Is Hard Work Enough?

You've met them - the colleagues and friends who are dedicated to their job. They spend 12 hours a day, nights and weekends meeting with customers, solving problems, researching alternatives, writing reports, making presentations, delivering results; yet others get the opportunities and promotions. They are as smart (or possibly smarter) than their bosses. They can see the problems and solutions. They know what should be done. And look at the work they continue to deliver. Maybe if they just work a bit harder?

In their book, Execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan talk about the "doer" - "the person who is a little less conceptual but is absolutely determined to succeed will usually find the right people and get them together to achieve objectives". The doer doesn't hang his or her hat on the right answer, the right solution, the correct and detailed report. The doers are the ones "who energize people, are decisive on tough issues, get things done through others, and follow through as second nature."

Energizing Others

Energy starts with a vision and direction; yet the leaders who create, rather than drain energy from their colleagues and teams, are the ones who turn that picture of success into short-term accomplishments, increased capabilities and increased confidence. Think of the coaches who stand on the sidelines yelling at their teams, where the players operate from fear of failure. Now think of the coaches who keep the focus on the next play, point on the good moves, identify what should be done differently next time, and push the players to prepare well physically and mentally for each game. It's not just the rhetoric, it's not the vision of a winning game, it's the focus on each step toward the winning game.

Being Decisive

Being decisive and being right are too often confused in the minds of those colleagues working all hours. Being right can lead to over-analysis. It can lead to an answer that is optimal but too radical. It can lead to rigidity when flexibility is required.

By contrast, "decisiveness is the ability to make difficult decisions swiftly and well, and act on them", according to Bossidy and Charan. It is the combination of the ability to confront a tough situation, make a sound decision,and lead others forward, that can separate the good thinker from the doer.

Achieving Through and With Others

Yet as pointed out above, the good decision, well-articulated, is insufficient for true success. It is only through developing and using influence skills that the doer accomplishes the necessary outcomes. The successful doer builds a social network that enables her to stay on top of shifting organizational priorities and maintain valuable relationships. He knows how much support to ask for, and when. She knows where she can count on support and where she has something of value that will help to gain support. He knows that communication up, down and sideways on the objectives, key steps, milestones, challenges, and achievements is key for keeping an initiative on track and people supportive of the outcomes. She has learned that organizations are made of interdependent people, and only by developing in herself, and in others, new and better ways to work together will success be achieved.

When you see your colleagues with their head down, working all hours, striving for the best, and wondering why they seem to be passed over time and time again, ask them to consider the following:

• What portion of your time is spent getting to the right answer compared to making sure you understand whether you are working on the current priorities? Compare that picture with others. What might be the benefits of shifting your time allocation?
• What portion of your time is spent on task vs relationship? How does that compare to the people being promoted?
• What is your energy like on a daily basis? Are you creating or draining the energy of the people around you?
• Are you making decisions on issues at the right level for your job, neither too detailed, nor too high-level?
• What systems do you have in place to keep informed about shifting organizational (and personal) priorities?
• Do you adjust your approach to meet the needs of the people around you?
• How can you learn more about the needs and wants of the people who work above, along side, and for you? What can you do with that information that supports both their success and your own?
• How do you handle conflict in ways that advance your cause?
• What ways do you have of getting clear and effective feedback and of continually developing yourself?
  

Strong skills, talents, and hard work are prerequisites to success, yet they are insufficient in most organizations. Working up, down and sideways; knowing your own and other's motivators; enhancing energy; being decisive at the right level; and knowing how to influence others, frequently outweigh working hard to find the correct answer. Most often, a range of solutions will work - the win then goes to the one who can bring about the results, while building capability and energy for the next challenge in the people around them.

If you'd like to learn more about how to develop behaviors in your organization that deliver results while building capability and energy, please contact me.

Maintain Your Composure

Few articles start without an internet search, and this one was no different.I found that among the definitions of composure a band named Composure and a number of drugs, including one for pets. Merriam-Webster Online defines composure as a "calmness or repose especially of mind, bearing, or appearance: self-possession." I couldn't resist following the link to self-possession and finding this further definition, "control of one's emotions or reactions especially when under stress: presence of mind." And on to presence of mind to find "self-control so maintained in an emergency or in an embarrassing situation that one can say or do the right thing.

