Tag Archives: Business

How Do You Know You’re Not Producing Crap?

What would you do if you found out that your best practices had become your worst practices? Would you stop doing them? Most of us would probably say yes, but its not that easy is it? If we could stop when we recognized that something was a bad idea, then we would have far fewer smokers, alcoholics, gamblers and other addictive behaviors.

Ok, what if we removed addictive behaviours from the conversation and simply looked at those behaviours that are just bad practice, we would stop right? Well, actually, not really or not easiliy. Often what people do instead of changing their behavior is to work harder at their old models. They don’t do it out of stupidity or spite, they do it because they are absolutely convinced that if they apply themselves, if the tools are right, if everyone would do their part, if any array of things were different then the old models would be effective and they in turn would be proven correct. On a regular basis new and better ways of doing things are revealed and ignored.

Psychology Today shared results from recent psychological research that revealed that the five worst learning practices are the ones we are most likely to use in schools. Think about that. We teach our young with methods that are most likely to ensure they don’t learn. Do we hate our kids? Unlikely. Are we committed to seeing them learn and develop new ideas? Yes. So why aren’t we using the five best learning practices?

Think about the corporate world’s persistent use of brainstorming sessions as a way to generate new ideas. Research has shown that we actually generate more ideas when we are alone, than when we are in group settings. The reasons are many, ranging from a reluctance to share because we might be ridiculed, to feeling too much pressure to perform. Regardless of the reasons for low output, we know that we are less innovative in group settings, yet we not only persist in brainstorming sessions, but we work hard to make them work better.

What makes the sessions so very appealing is that we like how we feel when we participate. We feel that we have produced more. They generate trust and generally make us feel more connected to our colleagues. Not bad for a bad practice and if we had feeling good as our objective, then that would be great, but that is not the outcome we are looking for from the activity, so why persist? The answer is simple and really complex, we don’t like change.

Change is hard and it can seem frightening or futile. We will work hard to avoid change. If we can understand what motivates us to do the things we do, then we are in a better position to manage performance, manage outcomes and manage expectations. As leaders we need to understand that what we are comfortable doing isn’t always what we should be doing. Some of the most destructive words in any workplace, community or culture can be, “That’s how we have always done it.”

This s not to say that traditions are wrong or old way erroneous. We just need to be aware of why we cling to activities and ways of doing things. We should also constantly be looking for the ways to improve. We may determine that the old ways are still the best ways, but being blind to possibility, or closed to opportunity is not only a way to fail ourselves, but when managing people it can be disastrous for an organization.

One of the most interesting aspects of social media is that it behaves like a continuous improvement process. It never stops assessing and adjusting, it asks participants to continuously adapt, it regularly produces metrics that you can measure performance by and it never stops changing. Not bad practices for the rest of our lives. Not surprisingly, it also happens to be one of the few places where brainstorming actually produces a quantity of innovative ideas.

Applying some of the adaptability that we use to navigate the social media world in the real world would be a great start to ensuring we are not producing crap. What do you do to stay effective? How do you ensure that your practices are still best practices? Share your ideas with me in the comment section.

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Communications, Management

Wanted: Communications Goddess

Debra Yearwood 56 Comments

When job descriptions become a communications nightmare.

Chatting with old colleagues, fellow communicators and bloggers on LinkedIn is always good fun and every once in a while I come across something that makes me want to share more widely. In this instance, it started with a series of odd job descriptions that I came across a few months back. In one notable announcement the job description ran for more than three pages…that’s over three pages of required skills and responsibilities. One of my more discerning fellow communicators posted the ad to our LinkedIn group and posed the question, “Who could possibly qualify for this job?”

Wanted Communications Goddess

Many of us read the ad, there are about 163,212 in this particular group, and with some amazement we debated about who had written it. Who could be so clueless? Was there an internal candidate they were trying to protect or avoid? It couldn’t have been written by a human resources professional…we hoped. While we mused over who could have been so silly, more concerning was, who would apply for it? Surely anyone foolish enough, confident enough, delusional or desperate enough would quickly find herself overloaded and overwhelmed. No one thought the individual could exist who had all the skills. The responsibilities were simply too diverse, web master, product marketer, social media strategist and on and on it went. We decided that even if there was someone on the planet who could lay claim to most of the skills, when on earth were they ever going to find the time to put them into play? It made us all wonder about the firm who posted the ad. What on earth would their culture be like?

