Search Results for: Not for me

Just like on the football field, the workforce is fraught with Running Backs and Defensive Linebackers.

Running Backs catch new ideas and help us run them to the end zone, navigating obstacles in their path.

Defensive Linebackers block us from easily reaching the goal with their naysaying (lots of no-can-do talk) and no-doing (lots of can-do talk, no action).

Buy why? Why block good ideas? Fear, concern, or confusion. 

• Why didn’t I think of that idea? Does this mean that I’m not needed anymore?
• Will I get in trouble if this goes through and fails?
• I don’t get it and I’ve got enough I’m already trying to figure out

The secret to working with Defensive Linebackers: purposeful perception. We need to respond not react, discern the real issue, and consider the view from their sidewalk.

Ask yourself:

• What’s really going on – what’s their fear, concern, or confusion?
• How can we address it?
• How can we help them win when we win?

And while it’s easy to judge others, we must be honest when new ideas come to us: are we being the Running Back or the Defensive Linebacker?

People support that which they help create.

In behavioral economics, this is called “Participatory Bias” – people are more inclined to support decisions they help to make and solutions they help to create, even if the end result is not theirs.

Having participated, they are more willing to defend the outcome. Their ego won’t allow them to support the process and oppose it at the same time.

The opposite is also true. When we don’t include people in decisions, projects, or solutions, they are more likely to resist, oppose, and even sabotage the end result.

Knowing this, why wouldn’t we go out of our way to create opportunities for people to participate, even when we don’t need them to?

We cannot ignore the enormous influence participation has on human behavior.

The simple act of including someone…

• helps that person feel valued, recognized, and appreciated
• increases their engagement and patronage
• fosters their effectiveness through understanding, learning, and discovery
• encourages their creativity and innovation

Easy ways to create participation:

• Solicit suggestions for improving the team, the meeting, a project, or a process
• Ask someone new every week for their perspective on an issue
• Seek advice on solving a problem from someone not involved with it
• Request a your team’s help in generating new ideas or approaches
• Nominate people for a task force, a committee, or a development program

If we want to be great leaders, we need to intentionally provide people with the opportunity to participate, contribute, and make a difference.

Where you are is not who you are. 

Ursula’s mom preached these words to her daughter while raising her in a tough, drug-infested ghetto in New York City’s Lower East Side. She lectured Ursula about education and hard work being the way up and out of the ghetto.

Today Ursula Burns is CEO of Xerox Corporation, a career she started in 1980 as an intern after completing a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. She became the first female African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

What power did Ursula’s mom give her? The conviction that our circumstances do not define us …unless we let them.

We can apply this wisdom to any circumstance:

• What you did is not who you are. A mistake, an error, a bad decision does not define you. You have the power to learn a lesson and act differently going forward.
• What you said is not who you are. A misspoken word, a short temper, a negative moment does not define you. You have the power to apologize and speak differently going forward.
• What you are called is not who you are. Your title does not define you. You have the power to contribute and make a difference regardless of what your business card says.

Ursula’s mom taught Ursula to write a different story for herself instead of following the one dictated by her circumstances.

Are you and your team allowing circumstances to define you? Maybe it’s time to write a different story.

In 2012, Zappos got rid of all of their managers.

Why? They decided the company was saddled with too much bureaucracy, which was suffocating its innovative, entrepreneurial spirit. So they eliminated all of their managers in favor of a new structure called “Holocracy” (a self-management operating model in which everyone is autonomous and no one has bosses).

Blaming managers for bureaucracy and suffocated innovation is so trite.

But their solution is equally inane. By eliminating their managers, they eliminated their powerhouse in the middle of the organization.

Managers have two vital and powerful roles in every organization:

• to propagate the message from the top
• to develop people’s leadership from the bottom

Managers are the gateway to a company’s success, not the barricade.

What Zappos should have done is prepared their managers to be effective. Instead they hurled them off the bus.

What are you doing to prepare your powerhouse of managers?

Job Crafting: The act of adding meaning to your work

More than 65% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. Why? They’re focused on a fixed list of duties. It’s time to encourage these people to expand the boundaries of their job description…

Coined by researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale, “job crafting” describes people who meet the expectations of their job and then find ways to add something that makes a difference and benefits the team/company/customers.

Examples of job crafting:

• People who volunteer to mentor others
• Salespeople who solve problems instead of sell products
• People who take on a project for an employee resource group or a Diversity Council
• My colleague who stayed late to help me prepare for a big presentation
• The hotel front desk clerk who walked across the street to get me a first-aid kit
• The Xerox employee who turned an error in adhesives into Post-it Notes
• The Zappos call center rep who sent flowers to a customer whose husband had just died and who was calling to return a pair of shoes she had purchased for him
• The utility workers from around the country who traveled to the East Coast to help neighborhoods get their power back after Hurricane Sandy in 2013

Where to start? Assess and alter any of the following areas in your job:

• Tasks – what tasks could you perform differently or more effectively? what new tasks could you take on?
• Relationships – what new relationships could you develop and contribute to?
• Perceptions – how does your work affect others? how does your work make a difference?

3 essentials for success in job crafting:

1. Create value for others:  find ways to benefit and serve your boss, team, colleagues, and customers
2. Establish trust:  help others see that your actions are in service of them, not in service of you
3. Start with the yaysayers:  focus first on those who support you

Why should leaders advocate for job crafting? It’s a potent way to empower people to increase their own satisfaction, elevate their own achievements, and improve their own resilience.

The result? Employees who are re-energized and re-committed because they found new ways to contribute and make a difference. And who wouldn’t want to work in that kind of culture?

What kind of job crafting have you been up to? Send me an email – I want to cheer you on!

Bad events are stronger than good.

Research shows that we learn from and use negative information far more than positive information when making decisions.

Negative events have a greater impact on us than positive ones. Negative events are more memorable. An embarrassing moment, losing a friend, getting fired, receiving criticism, an altercation with a stranger. We are more motivated to avoid these bad situations than we are to pursue good ones.

It would make sense to focus on our failures to avoid replicating them. But our ego gets in the way of allowing our errors to serve as teaching tools, pointing to bad luck, unfortunate timing, or external circumstances to excuse our gaffes: the weather, the traffic, the sabotaging colleagues, the jerk in the store, our manager’s poor judgment, the short-sited client.

And society has convinced us to study successful people through books, magazines, speakers, and movies. The reality, however, is that success is hard to replicate. There are too many factors involved.

Failure, however, can easily be replicated. So let’s focus on others’ failures, mistakes, gaffes, errors, and missteps so we don’t replicate them:

• When engaging with a Mentor, ask about their mistakes and lessons learned
• When talking with anyone about their success, ask about what didn’t work
• When reading about successful people in books and magazines, focus on their errors and blunders
• When in awe of role models, notice their miscalculations and gaffes
• Keep a list of failures, fiascos, and flops of other people, teams, and companies
• Then study the list regularly

Warren Buffet’s business partner, Charles Munger, keeps an inanities list and a file of foolishness filled with other people’s missteps, errors, and bad judgment. He studies it to ensure he doesn’t replicate them.

Create your own Fiascos and Flops List and reference it before making decisions. When everyone else is trying to parrot the successful, you’ll be busy generating your own success.