As I followed this trail, the challenges with our language became clear. Dictionary.com defines composure as "serene, self-controlled state of mind; calmness; tranquility", yet I suspect few of the leaders giving people development feedback are asking them to become tranquil. Rather, pulling together the Merriam Webster trail, composure as we use it in the workplace is about controlling one's reactions, especially under stress, in order to say or do the right thing. It's not about being perpetually calm. It's not even about controlling your emotion: passion is fine, anger is not. It's about what you CHOOSE to do, say, or display and therefore about gaining control.

How do you gain control? Become aware of your hot buttons. When do you become especially upset? Are you bothered by people who are unreliable? What about people who are untrustworthy? Does close monitoring of work, perhaps micro-managing make you crazy? Perfectionisms? Too much detail? Sarcasm? Insults? Roadblocks? Yelling? Once you have identified your hot button(s), reflect on what in these situations causes you the biggest concern. Consider what steps you can take to minimize or avoid situations where your hot buttons are triggered. Evaluate how you would prefer to respond in future situations. Develop a set of strategies for cooling down, for riding it out, or for changing the dynamic. Consider ways in which you might be able to have a positive impact on the situation or person, before, during or after the event. Enlist a partner in providing feedback, intervening, or making suggestions.

Change requires a number of steps: identifying your goals, defining actions, experimenting, getting feedback, staying the course and celebrating the win. If lack of composure is something that might be holding back someone in your organization, consider using feedback, assessments, coaches, observation, and experimentation to assist them in their development.

Remember, when you hear a message about composure, it is is not about stress reduction, achieving tranquility or creating a calm environment. It is about saying, doing and modeling the right things under stress.

Always keep your composure.
You can't score from the penalty box; and to win, you have to score.
Bobby Hull, Canadian Hockey Player

Three signs of a miserable job

Do you hate your job? While Gallup finds that 77% of Americans hate their jobs, a University of Chicago survey shows satisfaction at 86%. Let's see, they were either talking to vastly different survey samples, or the questions were wildly different.

The reality is that there are a lot of people who feel trapped in their jobs for financial reasons, who feel unappreciated by their bosses, and who face each day's work as another day of drudgery. There are a lot of self-help gurus out there who would suggest that you should find your passion, and the money and satisfaction will follow. Easier said than done when financial security is shaky and others are depending on your earnings.

Another school of thought is that the job is about the money. If you want satisfaction, you should seek it in another area of your life. Certainly more practical, and worth factoring into job choices; but this denies the reality that work takes up a very large portion of our waking hours.

Nash and Stevenson in their book, Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life, suggest that success has four components:

• Happiness – feeling about pleasure and contentment about your life
• Achievement – accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals others have strived for
• Significance – the sense that you’ve made a positive impact on people you care about
• Legacy – a way to establish your values or accomplishments so as to help others find future success.

In an ideal world, maybe our job can give fulfill needs in all four of these areas; but most people live in less than idea worlds. Rather than seeking everything from one aspect of our lives, perhaps it would be more useful to find happiness in hobbies, family and community work; to find significance with your friends and in service to others; and to find legacy through your families and other creations from your heart. Who knows, maybe in looking for satisfaction out of the job, it will be easier to get out of bed in the mornings.

For more on the three signs of a miserable job and what managers aren't doing about it, see Lisa Takeuchi Cullen's blog through the title link.

The Will to Win

Are mental workouts what you need to help you win?

Sports psychologists have been working with athletes for more than 30 years to give top competitors their winning edge. According to The Will to Win, Scientific American Mind April 2005, the key techniques are visualization, confidence and self-talk.

Purveyors of "The Secret", aka the Law of Positive Attraction suggest that we can draw into our life that upon which we place our dominant thoughts. See yourself winning, think only about successful execution, think about dominating the game, and ... well, it's not quite that easy. The question perhaps is how much of this can be used.

In my earlier posting, Performance Anxiety or Energy, I noted that John Eliot, Ph.D. in his book “Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More”, argues that top performers understand that they perform best under pressure. Rather than seeking to relax, they use the natural physical reaction before a performance to increase their focus and move into the process of performance.

Beyond finding the balance between strain and relaxation, many athletes employ visualization techniques. Repeated visualization can make the real motion easier to perform. Brain researchers have found the imagining a movement activates the same motor regions of the brain that light up during the actual movement. Repeated attention to this area of the brain is believed to increase the strength of the neural connections.

