Monday Morning

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.
Albert Guinon (1863 - 1923)
At some point during your day, you will be asked to listen to your direct report, your boss, a customer, or maybe a family member. Regardless of how fast they speak, your brain can actually process information 4-5 times faster. This ability can set the stage to yield to the temptation to do more than just listen. And if you happen to be in front of your computer or at your desk—multitasking during that conversation is all the more likely. Effective listening is every executive’s Achilles’ heel. Regardless of your expertise—technology, law, marketing, finance or operations—an executive who cannot listen well is doomed. Here are five ways to engage in active listening. Consider yourself a good listener if you can say you’ve adopted at least 3 of these:  [1] Minimize distractions and step away from your clutter.  Find a place to hold key conversations where you cannot be interrupted by all of the visual cues that call for your attention.  Use a conference room if it’s available. If you’re on the phone, step away from your desk and force yourself to stand up to remind yourself the person on the other end of the call is asking for your attention. [2] Disengage your personal defense mechanisms and avoid working on your response as the person is speaking about their concerns.  If you find yourself looking for holes in someone’s argument, or simply countering them to play the devil’s advocate—stop.  While these may be valuable during a brainstorming session, they can also serve as defense mechanisms when the messenger is giving you a dose of painful truth. [3] Look for an opportunity to recap key points of the conversation and “check-in” throughout the conversation to see if you are indeed getting the message.  Paraphrasing the speaker’s comments can be as simple as, “So what I hear you saying is… and do I have that right?” [4] Take notes during your conversation to force yourself to track the speaker’s comments or concerns. Depending on the circumstances, even the act of asking permission to take notes is an opportunity to convey that you see the importance of what’s being said. Make sure you use your notes to address the heart of the conversation rather than to document the comments for your records. [5] Get feedback on your listening skills. Find out what others think of your ability to hear them.  Make sure your annual performance evaluation has a 360 feedback component that includes questions on your listening skills. There’s always more to learn and hear from your colleagues

“If you follow every dream, you might get lost.”

–Neil Young “The Painter” in the Album Prairie Wind

 In case you haven’t noticed, the threat level in many executive suites has been set to a permanent state of overwhelm.  The ever growing list of things to do, now called “corporate dashboards” are flashing red—initiatives are off-track, behind schedule, or not meeting target performance goals.  If that isn’t enough for heartburn, just take a look at any of your inboxes—voicemail, email, or the files on your desk. For many executives and managers, “frantic” is an accepted part of the complexity of managing a team, an entire division, or the company.  Effective leadership however, requires effective focus: learning to see the essential amid the clutter and then acting upon that information in ways that align with your company’s strategy or your organizational mission. ¼br /> So how can leaders stay focused? Take time to ask what’s truly important to achieve and force your self to limit all those tasks or projects that support your goals.  For example, on one side of a 3 x 5 card write down what you and your team need to achieve in the next 90 days.  On the other side, write down no more than 5 milestones or priorities that you or your team need to address in order to meet that target.  Now walk around your office or department and observe:  Are people working on any of the five priorities you jotted on your card? If not, what’s in the way?  Are people aware of these priorities? If not, ask them what they think the priorities are and why?  Ask your team if they have the tools to focus on those priorities?  And finally, dare to ask if your team is being asked to address too many priorities at once.  It takes courage to ask whether your team is distracted by too many initiatives or projects and even more courage to set realistic targets with them.  In the end, however, you may find that by focusing on the right things you and your team has achieved much more than you dreamed possible.
Š

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think”–Martin Luther King, Jr.

