by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Does your life and work schedule resemble the landing strip at O’Hare or LaGuardia airports—so much incoming activity that there’s no time for anything else?
No time to think or reflect or connect?
(Sometimes, in my first act of life, there was hardly time to go to the bathroom!)
In today’s crazy busy world we connect with technology frequently, spending lots of time interacting with a device (Crackberry, anyone?).
Yet it’s connecting with real people that brings genuine success and satisfaction to our personal and professional lives.
Making those “people” connections requires us being thoughtful in seeing, and seizing, the opportunities to “only connect” as E.M. Forester says.
You’re 1/12 into a new year.
Are you as connected with others as you’d like to be?
3 crucial connections
If not, use this three-pronged approach as your guide to making the other 11/12 of the year rich with quality leadership connections.
Connect with you
If your personal reservoir is empty, there isn’t much to share with others. Re-engage with what’s important to you. Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s work with emotional intelligence is a helpful place to start:
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
Getting in touch with what we fail to notice—about ourselves and others—is a crucial first step to establishing powerful connections.
- What’s my personal and professional north, and am I still on track?
- What worthwhile things have I done today that I will continue doing?
- Whose life did I touch today and help make it better?
- What one thing, big or small, did I do today to renew my energy and increase my knowledge and/or skills?
Connect with those around you
Make the time – or schedule it if that works for you – so you’re spending five quality minutes with a direct report, colleague, client, vendor, assistant, the barista who makes your daily latte, and so on. Establishing relationships with those around you at work – at every level within the organization and externally as well – is a make-or-break element for career success.
- Ask “how are you doing today?” Then really listen to the answer and ask follow-up questions.
- Say thank you. Throw in a smile for good measure.
- Celebrate an accomplishment. Chocolate is one of the four food groups!
- Ask people around you about sports, their kids, a favorite TV show, etc. Explore, discover and share interests to build a bond.
Connect with your boss
Some bosses are the scourge of the earth, others just delightful. Either way, engage him or her in a meaningful exchange. Your boss can propel your career to new heights or hold you back behind your back. Aim for the propelling part.
- Ask your boss how you can help out.
- Ask him about his family or favorite book so you can establish some common ground and shared interests.
- Ask her where she sees her career going and what will help her succeed.
Make making meaningful connections a goal, a habit, a way of life!
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
“I so want to tell him ‘no’ but I don’t want to let him down.”
From the pained look on her face, I guessed Casey didn’t want to disappoint someone who was important in her life or career. That guess was wrong.
When I asked about the relationship, Casey said she had only met the gentleman a few days ago.
As she described it, she had been sharing success stories at a cocktail party about her magazine articles and having had two pieces picked up by national magazines.
Hal approached Casey saying he had an interesting story about how his business got started that he’d like to see get some national press and asked if she might be interested in writing about it.
Casey agreed to meet and learn more.
They met for coffee the next day. Hal provided a high level overview of his story. He said he would pay her $500.00 for writing the article. The money was good, but Casey declined because the subject (tax law) was outside her expertise and comfort zone.
Hal was insistent, upping the pay to $1000.00. Casey gave in and agreed to write the article.
Three days later when we met for coffee, Casey was wrestling with an uncomfortable situation: her inability to figure out an appropriate story line for an article she really didn’t want to write and her fear of Hal not liking her for turning down his request.
5 ways to give yourself permission to say no
1. It’s good, mandatory even, to set personal boundaries. Know where you draw your personal lines and be prepared to stick up for them. That’s what boundaries are for.
2. Telling people “no” doesn’t make you unlikable. Failing to say “no” when it’s appropriate to do so makes you a doormat. And the really ugly kicker here is that saying “yes” doesn’t necessarily make you likeable.
3. Don’t be seduced by money. Some things just aren’t worth it. Liking yourself is much more important.
4. Stick up for yourself. If you really aren’t interested in doing something, tactfully say so. If you don’t protect yourself, who will?
5. Don’t feel guilty for not wanting to do something. It’s your choice, your decision, and you accept the consequences either way so feel good about standing up for yourself.
So how did Casey’s story end?
Casey phoned Hal, thanked him for his generous offer of work and declined. She gave him the name of a freelancer friend who might be perfect for the assignment.
