Chickens and Eggs

Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking with a managing partner of CPA firm. We were discussing communication among the three primary generations currently in the workplace (Boomer, Gen X and Millennial). He said several things that struck me:

“I try very hard to see the best in people.”

 “I’m one of the only Boomers in my firm, and I love being around younger people. They keep me fresh and their ideas intrigue me.”

 “We work really hard at our firm to get it right internally, because if we get it right internally, it’ll be right for our clients.”

Clearly, this man thinks differently. His words indicate that he’s optimistic, kind, and comfortable in his own skin. I imagine that he is consistently what the rest of us are only on our best days.

Here’s my chicken-and-egg question: did this guy become managing partner because he is consistently optimistic, kind, and comfortable in his skin? Or is he consistently all these things because he is the managing partner? Could it be some combination of the two?

What do you think? Take a look at your leaders. Compare your experiences with them to what I’ve described here. I hope all of you find scads of similarities. 

When Is As Important As What

When I ask managing partners and leaders of professional services firms about their biggest operational challenge, their answers are remarkably similar. Nearly all have to do with how to communicate with younger team members. Even though we’ve been dealing with Millennials in the workplace for several years now, the communication problems remain. The responsibility is bilateral.

One of my friends who leads a small CPA firm was bemoaning a recent hire: a bright young man who just can’t seem to get to work on time. When I asked the managing partner how he handled the issue, he said, “Well, I gave him a very harsh review at the end of the year.” “How’d he take it?”, I asked. “Not well. He seemed upset and confused, and yet still nothing has changed.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

The latest hire described above was angry and confused that he didn’t learn more quickly what he was doing wrong. As a Millennial, he expects rapid feedback, even when it’s negative. He has every right to that expectation, and he’s smart to want the feedback. Nothing is less useful than a critique offered several months after the fact.

If you are a Baby Boomer or Generation X-er, you might feel uncomfortable addressing specific issues such as tardiness, dress, and professionalism the moment they occur. It’s much easier, isn’t it, to fill out a standard evaluation form at the end of the year? The problem is, it’s useless, particularly to younger professionals. They want to know (and we all would do well to want to know) right away when things are going well or when they’re going poorly.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Millennials will handle your critique professionally or in a way that makes you comfortable, but this isn’t the point. Many Millennials absolutely need to improve their ability to take criticism; it’s a relatively new concept to them. Like the rest of us, they will learn that a well delivered and appropriately timed critique helps more than it hurts.

If your employees are driving you crazy, consider that you may be playing a part in that. If they aren’t living up to your expectations, tell them. Tell them immediately. Tell them why. And then help them to do better. That’s what leaders do.

Heads and Tails

The more I work with clients, the more I realize how often communication is misunderstood. Usually, we view it solely as the process of speaking and being heard; yet, we often forget the underlying elements that make communication effective. I am beginning see these elements as two sides of a coin. Heads, you’re talking; tails, you’re listening.

Honesty. It simply is impossible to work productively over the long term without the strong foundation that truthfulness provides. Be honest even when it’s not comfortable.

Heads – People rarely lose their integrity all at once; they do so interaction by interaction. So tell the truth as you understand it. Don’t sit on the sidelines of a meeting, offering nothing but sotto voce mumblings, only to play Monday morning quarterback afterward. That’s just not honest.

Tails –  Even when you don’t like hearing truth (and most of us often don’t), accepting it gracefully and gratefully makes you a stronger professional and allows valuable communication to occur. So swallow hard, take a deep breath, and accept someone else’s version of reality. Roll it around your mind a while before rendering judgment and responding.

Civility. This is easy when things are going smoothly, but conflict is part of life and business. That’s when things often go awry.

Heads - Express yourself skillfully and with kindness. Remember Ritz Carlton’s motto? “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” Old world? Maybe. Timeless and widely applicable? Yes.

Tails – Resist sulkiness, yelling, and various other adolescent expressions of incivility when people make decisions you don’t like, disagree with your ideas, or fail to live up to your expectations.

