by Jane Perdue | Power
Ah, work/life/business boundaries—so tricky, so necessary, and so darn hard to manage for many reasons both personal and professional.
A female business colleague and I were sharing insights for how we set (or don’t) boundaries for work and personal time.
(Before I go on, I must raise my hand and confess, “I, Jane, am a workaholic” because this tendency plays a role in how my story unfolds.)
Over the last six weeks, I attended twelve teeball games, two a week, all with 5:30 PM start times (My corporate hard wiring kept asking, isn’t 5:30 PM the middle of the afternoon?!).
There I saw my six-year-old grandson smile shyly yet proudly at us on the sidelines after his triumphant runs to first base. I could cheer him (and others) on in what one charming little fellow so creatively named “first we hit, then we glove.”
To my second act of life way of thinking, this encouragement and our presence were acts of leadership development for those small girls and boys. We were helping them build self-confidence, learn teamwork, and get better at sharing.
Because the coach rotated the kids from one fielding position to another, they were learning to appreciate that each one of them brings different skills and outlooks, a great exercise in building tolerance.
Going to those teeball games was a commitment of time for me, I’m sad to say, that wouldn’t have happened in the first act of my life.
In the corporate America first act of my life, there was the ever-present, yet albeit covert, belief that individuals—especially women—who left work early for family reasons (things like 5:30 PM teeball games) “weren’t giving it their all” or were “unwilling to do what it takes.”
Given my desire to succeed, I drank the corporate koolaid by the gallon. Not wanting anyone to say I wasn’t willing to do what it took, 70 or even 80 hour work weeks were my norm.
I used to joke that a 40-hour week was a part-time job.
Ah, what a sick puppy I was.
Time for a new direction for business
Having emerged from my “corporate detox” period, I’m more objective. Now I see the error of my earlier ways.
Back then, I didn’t set any boundaries. I was an all-work-no-play gal. I allowed my work schedule and life to be influenced by covert stereotypes.
But now, from the perspective of time and distance, I can see how badly frayed the fabric of business practices is. Spoken and unspoken expectations that enabled, no – encouraged, my nose-to-the-grindstone, crank-it-out work ethic.
Organizational cultures where taking time away from the office to participate in activities like cheering on the next generation of leaders wasn’t valued. Where doing so is, in fact, negatively rewarded at review time for those bold and smart enough to set boundaries. I’m now taking ownership to change this.
Along with Anne Perschel, I researched women in business and their relationship with power. You can read our findings in our report.
Now I’m ready to start reweaving the fabric of business so those teeball acts of leadership development and other changes can happen. For women. For men. For anyone interested willing to learn the lessons of paradox and power.
Ready to suit up and play?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
Wow, last Tuesday was quite a day, and the biggest problem I had in managing what was going on was managing myself and my attention span.
The final straw came in a meeting where three things happened that threw me off-course.
The woman who had scheduled the meeting arrived late, and she was wearing flip-flops.
Another participant rarely took his eyes off his Smartphone and kept typing away on it, then asked for information to be repeated four (!) times because he missed what was said.
Another attendee proved gifted at steering every topic or comment back to several items on her personal agenda
Lateness. Flip-flops in an office. Inattention. An all-about-me attitude. Grr.
What a perfect storm of personal hot buttons being pummeled in rapid succession. I couldn’t stop looking at the flip-flops being noisily flopped and waggled in the air. The personal-agenda-stuff and present-in-body-but-not-in-mind were so distracting I couldn’t concentrate.
I was letting these folks pull me off my game.
I. Had. To. Focus.
It was time for some serious tough love self-coaching Jane to Jane:
Note to self: these are my pet peeves, all mine. Let go.
The meeting hadn’t been called to meet my preferences. “How often people’s’ minds wander is definitely a big predictor of who’s happy and who’s not happy,” writes Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University who studied attention spans. I wasn’t happy my hot buttons were being pushed, but I was the one with the problem. I had to let it go. Be here now.
Acknowledge the distractions, just don’t let yourself react to them.
“The ability to willfully focus your attention is physically separate in the brain from distracting things grabbing your attention,” says Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OK, I can do this. Focus on the meeting’s purpose and why you’re here.
You are in charge, kiddo, of where your attention goes.
You can fuss and fume mentally over the flip-flops or the phone or the “I-love-me” megaphone. OR you can focus on the project deliverables and your role in making them happen. Remember what you are here to do and do it.
Remember why you’re there.
