negative discussion. Give yourself time to talk but don’t give yourself too much time. What can be accomplished in 30 minutes can be undone in 60. Set another time to meet if you can’t get it all out.  This will give you a chance to cool down, consider the discussion and contemplate new solutions based on what you learned.

Get clarity and acknowledge emotions. One of the most effective ways of breaking down the negative rhetoric that comes from difficult conversations is repeating back to the person what you think you heard them say. A few years back, a colleague of mine was quite angry.  An important document had gotten mixed up with less important pieces and subsequently redirected to our correspondence unit. I answered the phone and was met with yelling. She was shouting at me about how important the document was and how time sensitive and how much trouble it had caused when it went missing, and then repeating.  In the middle of the second go around I said, “I know it was important and urgent, that’s why I sent it to you right away. Are you angry at me because a paper clip from another document in the envelope snagged it and so you mistakenly sent it to correspondence?”

There was a pause as she considered, then a very quiet, ‘“Yes.”

“Would you like me to staple documents in the future?” I asked. Again a pause, then a very calm “yes” followed.  The conversation ended shortly after that. Given our respective positions, the conversation made no sense, being angry, even less, but sometimes anxiety gets the best of you and before you know it, you’re having a difficult conversation.

If you’re thinking that I am naturally a calm person, you would be wrong. The only reason I wasn’t yelling back was because I have interpersonal communications training. What the exchange taught me was that the tactics work.  All my yelling would have done was escalate things and waste time in a pointless finger pointing activity. By keeping my tone even and paraphrasing what I heard, the discussion slowed and stopped.

There is power in being wrong. Perhaps one of the most difficult things about difficult conversations is acknowledging when you are wrong. We all take pride in our opinions and I think most people strive to do the right thing. So when you find yourself in a situation where you are wrong, it can be very challenging to acknowledge and to respond appropriately. The thing is, when you acknowledge you are wrong it can be such a powerful action, particularly as a leader. When you acknowledge you are wrong, it tells people who report to you that they can own up to mistakes too.  It tells colleagues that they can trust you to be fair and it tells bosses that if you don’t back down from an issue, it isn’t because of pride.

On a final note, don’t forget your body is in the conversation with you.  Make sure you are not sending one message with your body and another with your mouth – no arms folded across your chest.

Have you ever had to have a difficult conversation?  How did you handle it? There are many, many tips for managing difficult conversations, what are some of your best practices for dealing with tough discussions?

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Management

Transparency – Is it clear that it’s a good business practice?

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Transparency

More transparency in business practice has been the buzz for a while now.  Counted among its benefits are increased employee morale, better client service, increased productivity and enhanced creativity.  What’s more, it models best practices and opens the organization to opportunity and innovation. So if transparency is so good, why do most businesses have such a hard time being transparent?

Do you remember the phrase, “knowledge is power”? Well most of us believe that to be true. If you couple that thinking, with a belief that resources are scarce, then hoarding power or knowledge makes a lot of sense. If that’s your world view, it’s not hard to see how the idea of transparency might be difficult to adopt. After all, if I’m doing something good in my business, then my competitors might steal my ideas.  If I’m doing something badly, then my competitors can use it against me.  If we are operating under those principles, then we are incapable of being open and transparent.

The thing is, why do we think knowledge is scarce? What happens if by being transparent our challenges get resolved or solutions come from unexpected sources? What if knowledge shared is in reality, knowledge squared? The evidence is that far from being scarce, we have an abundance of knowledge. Don Tapscott, a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy and organizational transformation argues that far from being scarce we have never had so much access to knowledge. He looks at the internet as a worldwide computer that is constantly being programmed by all of us as we upload videos, documents and ideas. In a world full of knowledge, transparency isn’t a just a novel new idea, it is how businesses will survive and renew.