Clarity. The pace of business lends itself to convoluted communication. A bevy of tools only complicates things more.

Heads – Think before you speak or write. Don’t just dash off an email or verbally toss instructions to team members. Deliver specific information about deadlines, expectations, and consequences for not meeting them. Learn to ask for what you want, respectfully and clearly. It’s a skill that can only be honed with practice, and it is well worth the effort (more on this topic here). If you want to be heard by someone, be sure you’re choosing a time when he or she has the emotional and intellectual room to hear you.

Tails – Pay attention during your interactions with people. The greatest compliment you can pay people is to look them in the eye and acknowledge their presence. All good communication starts with being awake and aware in the moment.

Communication is a coin toss: it can either simplify things in your organization or muck them up entirely.  The beauty of it is that you get to decide, interaction by interaction, how you will respond, no matter which way the coin lands.

Ask For What You Want

This month marks my 20^th anniversary of helping professionals improve their communications with clients and prospects, colleagues, and sometimes with themselves. Thousands of conversations with people just like you have taught me that even the most educated and experienced people have great difficulty asking for what they want.

Managers continue to run ineffective teams because they don’t know how to ask individuals in their group to do better. Employees gnaw at the cultural foundation with gossip and complaint because they don’t know how to ask for better treatment from co-workers. Leaders live in a constant state of irritation because they don’t know how to ask partners to participate in the business of the firm.

The results of not asking for what you want: unmet expectations, because they are unspoken; fractured relationships, because they are unclear from the outset; and broken trust because it is lost in consistently poor communication.

Nearly always, one of the two parties involved in miscommunication is utterly clueless as to any transgression or difficulty. This person simply had no idea he was hurting someone, or being unclear, or failing to adequately describe expectations. While he is in the dark about all this and going blithely about his day, the other party feels all kinds of negativity. Often, that negativity spills into other professional relationships. As office drama spins upward, productivity, camaraderie, and general happiness fall.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We all know the only person you can fully control is yourself; do that by asking for what you want. Take the initiative. Start the conversation only after your negative feelings (anger, embarrassment, hurt, etc.) have subsided. Ask him or her for some time when the two of you can talk. Describe your emotions surrounding something specific and relevant to the other person. Ask that person to work with you to improve the situation. If you need an apology, ask for it. If you need a change in behavior, ask for that, too. Be specific. Be as calm as you can. Make the communication or behavior the issue rather than the person.

Will you always get what you want? No. But in two decades of working in this arena, I know one thing for sure: you’ll never get it if you don’t ask.

Being Good

We have now migrated from the Season of Thanks to the Season of Be Good or Else. Be good or Santa won't visit you. Be good or you'll get coal in your stocking. I find these exhortations about goodness to be a bit tricky, don't you? When we take the concept of goodness from the personal into the professional realm, it gets even trickier.

Following is how I perceive being good at work. Maybe it will get you thinking more specifically about goodness and how it applies in your professional life.

• Our technical expertise is a given. If we want to be good at work, we need to think more broadly.
• Goodness is in the eye of the beholder. We need to understand how other people perceive us before we can begin to demonstrate goodness. We can do that by asking those we trust to tell us what they think about our conduct.
• Being good need not be difficult or high-falutin'. It may be as simple as slowing down our mental processes long enough to have a civilized interaction with a co-worker. It may mean removing our ear buds when someone is trying to talk to us, or not taking a call at that moment. Good behavior in a work environment means taking into consideration that we are in the environment with others and we owe them courtesy and respect. Any and all simple acts that show courtesy and respect are welcome contributors to goodness in the workplace.
• Goodness feels good. Most of us know when we are behaving well and when we're not. The two actions feel completely different. One leaves us and those around us energized, while the other depletes us and those around us.
• Good behavior serves our self interests. We enjoy feeling good more than feeling bad. We generally get better feedback when we're good, which can mean more clients, more interesting work, and more financial reward.
• Goodness is contagious. I know when I am treated to someone else's good behavior, I am inclined to behave better myself. Their goodness seems to fill my good behavior tank, allowing me to demonstrate the same to others.
• One final thing I have figured out: there are few angels among us who are good all the time. Everyone, especially in stressful times like these, has moments that are less than shining. Maybe part of being good at work is giving our colleagues a break when they have one of those less-than-shiny moments.

