“No” is a complete response. I had the great pleasure of spending sometime this week with a friend and colleague, Deborah Siegel, PhD. While talking with Deborah, she shared something amazing. She said she has a place in her office where she marks down when she says ‘no.’ So why is saying no a big deal? Because most of us, especially women, struggle with saying ‘no’, and saying no without having to explain why, etc. The ramifications can be significant when we fail to draw, and stick to the boundaries we need to be successful on our own terms. Here is a perfect example involving my own lapse. I over committed in the last few months. Some of the stuff I committed to I love and would do anytime I was asked. Some of it was because I felt I ‘should’ even though time wise I knew it would mean 4am or 5am starts to the work day and 11pm ends to the work day. What happened was due to being over committed, over worked, and under rested I began to slip up on things. Specifics…The May TEDx event I organized and ran required a lot of work pre, during and post event work with caterers, budgets, social media, ticket sales, accounting, speakers, etc. I LOVED doing that event, and deeply enjoyed the speakers that come on board. Being over committed I was not able to fully entrench myself the way I wanted to. Also updating TEDx web site required text often happened prior to 5am or after 10pm, or even on the fly via my cell phone, not ideal. And yes, I did it at 100 mph and managed to misspell one of the speaker’s name, not only in the original program for the event, but also on the TEDx video bio. I guarantee you this would not have happened if I had not over committed to things that really weren’t as meaningful and/or valuable. I got lucky, the speaker, Katy Hansell, caught it prior to the program going to print, and on the web site, which I then updated. Even luckier for me, is Katy is truly a generous person and made me feel like I was not an idiot for screwing it up. But we all know that doesn’t always happen, and very often people will zoom in on the 1% you missed rather than the 99% amazing stuff you got done. All this is to say, saying ‘no’ not only supports you, your mission, your business/employer, your family, etc. by empowering you to give your best, it is also a necessary thing to do. The word “no” does not require an explanation, nor does it need to involve feeling bad. One of the greatest lies in our culture is that we should be able to do everything, all the time and be the most amazing person in the history of the world at it. WRONG. You should do what you do best, and leave the other stuff to someone else who can do it best. Saying ‘no’ not only helps you up your game, it allows someone else to shine with the opportunity you are turning down. And yes, I am now proudly tracking when I say ‘no.’ Want to check out the two amazing women noted in this post? Visit Deborah Siegel, PhD, she does amazing things, by clicking here. And visit Katy Hansell, who also does amazing things by clicking here.
Women, The Workplace & Self Esteem – Like Watching A Rerun
My summer reading pile is almost all books about women. Books about women in the nineteenth century, women and self esteem, women and leadership, women in politics, etc. All very interesting, all research for articles and a book I’m drafting out. And while these books are interesting, all too often there is a common thread that tugs at the back of my mind, women as a gender are often stagnant regarding the women’s issues talked about in the 1970s and on. We still have not resolved many of the challenges women face in society and the workplace, and at times it seems like in the past they were easier to address, as now, when you bring them up in certain circles an example of an outlier will be thrown into the conversation as if that woman was the norm. For me, reading these books is often like watching reruns of the late 80’s early 90’s hit Designing Women, deeply unsettling when the realization that so many of the concerns, issues and challenges of decades ago still exist today. I’m constantly amazed how many successful women, whether at home or in the workplace still feel their contributions are not noteworthy. And I’m still sadly surprised when I hear, as I did last week, why women do not belong in leadership roles, or hear a woman in the workplace referred to as a “bitch.” I deeply believe that if we start paying more attention to the dynamics that surround us we can improve and progress from where we are as a society in regards to women, to where we often assume we are, and where we strive to be. There is currently a gap, and a big one at that.
What Is It Really Worth? Or, If You Aren’t Contributing Give Up Your Seat At The Table
With stats showing over 75% of the U.S. workforce is unhappy with their job(s) you have to begin to wonder why they stay. Where is the value for them in maintaining the misery, not only for themselves, but most likely, the ripple impacts their family and friends? Money and/or family, is the response I most often hear in regards to folks who consciously show up to a job they don’t like, and often full on hate. One, your family and friends want you to be happy. Two, there is most likely a job out there for you that you’d enjoy and would pay what you need to live a happy life. Three, if you are not looking for a better job, you can not find a better job. And four, perhaps there is someone out there that would really dig the job you are in. Summary: If you are at the table and not contributing, give up your seat to someone who will. You can’t find the right fit and fall into the right slot without shaking things up a bit.