No Super Heroes Need Apply

The challenge with a bad job description is that it not only means you won’t find who you’re looking for but it also takes a toll on how your organization is perceived. Jobs with ridiculous descriptions or ones that have to be posted multiple times make people think twice about applying. They assume the role was filled and vacated and that begs the question, what happened? If you do manage to find some brave soul to apply then you have to manage their inevitable despondency and disengagement. To add insult to injury, it often takes a long time for the employer to know that it’s the description that has failed and not the employee. In worst-case scenarios employees are fired and replaced several times before someone figures out that they should rethink the job. Most of the time employees figure out pretty quickly that the job simply can’t be done, but coming to that realization and trying to explain it to a boss are two very different things. In some instances the employee throws themselves at the job with great abandon hoping that if they just apply a heroic effort they can make it happen. Burnout will eventually get them and then it’s back to the drawing board.

Noted human resources consultant, Lou Adler explores the job description challenge in various articles on LinkedIn and Inc., as well as, in his book, Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams. Adler suggests that instead of describing a job based on skills, hiring managers should consider what the right candidates would need to do in order to be successful in the job. He argues that when performance is the lens through which a job is viewed, flaws in the description become evident. He also suggests that managers interview departing employees to discover if the job has changed over time. Take a look at this short video.

What do you think? Would you would prefer, to be interviewed on performance or skills? Would you be more responsive to a job description based on skills or performance? Ever come across a job that would take a goddess to perform?

Image courtesy of Gameanna/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Management

Does opportunity knock or slip in through the back door?

Debra Yearwood 18 Comments

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Taking advantage of opportunity is a lot harder than it sounds. Opportunities rarely come wrapped like beautiful presents. In fact, there are times when opportunity looks suspiciously like a setback or failure. I have confidently declared something to be a bad idea only to reflect on it later and realize it was actually closer to genius.

One thing I like to remember when an opportunity slips past me is that even the best opportunity seekers periodically get things wrong. Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is gracious enough to share their misses on their “anti-portfolio” web page. If you’re ever kicking yourself for missing out on a great thing, just wander over to that page. It’s not so much that misery loves company, as it is a good reminder that even the experts periodically get it wrong. To give you an example of one of their misses – they turned their nose up at Google.

So how do you know when opportunity is staring you in the face… or even quietly sitting next to you? Mark Rice and Gina Colarelli O’Connor describe opportunity recognition as, the match between an unfulfilled market need and a solution that satisfies that need. Seems straightforward enough right? The challenge is that unfulfilled needs are often no easier to identify than opportunity, especially if you don’t have a deep understanding of your market. So, starting with what you know, is the best way to hone your ability to spot an opportunity.

You have to have incredible knowledge of your market or area of interest. Imagine what your response would be if someone offered you shares in LinkedIn, Pinterest or even Facebook if you didn’t know anything about social media. How could you assess your options? How would you know what might happen? Even if you did know about social media – things change. BVP said no to Facebook because “MySpace” was already in existence.

The challenge of opportunity is that it can be shrouded in risk or the possibility of failure. Even if you get past the fear factor that risk imposes, you might still only partially recognize value. Something might seem like a good concept, but the application of the idea is limited. Only after new perspectives are discovered does the full potential for the original idea become fully realized. The story of the post it note illustrates that well.

Given all the variables at play, what kinds of questions can you ask yourself? For me it begins with the basics:

What are the advantages?
What are the disadvantages?
How long will it take to come to fruition?
Do I have the time it takes to make this work?
What variations on the idea can be considered?

The thing about asking questions about ideas when they are presented to you is that you are not only continuing to learn, but you are also assessing your environment. Opportunity sometimes knocks, but for those times when it slips in the back door, open-minded curiosity is your best ally against missing out on a good thing.