She left the coffee shop grinning from ear to ear.
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Women
Women in Business and The Paradox of Power
NEW REPORT REVEALS STEPS WOMEN MUST TAKE TO ATTAIN POWER AND MORE SENIOR LEVEL POSITIONS
Researchers Also Detail What Corporations Must Do To Be Part of The Solution
A new paper, Women in Business & The Paradox of Power, based on research by Jane Perdue of The Jane Group and Dr. Anne Perschel of Germane Consulting, reports that corporations are leaving money on the table and forgoing future success by failing to move more women into senior leadership roles. Perschel and Perdue also claim that businesswomen must prepare themselves to take on these executive roles by understanding and using power more effectively.
In their study, which involved hundreds of senior level businesswomen, Perdue and Perschel find that many women relate to power in ways that prevent them from attaining senior level positions, be it lack of confidence; cultural conditioning; or simply not understanding what power is. In-depth interviews with women who have attained the highest-level positions of influence reveal that they understood and used different approaches to gain power and make important changes to business culture and leadership practices.
Reshaping a male-dominated business culture, changing the ratio of women to men, and thereby improving bottom line results, requires a very specific set of actions by those currently in leadership positions as well as by women themselves.
Women in Business & The Paradox of Power: What Women Must Do
• Know power and be powerful
Perdue and Perschel define power as the capacity to get things done and bring about change. Not so for many of the research participants who think of power as “being in control at all times,” or “deciding and announcing,” among other misconceptions. Sixty-one percent of survey participants hold mistaken views about how to advance their power (and themselves). The authors emphasize that women must study power, understand power, and use their power to change the culture of business.
• Ditch Cinderella
Over sixty percent of the participants preferred passive approaches to gaining power, opting to be granted access, rather than actively taking it. Unlike Cinderella, women cannot passively wait on the business sidelines, hoping business culture will change and hand them the most powerful decision making positions. Instead, they must seek power, advancing both the change agenda and their careers. As one executive vice-president who heads a $300 million dollar business advised, “The success police will not come and find you.”
• Show up. Stand Up. Voice Up
Fifty-two percent of the barriers to power that participants identified are personal and internal, e.g., “what I need is a constant drip-feed of confidence.” With women comprising nearly forty-seven percent of the entire workforce, holding forty percent of all management jobs, and earning sixty-one percent of all master’s degrees, they are uniquely positioned to work towards dismantling legacy organizational barriers and stereotypes.
• Forge strategic connections
Relationships are the currency of the workplace, yet sixty-seven percent of the women in Braithwaite & Germane’s study are not taking charge of building their networks. To fill more than the three percent of the Fortune 500 CEO positions they currently hold, women must become masters of strategic networking as well as building alliances and coalitions.
• Unstick their thinking
Thirty-eight percent of participants opted for being well-liked rather than powerful. Perschel and Perdue contend this need not be a choice. Based on research conducted at Stanford University, women are uniquely capable of moving beyond such an either/or mindset. Leaders, both male and female, too often limit solutions by framing problems as a choice between two mutually exclusive options.
Women in Business & The Paradox of Power: What Corporations Must Do
• Make gender balance real
Having more women in senior leadership roles is correlated with a substantial increase in total return to shareholders, which is a performance metric for most CEOs. Why, then, do so many heads of companies fail to hire, develop, and promote women for clout positions on senior leadership teams? Executives at the highest levels must move beyond positioning gender balance as politically correct and giving it perfunctory lip service on the corporate agenda. If they are serious about gender balance, they must position it as a business imperative.
• Remake leadership
Despite decades of efforts to increase the number of women in senior leadership roles, the needle on this corporate metric has barely moved. Gender bias is prevalent in the very way leadership is defined – a take charge, have all the answers, aggressive style. Corporate leaders must change both the definitions and practices of leadership. Women will help them do so.
• Walk the talk. Develop women leaders
Seventy-one percent of firms responding to a survey conducted by Mercer, the world’s largest human resource consultancy, do not have a clearly defined strategy or philosophy to develop women for leadership roles. As some of the approaches that work for men do not work as well for women, corporate leaders must invest in modifying these programs to develop women and then follow up with promotional opportunities.
Women in Business & The Paradox of Power: About the authors.