What Is Beneath The Surface?
What is beneath the surface of your decisions? Do you even consider what the motivators might be for deciding and acting the way you do? While “critical thinking” is a fairly common term and practice, what about “critical awareness”? Critical thinking involves looking into data, etc. when pursuing a decision or outcome. Critical awareness takes the critical thinking process and additional step. Critical awareness is looking at data and forming decisions/pursuing outcomes with the knowledge of social, community and overall societal factors as part of the consideration. Example, John makes a critical thinking decision based on raw ROI data and it ends up blowing up. Why? Because community and societal factors (critical awareness) were not considered, i.e. the consumer was not engaged. Critical awareness provides a larger canvas of possible outcomes. It provides the ‘why’ that drives the ‘what.’ While critical awareness can be an individual tool, it can also be applied to examining and demystifying the mass market. Critical awareness can best be explained by the following: critical awareness=determining who benefits from each potential decision path’s outcome.
The Neuroscience Of Positive Leadership
Research on the neuroscience of positive leadership, to me, seems like the best idea ever! If you have positive leadership, creating a positive organizational culture, things start to take care of themselves, ROI, productivity fall into place. http://www.unc.edu/peplab/research.html
Public Speaking
Yesterday I held a TEDxWomen event here in IL, on the beautiful North Shore of Lake Michigan, outside of Chicago, in the amazing suburb of Winnetka. I learned a few extremely valuable lessons in the compact time I had to organize it, raise money for it, pick speakers and implement it all. 1) It is true, when opportunity knocks and you aren’t sure how to tackle the opportunity, say yes anyway, and figure it out along the way. 2) A great thing is a great thing. My event sold out without advertising and I covered cost with investing less than 2 hours raising the $8,000 I wanted to do the event well. 3) If you need help, ask. I didn’t ask for help for any of the process except for the day of the event. That was a mistake on my part as I could have shared this amazing experience with others. 4) There is an endless flow of amazing people when you look for them. The event featured 12 of these amazing people and their incredible stories. Some of the great speakers yesterday, Julia Collins who is the 2nd winningest Jeopardy contestant of all time, Marcia Cleveland, who swam the English Channel – her book,http://www.amazon.com/Dover-Solo-Swimming-English-Channel/dp/0967209110/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432928785&sr=1-1&keywords=Dover+Marcia+Cleveland, Jeanne Bishop who shared her story of mercy and grace after several members of her family were murdered – her book: http://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Justice-Making-Sisters/dp/0664259979, and so many other wonderful women. TEDxWomen and TEDx in general are the most amazing examples of an institution that has created a platform for truly, as they say, sharing “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Nine of the twelve speakers at day’s end yesterday…
Performance Strategy
If you ask your boss or those you manage/lead, what their performance strategy is, what do you anticipate hearing? If you ask yourself what your performance strategy is, what is your answer? Who is setting the tone, and bar, relating to performance strategies in your organization?
Performance Matching
Performance matching is a common phenomena within the workplace. It consists of group work and/or area work resulting in a consistent outcome pulled lower by the poorest performer. What does it look like? Say two teams are working at opposites sides of the building on the same task. The groups outcomes will tend to match that of the least productive members, pulling down the overall group output. How do you guard against a failing dynamic and downward norm setting? Implement internal and/or external incentives for high performance and include a competition component involving another group. Studies have shown when team competition enters the equation, the downward norm no longer exists.
Avoiding Conflict, The Abilene Paradox
There is a dynamic that seems like a smooth path, but leads to bumpy results – the Abilene Paradox is this dynamic. So what is the Abilene Paradox? It is when healthy debate and outcomes are foregone in place of conflict avoidance. Basically it is putting consensus above positive outcomes and productivity. Interestingly, the Abilene Paradox can leave a group with an outcome that no member would have recommended on their own, and not in a good way. The path of the Abilene Paradox leads to pluralistic ignorance and obviously that is no good for the individual participants, group or organization.