There's More to Work Than Work

Yesterday’s column by David Brooks of the New York Times deals in part with policy makers' misunderstanding of what drives prosperity and happiness in America. Mr. Brooks got me thinking the same might be true of businesses when they fail to see what keeps employees happy and productive: it’s about so much more than money.

The good relationships employees build at work will do more to create and sustain corporate loyalty than any benefits package. The same is true in the opposite: no matter how golden the handcuffs, employees will walk away the moment the opportunity presents itself if they feel unappreciated or isolated.

Says Brooks: “Over the past few decades, teams of researchers have been studying happiness. Their work, which seemed flimsy at first, has developed an impressive rigor, and one of the key findings is that, just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through… The overall impression from this research is that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.”

Relationships are innate to our survival and essential to happiness. Knowing this makes me wonder why leaders who want a stable, productive, profitable workforce don’t pay more attention to relationships. Maybe it’s because quantifiable things like efficiency, rate, and budgeting are easier to tackle with the IQ; no emotional intelligence is required. Ultimately, though, efficiency, rate and budgeting are not what create great companies. Relationships are.

How Do You Know You’re a Good One-On-One Communicator?

Here are ten behaviors or characteristics of the most effective communicators I know.

1. You listen well. You don’t interrupt or assume what the other person is going to say.
2. You make eye contact. It’s disheartening to be talking to someone whose eyes are all over the room or looking at the wrong part of your body.
3. Your facial expressions indicate involvement in the conversation. This one’s tough for many men, who typically remain stone-faced when someone else is speaking. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re disengaged or judgmental, but it sure can feel that way.
4. You focus on the person and the subject at hand. When someone is trying to talk to you, pull out your earplugs, look up from your computer or phone, and give the person in front of you your complete attention. This is really just civility.
5. You connect the other person’s statements to yours. It’s really weird to talk with someone who doesn’t connect his thoughts with your statements. It’s like talking in a parallel universe. So make sure that, when you’re talking, you’re actually conversing and connecting rather than delivering a monologue.
6. You leave just the right pause between the other person’s words and yours. Too little time and you’re very nearly interrupting and almost certainly not processing their words; too much time and you seem to be disconnecting from the conversation.
7. You know how to end or redirect a conversation gracefully. If you are a good communicator, you will never be at a loss for people who want to talk with you. It’s important to be able to say, “I’m glad we got a chance to chat, but now I’ve really got to get back to the project I’m working on.” Or, “Gosh, I’m sorry to hear about your difficulty with this. I’m wondering, though, if you should talk to so-and-so about it. He seems like the guy who can help you solve the problem.”
8. You know how to invite others into your conversation or exclude them from it. This is critical in cubicle-ridden conditions, where people seem to find it completely ok to just jump into a two-person conversation. Interruptions seem to be status quo these days. Learn when it is useful to say, “Oh, John, I’m so glad you stopped in. We were just talking about….”, and when it’s better to say, “John, I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve finished talking with Mary.”
9. You can sense what the other person needs at that moment and you act accordingly. People will seek you out for wisdom, advice, laughter, empathy, guidance, clarity, and sometimes a kick in the pants - -whether they realize this or not. Listen carefully for what they need and give it to them. Rely on your instincts and skills, and you will rarely go wrong.
10. You have the courage to say what needs to be said. See #9 above

What else do you think should be added to this list?

Watch What You Say…to Yourself

All too often, we overachievers don’t need anyone to make us feel like we’re not doing enough. Our self-talk handles that just fine, thank you. And that self-talk can be brutal.

What we say to ourselves is as important, if not more so, than what we say to others.

Overachievers sometimes are prone to think they’re not doing enough, or that what they do isn’t making a real difference. They can feel as though their professional efforts are either not being recognized as meaningful, or that the work they do is so undervalued it really doesn’t have meaning. For people with any work ethic at all, these situations can begin a spiral of deadly self-talk. To whit:

“Nothing I do matters.” “The firm wouldn’t even know if I left.” “Sure, I’ve got a bunch of great ideas, but they’ll never get executed here.” “Nothing ever changes at this place, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Pretty soon, internal talk like this will influence your attitude and behavior. If you are having any conversations like this with yourself, it is crucial to reframe your thinking – and fast. I hope these suggestions change your conversation with you.