A New Year has just begun and for many of us, the month of January is an opportunity to resolve to achieve new goals or set out to create new habits that can promote personal and professional success. All of this requires each of us to set aside time to take stock and think hard about what matters in our quest to live better or work smarter. Whehterh you are in a leadership role now or want to be, here are three questions to support your plans for a successful 2007: [1] List your top three achievements in 2006 and ask what conditions made it possible to reach those goals or successful moments.  What are you doing now to create those same ideal conditions for 2007? [2] List your top three disappointments in 2006 and ask what were the decisions or conditions leading up to those that you wish now you would have handled differently? Is there anything in 2007 that places you at risk to repaeat that same kind of disappointment? and [3] If your staff or direct reports or your colleagues were asked to write one sentence to describe the impact of your leadership or your work last year, what do you think they might say and why? Are these words the ones you want to be remembered by?   Executive development and leadership growth happens through careful reflection and thinking hard about your impact on others and leveraging your potential. This money of January, I invite you to take a moment to asses the year past and plan for a bright year ahead.–To Your Success, Maria

If you didn’t receive our Coaching at Your DeskTop Newsletter for January 2007, please visit our front page and sign up to receive this free newsletter. �

Wall Street Journal’s “Cubicle Culture” columnist Jared Sandberg revisits the never ending debate on work-life balance in his December 12th column(See Back to the Future:Mixing Work Home, a Very Old Delimma). His remarks stand out on two fronts: First he calls attention to something that rarely gets included in the work life balance debate. Namely, we often bring our personal life  into our work world (yes, people do email friends from work and gosh darn, they talk to co-workers about kids, hobbies or the latest WSJ article they read). Second, he helps readers remember that people have struggled at protecting family time from the demands of work well before the advent of cell phones, text messaging and emails after 5pm.  I’m the first in line to admit that work today takes place for many of us where ever we have a phone and an internet connection.  But the stress we’re experiencing may be more a function of the level of distraction that’s completely self-imposed.  How many times are you talking with someone on a land line and their cell phone rings and they actually stop talking to answer that phone rather than finish their first conversation? How many folks check their email (ever so discretely) while they’re at their desk talking with a colleague?  These are Habits of Distraction that are not based on technology–these are user preferences. Everything in my gadget arsenal has an off switch but like most –I rarely turn these things off.  I do choose not to answer the phone at times and I do choose to limit the times I check email but I consider those habits important professional skills that I’ve cultivated with the same determination I’ve given to  time management or goal management. Maybe the debate on Work Life Balance would be better served by asking how each of us can balance between the impulse to do it all versus focusing on what’s important at that moment.  Sometimes doing one thing at a time, can actually accomplish more than multitasking and yes, it can feel like there’s balance in our hectic lives.

I often hear skepticism about change.  There are plenty of comments early in a project that some one or some department just can’t possibly change and that a project or a program is doomed from the beginning as a result. The proverbial “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” gets said over and over again.  It’s a skepticism I find fascinating given all the evidence to the contrary: people all around us really DO change.  In fact, we are all witness to an era of profound changes in individual and social life–the catch is this: its gradual and you have to pay attention!  While it’s very easy to notice the wave of technology changes present before us (just browse your local Fry’s, Best Buy, or Circuit City), human behavior changes are more subtle.

Here’s an example–the demise of the nostalgic family dinner time in our fast paced lives has been the focus of recent studies at the University of Chicago.  In 1998 only 47 percent of teens were having 5-7 dinners with their family each week.  In 2005, that number rose to 58 percent.  Why the change?  An increased awareness that family time is increasingly hard to have but vital for the well being of teens.  Specifically, teens who eat dinner with their family 5 - 7 times a week have a lower risk for drug and alcohol use compared to those who only have dinner with their family twice a night.  Given how much everyone struggles to balance work and life, a change of 11 percentage points suggest many families got the message when this news broke 9 years ago.  You can find out more  about this research at the September 26 Family Day web site.

The opportunity to make subtle and significant change for the better is something humans can do quite well. Ironically, change is the only constant in our lives. And based on the 80/20 principle, a Canadian group named An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Inc. came up with another way to look at change :  5% of people GENERATE change, 15% of people HANDLE change, 80% of people UNDERGO change.   The next time you face a skeptic, you may want to gently remind them they are in one of these three groups–the question is which one?

You may have missed this news of the weird.   Two entrepreneurs in Shanghai have started a business to provide “anger surrogates” for workers under stress.  For about $15 an hour the founders of Wantong, LTD will allow a worker to yell, scream—even strike out—at hired surrogates in order to relieve their client’s work place tensions about everything from bad managers to bad workplace conditions.   I’m not sure founders Zhang Li and Chen Jun are going to last very long.  Frustrated workers can get quite angry about the strangest things.  I’ve seen workers who have ranted about having office chairs with arm-rests versus chairs without arm-rests, eliminating bottled water, poor coffee choices, and off-site event locations.  Of course, employee reactions over mundane events can be largely symbolic rage over larger issues workers face.  The daily barrage of poor management, poor training or poor work systems or all three is usually at the heart of the stress that underlies most meltdowns.