The meeting was called to get work done, not for you to watch and judge the other participants. Remember the terrific outcome this work will achieve. See the big picture of the work, not your hot buttons being pushed. “What your brain is best equipped to do is to think, to analyze, to dissect and create. And if you’re simply responding to bits of stimulation, you won’t ever go deep,” says Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist focused on attention deficit disorder. Got it. Now ready to do it. Now doing it. Keep doing it. Yeah, Jane!
Whew…finally back on track.
What works for you to get refocused when your mind wanders?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
“All you OD folks want to make things so difficult. Making my employees happy is simple. Just serve up pizza on Friday and you’re pretty much done with it.” ~Business Owner
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Mine differs considerably from this fellow’s!
From my perspective, keeping employees motivated day-in and day-out isn’t the result of one-time events like parties, cookouts, passing out cupcakes on Tuesdays or pizza on Friday. These overly simplistic approaches put employees on the same level as trained seals who will patty-cake to get their sardine!
Great leaders build a trusting and giving environment where employees motivate themselves because they feel valued, appreciated, and even loved. (Love at work is a good thing!)
In addition to the qualitative benefits, plenty of positive quantitative benefits accrue to employers that equally value results and relationships. John Baldoni provides some great examples:
“…strong employee engagement promotes a variety of outcomes that are good for employees and customers. For instance, highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of lower engaged organizations. Comparing top-quartile companies to bottom-quartile companies, the engagement factor becomes very noticeable. For example, top-quartile firms have lower absenteeism and turnover. Specifically, high-turnover organizations report 25% lower turnover, and low-turnover organizations report 65% lower turnover. Engagement also improves quality of work and health. For example, higher scoring business units report 48% fewer safety incidents; 41% fewer patient safety incidents; and 41% fewer quality incidents (defects).”
7 ways to foster real employee engagement
Gallup’s latest survey shows that a meager 13% of employees are engaged. Here’s some simple ways to reach the other 87%.
- Communicate openly, honestly, and frequently.
- Let your employees know you have their back.
- Let employees make decisions.
- Offer a heartfelt “thank you”
- Seek out and listen to employees’ feedback.
- Say I’m sorry and mean it.
- Deal quickly with employees who aren’t doing their jobs.
If you’re regularly doing these seven things, then the cupcakes on Tuesday and pizza on Friday are icing on the employee engagement cake.
I’d love to hear your reaction to the boss’s quote at the beginning of the post and say what recommendations you have for building employee engagement?
Please share!
Photo source: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Character
A lovely reminder attributed to Charles Osgood about our responsibility to “just doing it” to kick start your thinking!
That this was something somebody would surely have to do.
There was a most important job that needed to be done,
And no reason not to do it, there was absolutely none.
But in vital matters such as this, the thing you have to ask
Is who exactly will it be who’ll carry out the task?
Anybody could have told you that everybody knew
Nobody was unwilling; anybody had the ability.
But nobody believed that it was their responsibility.
It seemed to be a job that anybody could have done,
If anybody thought he was supposed to be the one.
But since everybody recognised that anybody could,
Everybody took for granted that somebody would.
But nobody told anybody that we are aware of,
That he would be in charge of seeing it was taken care of.
And nobody took it on himself to follow through,
And do what everybody thought that somebody would do.
When what everybody needed so did not get done at all,
Everybody was complaining that somebody dropped the ball.
Anybody then could see it was an awful crying shame,
And everybody looked around for somebody to blame.
Somebody should have done the job
And Everybody should have,
But in the end Nobody did
What Anybody could have.
~Charles Osgood
Image source: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Character
A parable to make us ponder:
A pencil-maker told the pencil five important lessons before putting it in the box:
1) Everything you do will always leave a mark.
2) You can always correct the mistakes you make.
3) What is important is what is inside of you.
4) In life, you will undergo painful sharpening which will only make you better.
5) To be the best pencil, you must allow yourself to be held and guided by the hand that holds yours.
————-
We all need to be constantly sharpened.
This parable encourages us to remember that we are special and have unique talents and abilities.
Only you can fulfill the purpose which you were born to accomplish. Never allow yourself to get discouraged and think that your life is insignificant and cannot be changed.
Like the pencil, always remember that the most important part of who you are is what’s inside of you.
More thoughts on leaving marks
It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die. ~S.I Hayakawa
Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge. ~Arnold Toynbee
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. ~St. Augustine
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us. ~Jean-Paul Sartre
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. ~Henry David Thoreau
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us. ~Quentin Crisp
There’s a lot of fear connected with the inner journey because it penetrates our illusions. Taking the inner journey will lead you into some very shadowy places. You’re going to learn things about yourself that you’ll wish you didn’t know. There are monsters in there—monsters you can’t control—but trying to keep them hidden will only give them greater power. ~Parker Palmer
Image source: morgueFile