However, some studies, and the work of John Eliot, suggest practice is one thing, performance is another. Breaking the motion into pieces at the time of performance can hinder the results. "The alternative is to imagine the outcome" with great focus.

Brain research points to compelling evidence that visualization enhances physical performance, that neural connections are strengthened to repetition. Awareness is drawn to that which we most think about. So when we are positively focusing on the will to win, do we draw toward ourselves that which we most think about, or do we, perhaps, draw ourselves toward the goal?

Celebrating

Everyday, we take steps forward. Sometimes they are as large as a promotion, as useful as paying the bills or as significant as spending focused time with a loved one. What might be the outcome of celebrating a daily win?

When we celebrate,

• the negative is diminished, the positive is magnified


• successful behaviors are reinforced


• dopamines, released in the brain, bring calm and enhance our emotional well-being


• our perspective is focused on more, rather than less


• neural connections build and strengthen in support of the new ways of thinking and acting

Here are simple ways to increase the celebration in your life.

1. Start a routine of sharing a win within your family or team everyday. Cheering, clapping and a few "whoo-hoo's" will improve everyone's sense of well-being.


2. Keep a daily reflection journal including that which you are grateful for, along with the win for the day.


3. Set aside a few minutes to reflect on what you have achieved each day.
   
   
4. Include rewards and celebrations for each step along the path to a major goal.


5. Be sure to involve others in acknowledging your big wins.

Rewards do not need to be big - a 5 minute break in the sun, a fresh cup of coffee, a call to a friend, a piece of cake, or a cheer. Taking the step, making progress, celebrating each success keeps you focused and energized on the bigger goal.

So what's your win and how can we help you celebrate?

Please post a comment on your win today and join us in celebrating others!

My win? I have completed all of the requirements for Certified Professional Coach status from International Coach Academy. A big accomplishment gets a big celebration! Mine was traveling in Yunnan for 5 days with a friend and then exploring new parts of Shanghai with her.

Enduring Success

Research done at the Harvard Business School has shown that enduring success is seen across four areas :

• Achievement: Do you measure accomplishments against an external goal, e.g., for example, power, wealth, recognition, competition against others?
• Happiness: Is there contentment or pleasure with and about your life?
• Significance: Do you have a valued impact on others whom you choose?
• Legacy: Have you infused your values and your accomplishments into the lives of others to leave something behind?

Stevenson and Nash contend that in fact, all four areas are required to achieve enduring success. Achievement or what we often see as success often arrives in the business world without balance across the personal, spiritual and service spectrums. The research points out conflict often arises across these areas, as they compete for your attention and resources.

As we move into the Year of the Golden Pig - year destined for prosperity - consider whether your success is balanced.

Achievement: What measures of success have you established for your work life? What have you achieved in your life? What challenging goals have you set for the future? Are you progressing toward your goals? Is there a way this could or should be accelerated?

Happiness: Is there contentment or pleasure in your life? Have you surrounded yourself with people and things that bring you enjoyment? Where are your sources of frustrations? Are there actions you could take today to reduce them? What small step could you take that would bring you a smile? Can you make it last?

Significance: When you look at the people that you interact with in your personal and professional life, are you added positive value to their lives? Consider your spouse/significant other, your children, your co-workers, your subordinates, your clients, and your friends. Are you adding to their achievement? to their happiness? to their development? What more could you do? What are your aims as you consider your impact on others?

Legacy: What impact will you leave behind you, whether small (influencing the life of one person) or large (improving the world)? What impact would you like to leave? What could you do today that would begin to use your success in other areas in a way that leaves positively influences the world?

Consider the words of Robin S. Sharma, from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari,

...the purpose of life is a life on purpose. Those who are truly enlightened know what they want out of life, emotionally, materially, physically and spiritually. Clearly defined priorities and goals for every aspect of your life will serve a role similar to that played by a lighthouse, offering you guidance and refuge when the seas become rough".

Have you set goals and priorities that will lead you to enduring success and a life on purpose?

Lagace, Martha. “Four Keys of Enduring Success: How High Achievers Win”, June 24, 2002, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/2990.html. HBS professor Howard Stevenson offers insights from research he and HBS senior research fellow Laura Nash are conducting on the meaning of success for high achievers.