If Wantong, LTD isn’t available for franchising in the US, communal punching bags may become new standard office equipment.Employee anger isn’t all about poor management or bad workplace conditions, however.  Another factor contributing to workplace stress that isn’t talked about as much as poor management, outsourcing or downsizing is the self-imposed turmoil among workers who can’t or—most often—won’t leave their jobs for something better. Yes, it is very hard to find a new job.  Yes, some jobs offer great benefits that can’t be easily found again. Yes, some workers are vested in retirement programs that make leaving a hardship.   Yet, in spite of all these factors that make a job good to hold on to, none of that seems to dissuade workers from complaining, filing spurious grievances, or creating havoc for their employer because of their fundamental unhappiness.  The cost in workplace productivity is astounding.  For these workplaces, there may simply not be enough punching bags or “anger surrogates” to go around! 

It’s the morning after the “Day Without Immigrants” and amid the national debate on what the day accomplished, the media is having a field day with the idea of having a Spanish language version of the Star Spangled Banner.  If it weren’t being reported so much, this might all play like another bad sitcom skit on Saturday Night Live.  For all the times that real Latino issues are ignored, it’s a bit unerving that a British music promoter looking for his 15 minutes of fame is some how representative of a Latino agenda. Yes, that’s right.  The idea of the Spanish version of the Star Spangled Banner did not originate among some vatos loco in East LA.  So let’s put this into perspective. No one in their right mind who sees the first snappy t-shirt after a California earthquake would claim the creator is providing a public service announcement on disaster preparedness that should be adopted by Homeland Security.  If anyone is looking for evidence of Latino patriotism in the US, please look no further than the disproportionate number of Latino men and women in the military, the workers who do back-breaking work others don’t want to, and the significant number of Latinos in public service.  Perhaps if the nation’s major media outlets had a diverse staff reporting on all the events of the day, a Spanish version of the national anthem being peddled by a British music promoter would be recognized for what it is –another distraction.

Today some employers are going to learn about diversity, immigration, and the global economy.  It may be a harsh lesson. Employees who don’t “look” like immigrants and those who do might be taking the day off out of sympathy for 12 million people who work in the US without proper documentation.  Employers who are relying upon workers with low wages may find out the true value of the work they do.  Amid all of the sound bites, the editorials and the inconvenience, it will be hard for employers to make sense of what’s at stake amid all the noise.

The ongoing protest by immigrant rights groups across the country brings together a complexity of issues that cannot be captured in one position, one reform, one broad sweep.  Immigrants from Mexico are a disproportionate number of immigrants here for a multitude of reasons: economic, geographic, historical, and political.  The unfairness of the day seems to to be one of labeling the protest as a narrow argument about illegal immigration.  It should be clear that today’s protests are focused on the absurdity of making illegal immigrants into felons—all 12 million.  Let’s beware that just like so many other social movements; many will line up to make the day fit their agenda. My parents came to the US legally and I am the only child born here—the official “gringa” by birth.  It would be disrespectful of my parents and all those who came to the US by following the rules for me to suggest that illegal immigration is fine.  Entering any country illegally isn’t right. The sad truth, however, is that regardless of how we came to the US, my parents were discriminated just as much as those who came illegally.  Even after becoming naturalized citizens, my parents and my brothers faced that sense of being second class members of the community.  It was a challenge to feel included and accepted despite our dedicated efforts to be good citizens.  It was especially hard when immigrants from other countries seemed to be welcomed here while the rules for immigration from Mexico became much harder.   It is the unrelenting nature of racial divide in our nation that stir my heart today to empathize with the individuals, the families and children on the street rather than any statistics that are being used to justify positions on the right or left.  Perhaps when we make pluralism the ultimate agenda of any discourse, immigration reform will be viewed in its proper context by employers, congress and advocates on either side.