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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.

Lower your expectations.

I first heard this advice at RAGBRAI, the annual bike ride across Iowa held the last week of July. When my friends and I arrived at camp to start the adventure, the head of our outfitter, Pork Belly Ventures, welcomed us with the following, “This is going to be a great week. But here’s the reality: It’s hot. You’re sleeping in a tent. And you’re riding with 10,000 cyclists into towns built for 400 residents. Just lower your expectations.”

Brilliant. Most employed advice of the week. Whenever anything was about to cause an upset (like the mid-week downpour and tent-flooding), we would look at each other and say, “Lower your expectations.”

When our expectations are high, we easily get disappointed, angry, and upset. In fact, conflict is merely the result of missed expectations. One person’s expectations are higher than another person’s. That gap produces the conflict.

If you’re like me, however, you’re suddenly looking at an entire career rippled with high expectations of people. You cannot fathom lowering them for fear of breeding complacency and mediocrity!

But here’s why we should heed the advice from RAGBRAI and apply it to work:

• We can have high expectations of things we manage: time, money, budgets, deadlines, and projects.
• We get in trouble when we place high expectations on things we do not manage and therefore cannot control: weather, traffic, airlines, family, and people.

We manage things and we lead people. Expectations are things to be managed. People are not.

So what should we do with those high expectations we have been dumping on people? Exchange those expectations for aspirations.

As leaders, our commitment is for people to be wildly successful. So we need high aspirations for them. And only through leading can we contribute to and influence their success with those aspirations. We influence aspirations. We control expectations. 

New Rules

• If you cannot control it, then lower your expectations around it.
• Exchange those high expectations of people with high aspirations for them.
• Then influence the success of those aspirations by relentlessly leading and contributing.
• Lower your expectations. Raise your aspirations.

Caveat: Lowered expectations does not mean no expectations. You must have minimum standards of expectations for every role.

Try on this perspective this week! Let me know how it looks through the kaleidoscope.

If you want to influence anyone, trust is imperative.

People only follow people they trust, regardless of titles.

When you have the privilege of leading or mentoring others, trust is your bedrock to success. If you attempt to lead or mentor without it, you breed micromanagement, resentment, dis-involvement, and even active disruption.

Here are 7 ways to accelerate and strengthen the trust you need in order to lead others:

1.  Commonalities::  When we discover something in common, we feel connected. Commonalities bond people automatically. I love dogs. So I am instantly more trusting of others who love dogs. Seek out common grounds.

2.  Interest::  When we sincerely seek to learn about someone else, to appreciate our diversity, to understand their choices, experiences, and situations, we fuel trust. When we lack interest, however, we feed assumptions, judgments, and even prejudices – theirs and ours. Express a sincere interest in your differences.

3. Compassion::  When we offer empathy rather than indifference, we kindle trust. Before thrusting a change onto people, we need to first meet them where they are. Be empathic and understanding.

4.  Experiences::  When we have experiences with others – projects, workshops, off-sites, retreats, community volunteering – we strengthen trust. There is a reason we still have those friends from high school. Our lives may be completely different now, but the experiences we shared as teenagers bonded us. Intentionally create experiences to bring you together.

5.  Vulnerability::  When we share something personal or reveal some fears or aspirations, our vulnerability invites theirs, which promotes trust. We trust people who are genuine and we disconnect from people who are inauthentic. Drop your defenses and expose your authenticity.

6.  Integrity::  When we do the right thing even when no one is looking, when we share credit for an idea or the success of a project, when we follow up as we promised, we operate with integrity. And people trust people with integrity. Our lies, however – even little white lies – will invalidate that trust. Demonstrate honesty of character.

7.  Consistency::  When we execute, when we communicate, when we show up, time and time again, people trust us. Our consistency accelerates trust. Exhibit consistent actions.

If you want to uplevel your influence, start with trust.

If trust was easy to generate, it wouldn’t be so valuable.