People Repellents

1. A productive-yet-prickly lawyer resigns his position in a highly respected firm. The firm breathes a collective sigh of relief.
2. Two high-profile executives are relieved of their duties by their financial backers. Rumor has it, it’s because they just didn’t connect with the local market.
3. A long-time association chief is sent packing because his style wasn’t helping the association reach its long-term goals.

All three of these events occurred in New Mexico. The people involved all seem to have something in common: none of them understood (or, perhaps, didn’t care) how their behavior affected the people around them. They did not understand the importance of their emotional wake.

Emotional wake is what remains when we have left the room, much like Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strip. It is what either draws people to us or repels them from us. In the cases delineated here, the emotional wake was repellent.

At best, the Emotional Pigpens of the workplace do not exude any sort of warmth in their professional relationships. They are remote, icy, arms-length. They make no effort to reach out, to express the basic civilities of life, to make anyone feel uplifted or even neutral by their presence In short, they repel others.

Maybe it’s a defense mechanism for shyness. Maybe it’s a way of keeping people who might want something at bay. Maybe it’s a mistaken view of professionalism. I really don’t know their motivations for behaving as they do. But I do know this: we have nothing without relationships. No support. No legacy. No way of progressing. It’s professionally fatal to repel more people than we attract.

Leaving a positive emotional wake is incredibly easy. A smile and hello work wonders. So does eye contact. Engaging in the moment with whoever is in front of us — asking them how they’re doing and listening to the answer — is another simple step. Saying thank you and meaning it. It’s nothing more than basic civility. It’s also smart business.

Execute, Execute, Execute

No, I’m not talking about your partners, clients, or employees. I’m talking about executing your duties without delay. I’m talking about doing what you have agreed to do. And I’m talking about myself as much as anyone else.

When I have trouble getting off the dime, here’s the conversation in my head:

Productive Me: “Melinda, get your fanny in gear and do something. You have multiple deadlines this week.”

Whiny Me: “What are you talking about? Clearly, you have no idea how busy I am. You don’t understand how many times I’m interrupted during the day and how much I have on my plate.”

Productive Me: “You’re a whiner. Shut up and do something.”

It occurs to me that we all have this conversation, because we’re all in the same busy boat. But I’m betting that our customers, clients, colleagues and employees just don’t care about our full plates. We have been talking about how busy we all are for so long it’s beginning to lose its meaning (much like the word “awesome”, as discussed in my previous post).

If I am not meeting commitments I made, I simply can’t get away with whining and not expect consequences: lost credibility, lost clients, lost opportunities. In the time I spend complaining about how busy I am, I absolutely could have completed one task – maybe more. Being busy has become a very poor excuse for not getting the job done.

So, for those of us who want the Productive Me’s to rule the day: let’s block our emails and silence our phones for a couple of hours. Let’s ask colleagues not to disturb us unless the building is on fire. Let’s start with one task — preferably one that we can complete easily. Then complete it. Then let’s do another one. And another. Eventually getting things done — one task at a time, because multitasking is crazy — will become as ingrained as complaining about our workloads.

Want Better Ideas? Put Your Blinders On.

Most people will urge a group that's trying to create something new to throw caution to the wind, to allow any thought to be heard, to leap out of their comfort zone. I beg to differ. I believe that the most powerful communication between people, whether one to one, or one to many, occurs only when everyone is intently focused on the communication taking place. There can be no distractions, no mental wandering. If you want a truly productive meeting, I say put your blinders on.

I have been turning these thoughts around in my head because I recently facilitated a planning session for a trade association. They needed to create goals for the next year and a strategy to achieve those goals, and they only had four hours to do it. To tell the end of the story at the beginning: it was a tremendously productive half day session that resulted in a concrete plan, complete with what they would do, who would be the responsible party, and when the deadline would be.

I have facilitated hundreds of planning sessions over my career, and this was one of the most effective. It took me a little while to figure out why, because I’m suspicious when things go so well. The answer finally came to me: the people in that room brought their A-game to the meeting and left their Blackberries in their briefcases. They were – to a person – interested in and committed to the goals set out in that conference room. They wanted the best for their association, and they were willing to focus on the task at hand to get it.

There were no under-the-table texts sent. No wandering in and out to take a call. No whispered sidebars. No daydreaming. All the extraneous noise that we live with every minute of the day was, for just four little hours, filtered out. It was remarkable and rare. And exceedingly productive.

Having an effective facilitator helps, of course. But the meeting participants were ready to pull in the same direction from the moment they walked in, and the results showed it. So, next time you’re running a meeting or simply participating in one, bring your focus and ask everyone else to do the same. The earth will not stop spinning on its axis if emails and phone calls and personal agendas are briefly put on hold.