Sharma, Robin S. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, 1997, New York: HarperTorch.

Measures of Success

What happens to a business or life when you change the measure of success?

When I was establishing my business, I struck upon targets that defined success for me. This was not a simple task and required a fair amount of soul-searching. I set goals for 6 months, 12 months and 36 months. The timeline was a bit loose, but I knew that I would be able to achieve the 6 month target; I figured that I would be able to achieve the 12 month target; and I had no idea how I would achieve the 36 month target, but it would come. I was not wedded to the timeline; in fact, I was not at all sure that the targets were achievable in those timeframes. Nonetheless, I wrote down the targets; I shared them with people central to the business. I was on my way.

The targets were defined in terms of business revenue – money. Yet, whether I talked with people about what I was doing, I frequently commented that the money was not that important. More than one close friend challenged me, “is money why you’re doing this?” The answer was no, but the money represented a level of achievement; and so, I continued on my merry way; noticing that as the money did not flow, I was feeling disappointment and dissatisfaction, rather than relishing the success I was achieving.

One of the advantages of having a coach is that they do not let inconsistencies pass, at least not for long. My coach challenged me to consider whether there were other possible measures of success that better aligned with why I am in this business. As all good coaching questions are, this was thought provoking. If I attest to having defined why I am here – my purpose in life – and it does not have any emphasis on money, why is that the measure of success for my business?

Looking at what I gain from this business besides revenue, it is the satisfaction and joy of helping people; of being a part of people improving their lives. It was easy then to restate the goals around the number of people I can help through my coaching.

Which leads us back to the question, “what happens to a business or life when you change the measure of success?” In this case, the focus shifted from an uncontrollable outcome (the revenue) to controllable events. The focus shifts from the outcome to the process (and the former statistician in me says “duh!”). Let us get more concrete. A trial session may not result in immediate or any revenue, but it does help someone if I have done my job well. The trial session that does not convert to a paying client is a small part of my success; rather than a $0 income failure. And that session may lead to a coaching agreement in the future. The blogs and newsletter do not generate any revenue, but they do, I hope, help someone.

Ah, but the businessperson says, that is fine, but you need to make money; it is an important measure. Well, like the manufacturing or quality engineer, perhaps what I need to do is to trust in the process. The process says that I need to establish a fair price for my work. The process says that I need to develop credibility and a base level of clients that can lead to subsequent referrals. The process says I need to have a structure for getting, conducting and following up from trial sessions. The process says I need to have structures around the coaching practice. If I succeed in the processes, can I trust the outcome (eventually money) will follow?

Only time will tell. In the meantime, it is much more fulfilling to look at every step as a success; to evaluate the business building in terms of helping people improve lives, rather than how much money I made today.

Do you have any examples where changes in your measures of success had an impact in the conduct of your business or life?

I'll Try to Be There

Through the busy holiday season, I wonder how many times we hear, or say, “I’ll try to be there”.

The listener might think, “oh good, I’ll see them there”, especially if the listener is your child. The speaker may think, “I really want to be there, BUT I have to [fill in the blank].” Odds are that the person who will “try”, won’t be there. Perhaps the answer was an avoidance of saying no, of rejecting, or of creating disappointment. However, the listener is ultimately left with the no, the rejection and the disappointment, AND no explanation.

Sometimes the answer is a way to keep options open; as in, I’ll show up if nothing better comes up. The listener then gets to guess on what basis they have for being rejected when the speaker doesn’t show up.

Another approach is making “time” accountable for showing up or not – “If I can find time, I’ll be there”. Unfortunately, time is what it is; there can be neither more, nor less of it. The person who learns to “find time” has a secret worth millions. Well, maybe he meant, if he can “make time”. Oops, same problem, no magic formula for making time.

Instead, we might want to consider how the speaker will use the time he or she has. What are they committed to? Over work? Achievement? Accomplishment? Appearing overbooked? Avoiding parties? Avoiding confrontation? or just plain Commitment.

The reality is that we are committed to something every moment of every day. Even while taking a nap, we are committed to something. It could be resting, self-care, avoiding work, avoiding people, or preparing for the party ahead. We are committed to something.

The next time you catch yourself “trying”, take a moment to consider what your commitment might be.