There is a guy in our group.
He’s intelligent, nice,
yet no one wants to work with him.
Why?
Because he doesn’t listen.
He multi-tasks while others are talking.
He doesn’t read emails sent to the group.
Then he asks questions that
have already been answered.
It wastes time and
makes his team members feel unappreciated.
Leadership Turn has a great post on
5 Simple Tips To Become A Better Listener
including Paying Attention
(that means shutting off the Blackberry).
Like it or not, our offices say a lot about us.
I once worked for a company
with a clean desk policy.
At the end of the day, everyone’s desk
(from the mailroom guy’s to the CEO’s)
had to be clean.
A clean desk, an organized mind, I was told.
Is that a goal to aspire to?
It depends.
As associate professor of psychology
Sam Gosling says
“You may want your lawyer
to be very organized
and have a clean desk,
but if you are meeting with someone,
perhaps from advertising,
you would want their desk
to be covered in papers and ideas
that represent his ability to be creative.”
Managers talk about “tricks” to retaining staff.
Give employees new challenges.
Offer a bonus six months after the year end.
Have stock options vest over ten years.
Often it is not that simple.
The position I’m currently filling has
never had a employee in it for more than a year.
When it was advertised internally,
not only were there no internal candidates but
no employees forwarded external candidates.
I’ve been there 3 months and
I’m ready to leave (daily).
The problem?
The very emotional manager.
And this burning your bridges complaint
won’t show up on any exit interview
or by “asking the temp.”
Assume it is you
before looking to outside fixes.
One of my favorite business bloggers,
Troy White,
has a post on
his big lessons from 2007.
One of them was
to surround yourself with successful people.
He reco’s that from the mentoring point of view
but there is another reason.
Successful people inspire.
I’ve been struggling with a project lately.
I was feeling a bit beat up.
Then I hear that a friend accomplished an “impossible” dream,
something that she struggled with only weeks ago.
Darn it, I told myself,
if she can do that,
then surely I can do this less challenging task.
And I worked on it all yesterday with renewed determination.
Success breeds success
whether it is your success or someone else’s.
It used to be that employees
had to hide their moonlighting work
for fear of looking disloyal to their core employer.
Many feel… not any longer.
A buddy is hiring and
candidates have been quite open about
their side projects.
In Wikinomics,
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams tell us to
“look for consultancy to be the
dominant contractual model for work
in the near future…”
The near future is now.
Note: I keep my side projects to myself,
even though I’m officially a consultant.
There is no upside with sharing and
there are still enough old school managers
around for there to be downside.
With the book launch approaching (May),
I’ve been busy developing new working relationships.
What I do with every “partnership” is
outline how I work best and my expectations.
I capture these in writing (in email) and
send it to the key people involved.
Sounds like a no-brainer but
very, very few people do this.
And not being clear about your preferences
causes unnecessary stress on the relationships.
Be clear about what makes you a happy partner.
25% of the population are introverts
(people who lose power around other people,
extroverts gain power around people)
and I include myself in this number.
When I am “on”,
you wouldn’t know it.
Why?
Because I figured out early on
that if I wanted to be successful,
I had to act like an extrovert.
28.4% of executives do the same thing.
So stop using it as an excuse.
I was recently in a meeting and
the discussion turned to temps.
The talk wasn’t positive.
I heard how they don’t know anyone or anything
(a temp spends her working days being “new”)
and that there were reasons why
some people were on contract.
No one in the group remembered
that I was a temp
(albeit a high level one)
but I certainly remembered who in the group
doesn’t like temps.
A friend was in a product development meeting.
The project leader talked disparagingly
about the target customer.
My friend IS the target customer.
Two great reminders that
when we talk about “them”,
we don’t know if we’re talking to “them.”
A company was undergoing an office redesign.
The manager in charge set up four test design sites
and then had employees vote on it.
When he announced the decision,
he received a wave of complaints.
He asked me why this process didn’t work.
My reply was “it did work.”
A tough part of being a decision maker is
that not everyone will be happy with the decision,
not matter how its made.
You can minimize the negativity but
not eliminate it completely.
In the past year,
I’ve had contract gigs in
entertainment, restaurant, retail, service,
and, recently, a not for profit.
My recruiter buddy told me that
I’m “lucky” to be so flexible with industries.
That was not luck,
that was intentional.
In the short run,
industry hopping meant a decreased pay check.
In the long run, it has paid off.
Expanding industries,
as with expanding skill sets,
means more competition, more demand.
More demand translates to more dollars.
So think about your next job jump.
Can you hop to the next pond?