They say that a rising tide lifts all boats. We see the evidence of that in the blogging community on a regular basis. When we share, our time, our ideas, our expertise in the form of posts, comments and advice, we make the community stronger and more effective.  We do something else too.  We make better content for our readers and we provide better ideas to those freelancers, entrepreneurs and businesses who stop by our blogs looking for answers. If our blogs are part of our business, we provide reassurance about our knowledge. We let our clients know that we can be trusted because we put the spotlight on our thoughts and our thinking processes. How better to build brand trust than to demonstrate what we think and what we value? Operating with transparency really does illuminate values in a way that no mission statement, vision or strategic plan can.

If we turn to science in search of why this is true, we find that our brains are optimized for performance when we no longer feel the need to hide our mistakes or worry about blunders. Neuroscience tells us that we are healthier when we are not burdened by secrets. Anita Kelly, a psychologist at Notre Dame who studies the psychology of secrets puts it simply, “I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that being secretive could be linked to being symptomatic at a biological level.”

For the sake of clarity, the science does not encourage us to share every secret we’ve ever held in an effort to get healthy, but does reveal that people who are secretive tend to be more depressed, anxious, shy, and have more aches and pains.

It would seem that the benefits of transparency are clear. On that note, I’d like to extend my thanks to Jon Jefferson for prompting me to explore the issue of transparency in my blog. So what do you think? Should we adopt radical transparency in our workplaces and bear all from salaries to goals, objectives and ideas? Or do you think a little more modesty is in order?

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Transparency – Is it clear that it's a good business practice?

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Transparency

More transparency in business practice has been the buzz for a while now.  Counted among its benefits are increased employee morale, better client service, increased productivity and enhanced creativity.  What’s more, it models best practices and opens the organization to opportunity and innovation. So if transparency is so good, why do most businesses have such a hard time being transparent?

Do you remember the phrase, “knowledge is power”? Well most of us believe that to be true. If you couple that thinking, with a belief that resources are scarce, then hoarding power or knowledge makes a lot of sense. If that’s your world view, it’s not hard to see how the idea of transparency might be difficult to adopt. After all, if I’m doing something good in my business, then my competitors might steal my ideas.  If I’m doing something badly, then my competitors can use it against me.  If we are operating under those principles, then we are incapable of being open and transparent.

The thing is, why do we think knowledge is scarce? What happens if by being transparent our challenges get resolved or solutions come from unexpected sources? What if knowledge shared is in reality, knowledge squared? The evidence is that far from being scarce, we have an abundance of knowledge. Don Tapscott, a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy and organizational transformation argues that far from being scarce we have never had so much access to knowledge. He looks at the internet as a worldwide computer that is constantly being programmed by all of us as we upload videos, documents and ideas. In a world full of knowledge, transparency isn’t a just a novel new idea, it is how businesses will survive and renew.

They say that a rising tide lifts all boats. We see the evidence of that in the blogging community on a regular basis. When we share, our time, our ideas, our expertise in the form of posts, comments and advice, we make the community stronger and more effective.  We do something else too.  We make better content for our readers and we provide better ideas to those freelancers, entrepreneurs and businesses who stop by our blogs looking for answers. If our blogs are part of our business, we provide reassurance about our knowledge. We let our clients know that we can be trusted because we put the spotlight on our thoughts and our thinking processes. How better to build brand trust than to demonstrate what we think and what we value? Operating with transparency really does illuminate values in a way that no mission statement, vision or strategic plan can.

If we turn to science in search of why this is true, we find that our brains are optimized for performance when we no longer feel the need to hide our mistakes or worry about blunders. Neuroscience tells us that we are healthier when we are not burdened by secrets. Anita Kelly, a psychologist at Notre Dame who studies the psychology of secrets puts it simply, “I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that being secretive could be linked to being symptomatic at a biological level.”

For the sake of clarity, the science does not encourage us to share every secret we’ve ever held in an effort to get healthy, but does reveal that people who are secretive tend to be more depressed, anxious, shy, and have more aches and pains.

It would seem that the benefits of transparency are clear. On that note, I’d like to extend my thanks to Jon Jefferson for prompting me to explore the issue of transparency in my blog. So what do you think? Should we adopt radical transparency in our workplaces and bear all from salaries to goals, objectives and ideas? Or do you think a little more modesty is in order?

Related Articles:

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