My wish for all of us this season is that we each give and receive the gift of goodness.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Risking Gratitude

T’is the season to be thankful. Most people I know are relatively good at expressing gratitude for their own lives, health, families and such. Even those who have had a very difficult year somehow manage to understand their great good fortune in the larger scheme of things.

Most of us, though, aren’t very good at expressing gratitude to others. My clients are usually professional, often male, and frequently members of the Baby Boom generation. These clients run successful law firms, accounting firms, associations, and companies. They shoulder great burden and reap great reward.  They share their successes with team members and sometimes inspire people to do better. They’re often masterful writers of emails that thank the firm or groups within the firm.

But when it comes to giving personal, eye-to-eye thanks, they clam up. It’s not in their training or nature to look directly at someone in a quiet moment and express their genuine, heart-felt gratitude to another person. My clients feel it, I am certain; but expressing it is just so difficult for them. There can be no question that this represents a lost opportunity to do better and to feel better.

So, for those of you who carry great appreciation in your minds and hearts, I offer this: risk exposing your emotions for the short time it takes to look one person in the eye, to say thank you, and to tell that great team member how much he or she means to you and to your organization. Don’t worry about how smoothly the words come out or whether you blush. Just do it. Your employees and partners will see you at your very best: opened, maybe a little humbled, and filled with gratitude. And you, in turn, will see them at their best: opened, maybe a little humbled, and filled with gratitude.

I could go on at length about what such an act does for an organization’s culture and profitability, but I think you already know.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. As always, thank you for reading.

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Recently I spoke at an international conference of CPAs and lawyers. The subject of one of the sessions was leadership. During the session, I discussed Emotional Pigpens -- people who either do not know or do not care how their behavior affects others. They create plenty of negative energy and can drain organizational vitality.

I’m accustomed to answering questions about how to deal with Emotional Pigpens, such as “I have the worst partner ever. He’s constantly demeaning, he’s an emotional vampire. How do I deal with him?” At this conference, however, I experienced something new. After my session, one of the participants came up to me and said “I’m one of those people you talked about. How do I fix the mess I’ve made?”

First of all, bless this man for waking up. I don’t know whether he realized it only when I described Emotional Pigpens, or whether he’d always known it. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is, he became aware of his behavior and its effect on those around him. He wanted to stop being an emotional pigpen and he wanted help.

So, how was he to make amends, he asked. I suggested he do it both individually and collectively, acknowledging that his behavior had been less than optimal, apologizing for that behavior, and promising to do better. I’ve had a few days since then to think more about it; perhaps the following might help him and those of you who find yourself in his position.

1. Know who needs an apology from you. If it’s not apparent to you, ask your closest confidant. He or she will know.
2. Look right into their eyes when you say you’re sorry. You don’t have to be eloquent, and you need not explain the issues that caused your misbehavior if it invades your privacy. Just say, “I’ve been awful lately, and I’m sorry. I will do better, and if I don’t do better, I want to hear from you.” Mean what you say and your listeners will feel it.
3.   Most people with whom you try to make amends are likely to accept your apology. Take comfort in that. Those who do not, or who remain skeptical, have their own timetables for such things. Let them work it out. You have done your part.
4.  Once you have apologized, and you begin to change your behavior, let yourself off the hook. Learn from your mistake and leave it behind. Don’t relive it. Move on so those around you can do the same.
5.  Be thankful that you have the courage to realize your mistake, the fortitude to make amends, and the good fortune to be forgiven.

I am grateful to the self-admitted Emotional Pigpen who came forward. Learning to say we’re sorry is not easy, but making mistakes that affect others is part of being human. Apologizing for those mistakes makes us better humans.