by Jane Perdue | Character
My reaction to the request was immediate, visceral and not pleasant. Why on earth would the workshop facilitator ask the group to split up by gender?
This wasn’t fourth grade phys ed where sex and strength would play a role. My paradigm: leadership knows no gender distinctions, so why was this necessary?
My mind closed. I didn’t hear the first instructions. When everyone stood up and grabbed their chairs, I had no idea what was happening.
I blindly followed the woman next to me across the room and added my chair to the circle of women’s seats, still fuming at the gender division.
There must have been directions to think about something, given the silence and pensive expressions. After several minutes, the facilitator for the women’s group opened the floor for comments.
The deeply insightful and moving comments offered by the first two, then three, then four female participants set me back on my heels. This was meaningful stuff. My pique at the-girls-versus-the-boys separation was petty.
Because one of my personal hot buttons (women’s issues) had been hit, I had rushed to judgment, failing to seek first to understand. Fortunately, I only lost five minutes of what turned out to be an extraordinary two-hour exercise.
My humble pie lessons
1) Be curious. Gather information objectively. Understand what’s being asked and the context in which it’s being asked.
Be curious, not judgmental. ~Walt Whitman
2) Hot button or not, extend the benefit of the doubt. Presume good intentions, not ill.
Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. ~Marvin J. Ashton
3) Check your personal filters to make certain your own assumptions aren’t blocking the way for all the facts and/or data. I leapt to the top of the ladder of inference in a single bound!
Don’t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. ~Don Miguel Ruiz
4) Listen actively and with empathy to what’s being said. Assure that what you are interpreting is really being said. Focus on the speaker, not what’s swirling in your brain.
You can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear. ~Daniel Barenboim
5) Be humble and look for lessons to be learned!
True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes. ~Edward Frederick Halifax
Image source before quote: Dreamstime
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
“I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this group,” exclaimed Roger. “Once again, their efforts made all the difference. Without my team working into the wee hours of the morning to fill the customer’s order, we would have missed the shipping deadline.”
“What dedicated and caring employees you have,” said Sam. “Are you planning to recognize them?”
“Well, I’m not sure. This is the fourth time this month they’re pulled out the stops and made it happen. They know I appreciate what they do.”
Heroic efforts? Fourth time this month there was a need to pull out all the stops?
Recognition is absolutely important, but maybe, this boss needs to be looking at the reasons why his employees need to be so dedicated.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the crisis hoopla, that we forget to take a look at why those heroic efforts are needed so often.
Ian I. Mitroff, organizational theorist, consultant and Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California authored Smart Thinking for Crazy Times. In this book, Dr. Mitroff details five things we do that cause us to solve the wrong problem and offers solutions to avoid misguided outcomes.
5 ways to muck up problem solving
1. Picking the wrong stakeholders.
This happens when we focus on just a few interested parties and forget about, ignore or fail to consider other people who have a stake in the outcome.
Want to avoid wrong solution #1? Take and/or make the time to thoughtfully do a stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in the outcome and/or who might be positively or negatively impacted by what happens.
2. Narrowing our options.
This is one-note thinking: honing in on only one possible solution and failing to consider a broader range of options or alternatives.
How to side-step this trap? Don’t settle for just one definition of an important problem. When problems are called “important,” there’s usually more than one way to skin the proverbial cat – consider at least two very different formulations of the problem.
3. Picking the wrong language of variables.
This happens when we use “a narrow set of disciplines, business functions, or variables in which to express the basic nature of a problem.”
Duck this outcome by using your head to manage and your heart to lead. As Dr. Mitroff writes, “Never produce or examine formulations of important problems which are phrased solely in technical or in human terms alone; always strive to produce at least one formulation which is phrased in technical terms and at least one other which is phrased in human terms.”
4. Narrowing incorrectly the boundaries or scope of a problem.
Err on the side of being inclusive and expansive in defining the scope of a problem.
Elude this issue by broadening “the scope of every important problem up to and just beyond one’s comfort zone.”
5. Ignoring connections between parts and systems .
This is what Roger did: he focused on only one part of a problem rather than the whole system, thus “ignoring the connection between parts and wholes.”
Stay out of trouble by not fragmenting problems into isolated tiny parts. Look at the whole system, since sometimes the interactions between important problems are more important than the problems themselves.
What other problems get in your way of solving problems?
Image source before quote: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Power
The recent tornado that hit Joplin, MO or the massive flooding along the Mississippi River—those are forces over which we have no control. Same goes for the big boss who goes beserk in a meeting, shouting and pointing fingers.
It’s not the same with power…our capacity to change “what is” to “what can be.”
Not the same at all.
Recently, the media has been full of stories of people (mostly men) in high places who have exploited their power in despicable ways.
As I see it, those people had a choice. They weren’t victims of forces beyond their control. They knowingly chose to abuse their personal or their professional power, or both.
At some point, these unsavory individuals choose to believe they were more special, more privileged and hence above the rules that are applicable to us lesser mortals.
Power, office politics, and countless other topics are labeled as corrupt, evil, and something to be avoided because someone elected to apply them in a ‘I win, you lose’ manner. Taking that position is akin to the old saying about throwing the baby out with the bath water.