Uncategorized

What Does the Future Hold For Communicators? A Look At The Jobs of Tomorrow

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

This is the time of year that we tend to spend doing two things, we reflect on the year that has been and we make promises about the year to come. Since the stats are against us keeping our New Year’s resolutions, can I suggest instead that we think about the possibilities the future holds?

When I consider the future of communications I get excited about being in this field. It is a sector that is growing and blossoming and the biggest challenge facing most communicators is the ability to keep up with the changes. Of course even if you keep up you have to be able to discern between what’s worth learning and what can be ignored. Not as easy as you might think when new tools are constantly being added to the mix and when platforms that you’ve never heard of become go to destinations virtually overnight.

All of these changes mean the very nature of our jobs are also altering. We can all expect that our future jobs will look very different from what we do today. Just as authors now have to exist in a virtual world and communications means having dexterity in social media, we can expect to see changes across many different sectors as we all become more virtual. To satisfy my curiosity I went to the internet to look at ideas and I brought some back for you to consider. What’s interesting is that some of the “future” jobs I found are things that people are doing today. The future is now.

Avatar Manager – This individual designs and manages holograms of virtual people. Yes, that’s right, your personal brand will be a lot more complex in the future and your avatar will be the single strongest element of that brand. Imagine the nightmares that would follow if your avatar was hacked?

Digital Architect – In this profession you design the settings where virtual retailers will sell their goods. Rather than having consumers scroll through uninspiring pages of images, they will instead be able to “visit” virtual stores whose ambiance will matter as much as it does now, more so in fact since you should be able to achieve any setting you like in a virtual world.

Digital Media Planner: This position already exists but perhaps hasn’t been fully flushed out into an individual job in most organizations. This is essentially a high-tech version of a media buyer. This individual scans the internet and determines what ‘s hot with who and what sites would represent good opportunities for clients. They decide what kind of ads and what sites will best use your Internet advertising budget.

Personal Brand Manager: I thought these guys already existed and in Hollywood they were called agents, but it seems this future professional does more than sell your talents. The PBM will develop and manage your personal brand so that your avatar says does and looks just right and so that the only side of you that’s seen in the virtual world will be a good one. This may require deleting bad internet press or drowning it in good positive stories about you. I’m pretty sure these services are for hire today.

Social Media Strategist: This position is similar to the digital media planner, but is related to the thinking behind the decision to purchase. The SMS helps organizations to develop a following on growing and fast changing social sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Although this is still predominantly an outsourced service, larger organizations are seeing the benefit of hiring in-house specialist to create everything from buzz about product to ad campaigns that are intended to be viral.

Web Analyst: This role is an expansion on the marketing role that already exists today but will become more important going forward. Since a lot of what organizations do in the virtual world is intended to drive consumers to their websites, it follows that you will need someone to look at the behavior of consumers once they get to your site. A web analyst will use customer information from the visits to your website to predict trends. This will allow you to build better informed advertising and communications strategies.

Omnipotence Delimiter: I personally think this one may be needed by some of our political figures right now, in fact I can think of a mayor who may be in need of these services. The OD’s job is to rein in our belief that anything is possible and we are all-powerful.

What do you think? What jobs does your future hold? Do you think these jobs are likely or that they already exist?

Management

Getting Your Focus Back – Is Closer Clearer?

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

Last 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?

Management

7 Tips on Finding Balance

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

Do 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?

Management

Label Blindness – When You Become Trapped By Your Title

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

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?

Communications, Management

Six Tips for Managing Difficult Conversations

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

Getting 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?

Management

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

Debra Yearwood Leave a comment

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:

The Science Behind Secrets (Observer)
Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world (TED)
Why Radical transparency Is Good Business (HBR Blog Network)

Management

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

Debra Yearwood 28 Comments

Related Articles:

The Science Behind Secrets (Observer)
Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world (TED)
Why Radical transparency Is Good Business (HBR Blog Network)

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

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