1. It’s the leadership, not you. Very often, no matter how good your strategy and tactics are, your organization’s leadership won’t acknowledge the benefits. There are at least 300 reasons for this, but it’s mostly that leaders are humans who don’t like change or risk. They have plenty of things to think about other than your idea. Further, they aren’t in enough pain to consider anything other than the status quo. These factors have nothing to do with the validity of your idea or your value to the organization.
2. Break everything you do down to the smallest level. Let’s say your boss continues to ignore your latest great idea that absolutely will bring more business to your company. Instead of telling yourself that nothing you do matters because the leadership hasn’t executed your plan, start thinking small. Think about the smallest tasks you do without blinking an eye. For example, because you enter information into the company’s database accurately and promptly, your boss and coworkers will never look foolish because an important client is accidentally left out of a critical information loop, and the chance that a name is misspelled on a letter vanishes because of you. So even though the boss didn’t respond to your big new idea for winning business, you’re still doing valuable work by getting the basics in place.
3. Forget “the company” as a whole. Focus on how much you help individuals. I know a lot of corporate lawyers. This type of law, where you’re the highly paid suit defending the big, bad Goliath against the innocent David, could grind your soul to dust if you let it. But the happiest corporate lawyers I know are those who relate to their clients as individuals, not corporations. They relate to the case worker, the claims adjuster, or the insured person they’re representing. They don’t think about helping the corporation as much as they think about helping the humans involved in the case. That’s a healthy way to view your work.
4. Create your own posse. Go to them when you need an emotional boost. If you are like so many overachievers, you are the one with broad shoulders, the one who listens constantly to your co-workers’ travails. But you can’t be that – and only that – all the time. Sometimes you need a little help, too. When you need support and affirmation, look outside yourself to your trusted posse. They will look you right in the eye and tell you how professionally valuable you are to them and to your company. Even if you’re accustomed to being on the listening side of that conversation and don’t want to switch, do it anyway. This isn’t weak on your part; it’s smart.

Mistakes, Anyone?

Don’t you hate that feeling when you discover you’ve made a mistake at work -- especially one that involves someone else? Now, I’m not talking about a mistake on the magnitude of somebody dying. I’m talking about the kinds of mistakes we’ve all made: a partner’s misspelled name in the widely-distributed collateral piece you developed, an ill-considered forwarded email containing all manner of things you don’t want people to read, a fan letter with damning-but-funny details about a well-known firm that gets published in the local business paper.

Sadly, I’m intimately familiar with all of these. But I’m not alone. You’ve probably made similar mistakes. Here’s what the wisest among us know: it’s going to happen. Mistakes are inevitable if you live and work long enough. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re just not trying hard enough and probably living a very dull professional life.

So. You’ve made a mistake. What now? From experience, here’s my advice:

1. Keep your perspective. Ask yourself, “Did anyone die?”. If not, take a deep breath. Clear your head. Decide what happens next.
2. If the mistake involves someone else (i.e., if you have hurt or inconvenienced or embarrassed someone), tell them what happened immediately. Often, the aggrieved party will know of your mistake before you know about it and will, undoubtedly, alert you. Either way, you need to take charge of the situation.
3. Tell the person how sorry you are about the error and that you will fix it if you can. Then try like hell to fix it. If you can’t fix it, tell them why. But for heaven’s sake, communicate – starting with the apology.
4. Ah, the apology. Do it in person unless they’re on the other side of the country. At least pick up the phone. That’s right: stop typing that “I’m sorry” email. Don’t even think about it. Here’s why: if you’re really sorry, you need to be sure the aggrieved party understands that and can see it in your eyes or hear it in your voice. This is the best way to restore trust between you. Besides, if the aggrieved party happens to be a truly evil creature, they’re less likely to begin (or continue) the scorched-earth email string that alerted you to your error. I’ve found it’s much tougher for people to be nasty face to face.
5. Finally, take a post-drama minute and figure out what you can learn from your snafu. Do you need to be more thorough? Do you need to get someone else to proofread your materials? Do you need to zip your lips more often? What can you learn so you don’t make the same mistake again? It’s ok to make a mistake, but it’s not ok to make the same one repeatedly.

Mistakes are part of professional life, but you can’t be defined by them. It’s how you recover and what you learn that matters most.

Build Trust With a Few Keystrokes

Facebook. LinkedIn. Twitter. Email. Snail mail. Cell phone. Land line. It’s enough stimulation to make anybody crazy. But crazy or not, we are very often obliged to respond.

Now, some of this stuff is drivel and you can ignore it without much consequence. Friend requests from the guy you never liked in high school, tweets about god-knows-what, and the ever-present offers from your insurance agent can immediately drop off your radar.

But clients, vendors, referral sources, and colleagues — those who are directly and indirectly responsible for your success — deserve a response. To ignore them is to insult them, even if you didn’t mean to. So when you don’t have an answer to their question or concern immediately, it is wise to leave a voice mail or email, anyway. Try these words: “I got your message. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know something.”

When you don’t respond or delay your response for too long, the person who contacted you may make negative assumptions: He hates me. I did a bad job. She’s always been a jerk. I never did like her, anyway. Loss of trust in your relationship, and therefore in you, ensues. It makes sense to avoid losing that trust…unless you really don’t care about the relationship.

Even when you are swarmed by emails, phone calls, etc., take a deep breath, prioritize the messages, then set about the task of responding with all deliberate haste. Your communicators will trust you all the more for your quick response, and it’ll be one more thing crossed off your list.