Jane Perdue is the Principal of The Jane Group, a female-owned professional development organization, and the creator of the new Women’s Leadership Institute for the Charleston, S.C. Center for Women.
Dr. Perschel is known as “an unstoppable force advancing women leaders.” She is president of Germane Consulting, an executive coaching and organization development consultancy.
Both have been featured as leadership and women’s issues experts in newspapers and magazines, as well as on television and radio.
Utilizing their research and relative corporate experience, Perschel and Perdue lead and advance aspiring professional women through mentoring, sponsorships, coaching, and development programs. By identifying key obstacles such as those uncovered in WOMEN IN BUSINESS & THE PARADOX OF POWER, they help women and organization leaders identify the issues they must resolve to ensure cultural change and enable women to reach the highest pinnacles of success.
by Jane Perdue | Character
There’s one in nearly every work group – that certain someone whose words and/or demeanor gets you all fired up…or puts you into a slow burn every time you have to interact with them.
Perhaps their opinions and values are worlds apart from yours.
Maybe they’re openly hostile to you or your personalities clash.
Yet whatever the reason for the conflict, you can’t avoid or ignore them because your job requires you to interact with them.
So what’s a savvy leader to do?
The high road to personal success requires you to take control of the one thing you do control – yourself. While the temptation to fire off a snarky retort is alluring, it isn’t a politically astute move on your part.
3 ways to defuse the slow burn
1) Manage your attitude.
Think first, don’t immediately react when provoked. Move away from your sense of rightness to avoid a confrontation which serves no one well. This is the time for calm self-control.
Even in your rightness about a subject, when you try to push your rightness toward another who disagrees, no matter how right you are, it causes more pushing against. In other words, it isn’t until you stop pushing that any real allowing of what you want can take place. ~Abraham Hicks
Don’t immediately react when provoked. Give yourself time to think. Move away from your sense of rightness to avoid a confrontation which serves no one well. This is the time for calm self-control.
2) Understand and master your own intentions.
Are you operating from the “I win, you lose” position or from a “win-win” standpoint? Astute business people operate from the perspective of seeking win-win outcomes. Always seek to understand the motivation of the other party, e.g. is their intention that you lose so they can win.
Susan Lankton-Rivas, a consultant with Insight Performance, Inc., reminds us to “understand the other person’s point of view and how he or she arrived it at. Understanding why this person annoys you helps you manage your reaction.”
3) Communicate well
When it’s time to deal with the situation, control your communication style and message so there’s total alignment between what you say and how you say it.
The National Network for Women’s Employment reminds to us to “keep in mind it’s not just what you say that matters. It’s also how you say it, how you act and your body language.”
Advising a colleague in a sharp tone of voice that there’s a problem you want to discuss – and doing so with your arms tightly folded across your chest – sets off his or her internal alarms and doesn’t set a good foundation for the two of you to productively resolve the issue.
The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself. ~Garth Brooks
Learning to master your own attitude, intentions and communication style forms the bedrock for knowing how to effectively manage conflict!
What say you?
Image source: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
Mother Teresa wrote that “kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” I like those little things that have a big impact.
One of my favorites is someone uttering the kind words of “thank you.”
Thank you…two short, easy-to-speak yet incredibly powerful words:
…if you say and mean them from the heart, and
…provided 100% of your focus/meaning is directed to the person you are thanking.
Offering sincere and heart-felt thanks to a colleague, friend, family member, or the stranger who retrieved your runaway hat is a positive connection moment that leaves both of you feeling uplifted. You for giving, the other for feeling valued.
It’s also an irretrievably lost connection moment if you make the thanks about you instead of what they did. You know, the back-handed tribute that sounds like praise for them but is really a self-accolade in clever disguise. It goes kinda like this: How sweet of you to help me. You must know how incredibly busy I am with the important new project the Board of Directors asked me to take on.
Have you told someone thank you today…and really meant it?
Have you told someone thank you today…and really complimented yourself?
Which kind of thanks would you like to receive today?
Quotes to inspire you to say thank you
By the way, I’m wearing the smile that you gave me. ~Unknown
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you’ll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you’ll find that you have more of it. ~Ralph Marston
One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. ~Malayan Proverb
It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. ~Wallace D. Wattles
Image source: morgueFile.com