By definition power isn’t bad nor are office politics. Power and office politics only becomes bad when people choose to use them in self-centered and self-serving ways.
Power, in and of itself, does not corrupt absolutely…unless one chooses to let corruption be the outcome. Having power merely reveals what the person was all along.
What say you? Disagree? Agree?
Whew…stepping back from the edge, mini-rant over…looking forward to hearing what you have to say!
Quotes about power
Personal power is the ability to stand on your own two feet with a smile on your face in the middle of a universe that contains a million ways to crush you. ~J.Z. Colby
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still. ~Lao-Tzu
What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do. ~Aristotle
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs. ~Maxwell Maltz
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. ~Alice Walker
Image source before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
If, for some reason, you have a hankering to earn the moniker “Bad Boss of the Year,” remember to add these ten things to your daily ‘to do’ list and be a *real* winner.
1. March in the front door, proceed directly to your office, make no eye contact with anyone or engage them in conversation. Hey, you’re the boss. People should know that you have big, really big, things on your mind. You don’t have time for silly little pleasantries like saying “hello” or asking someone how they are.
2. Summon people to your office, right this very minute, and don’t bother telling them why you want to see them. Worry is good. Fear is better. You’ll tell them the subject when they arrive – why should you have to repeat yourself, for goodness sake.
3. Bask in the glow from the higher-ups when “your” good idea produces success. Quickly push your employees in front of the bus when “their” idea fails.
4. In John’s performance review, gloss over his performance and tell him how great he did. In the succession planning meeting with your peers, publicly announce that he’s a loser and on the fast-track out the door.
5. Hand out work assignments using as few words and directions as possible. You pay people to figure it out, right?
6. Demand that you approve every decision, no matter how large or small, before anything happens. Only you know best; that’s why they pay you the big bucks.
7. Set aside special time for the department tattle-tale to rat out co-workers and spill all the juicy juice about the latest office gossip. An informed boss is no doubt a good boss.
8. Flip-flop, either publicly or privately but both is best, on the important directive you briefly outlined yesterday. Don’t want anyone getting too comfy or set in their ways, do we?
9. Make sure your team members do not get assigned to cross-functional project teams or any other venue where they might hob-nob with people from other departments or levels within the company. Who knows who they might meet or god forbid, even impress.
10. Demand innovative thinking yet publicly humiliate anyone vulgar and brash enough to generate a new idea.
Here’s a call to action to make this ‘to don’t’ list as long as we possibly can.
Add at will and share widely so others can add their “best” suggestions, too!
Image source: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Communications
Rose “fell” into her PR career right after college, taking a temporary job to tide her over. That job lasted ten years.
While Rose had enjoyed her job, she always felt like something better was out there, that she was missing something. But until her layoff, she never hit the “pause button of life” long enough to evaluate the direction of her professional or personal life.
Most successful businesses have a mission statement describing their purpose along with a business plan defining what they do.
What works well for businesses also works well for individuals, especially if you’re in a career transition like Rose or are simply seeking a new direction.
Creating your personal life plan helps you focus on where you are, where you want to be and how you’ll get there. It’s a bit like having your very own personal GPS for the personal and professional direction you’ll take.
“Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs.” ~Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The process of figuring out what you want to do purposefully with your life and mapping out accompanying goals is simple yet complex.
The steps involved are straightforward.
The complexity arises from first deciding to be purposeful rather than random; and then doing all the heavy lifting of identifying your interests and goals, letting go of things getting in the way and finally finding a complementary career, volunteer work, and hobbies, etc., to keep your actions in alignment with your purpose.
Sometimes you have to “let go” to let other things “come in.”
Turning on your personal GPS
1) Define what you do well, like to do and makes you feel purposeful.
Richard Leider, author of The Power of Purpose, believes that “the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.”
2) Identify what you want to accomplish, both personally and professionally, and write it down.
There’s nothing like putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard to create clarity. Think of this as your personal mission statement. Here’s an example from Google that illustrates mission statement content: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” A company without a mission statement has little clarity on what it will do; the same is true for individuals.
3) List what you need to start doing, stop doing and continue doing.
This real benefit-producing step of the process requires honest and thorough self-assessment. Rush University Medical Center, a teaching and research hospital in Chicago, released a study on aging and activity in 2009. According to Patricia Boyle, neuropsychologist and assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush, “If you find purpose in life, if you find your life is meaningful, and if you have goal-directed behavior, you are likely to live longer.”
4) Define your goals and make an action plan.
It’s only when we combine our dreams with action that we realize successful outcomes. Thinking, hoping and visualizing are helpful exercises to shape your focus yet are insufficient on their own to produce results. Gotta make things happen!
5) Commit to action, learning, failing and trying again.
Hold yourself accountable to taking small steps every single day, whether you want to or not. (The siren song of procrastination plays loudly some days). Expect to take a misstep or two, that’s all part of it. Give yourself permission to fail; learn from those failures and move on. Celebrate your successes: throw a party, dance on the beach, eat chocolate, watch a sunset, send yourself a gift.
Having a plan creates direction.
Direction produces focus.
Focus leads to productivity.
Productivity makes results.
Results create confidence and success.
Sweet!
What other steps should be on this list?
Image source: morgueFile
