Lessons Learned on a Ledge

When you’re afraid of heights, it makes no sense at all to slide down the side of a five- story building. But I am afraid of heights, and I did it, anyway. 

The Great Leap of 2013, as I will forever call it, was a fantastic closing of a year-long project that I co-facilitated. It was a leadership workshop designed to build deep relationships and increase understanding of leadership strategies and tactics. Certainly rappelling contributed to those goals.

Here are some of the things I observed and learned:

1.The first steps are the scariest. That’s the time to keep pushing in the face of fear: when your feet are edging toward what feels like oblivion. Whether you are launching a new service, creating a new position, or handling a fierce conversation, the beginning is the toughest part. Get through that, and you can keep going.

2.Whatever narrative you repeat, you will believe. If you stand at the ledge and tell yourself you can continue, then you will.

3.When things get scary, focus on what’s right in front of you. For me, looking down was not an option, especially at the start. So I just looked straight ahead. It kept everything in perspective and lessened the fear. The same applies to working on a complex project with uncertain outcomes.

4. Break big tasks into small steps that you can control. When I thought about the fact that I was about to crawl down the side of a building, my entire being screamed, “What are you, nuts? Stop this!” But when I told myself to take the first step up to the edge, then hold the ropes, then lean back, then take small steps down, it was doable. 

5.Stress can bring people together if you handle it right. In our case, we handled it with humor. Each of us who rappelled was scared. All of us had knocking knees. But we kept laughing, joking, and hugging each other — before and after going over the edge.

6.Doing scary things is exhilarating, and worth celebrating. The sense of accomplishment that results from facing a lifelong fear is huge. Our team earned bragging rights for at least the rest of the year. It gives us a reason to celebrate success. When you and your team achieve something challenging or overcome a difficulty, don’t be humble. Be proud. Jump for joy. High five each other. Let the moment of victory linger.

When we push our boundaries, we make our world a little bigger and our spirits a little stronger. When we do that as a team, the whole group bonds and grows. I hope my experience will encourage you to take a big step off of a very high ledge...with proper ropes and guidance, of course.

Complacency Kills

Dictionary.com defines complacent as:

“pleased, especially with oneself or one's merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied”

What the dictionary doesn’t say is that being complacent eventually kills both relationships and revenue. If you’re hearing the statements below in your firm, you’re probably at risk of losing clients. The only way to save ourselves is to ask questions that counter individual and organizational complacency.

Complacency: “We’ve had this client for years. They love us.” Well, maybe they do and maybe they’re just feeling so-so about you. To think you can serve them year after year the same way you always have is pure folly. Rest assured, your competitors are looking to take your place with that client. They want what you have, and they will work hard to get it. 

Counter: Have I asked this client how we’re doing, face to face? Better yet, have I sent someone else in to ask the client how we’re doing -- just in case there’s something making Adoring Client uncomfortable or less than pleased with us? Have I spent the right amount of non-billable time partnering with this client to improve something about their business or their life? Have I brought them a new idea? 

Complacency: “We’ve always done it this way.”  What this really says is, “Hey, it’s not broke. Let’s not fix it. Let’s concentrate on our real (billable) work.”  The trouble is, your clients expect you to keep doing things better and working in their interests more effectively, on a fairly consistent upward spiral. They may not express it, but they surely do expect it. And if they don’t get the most forward-thinking innovation from you, they might just get it from your competitors. 

Counter: More questions. Which of our systems or processes are clunky, ineffective, or unnecessary? When is the last time we asked our clients what they’d like to get from us? What’s working well right now that we could do even better? 

You’ll notice that the counters to complacency are similar. They both require asking hard questions. We have to look in our organizational mirror and see who’s looking back. The price of not doing so is high: disaffected, disengaged clients that are ripe for the picking by your competition.

Advice About Giving Advice

A recent conversation with a friend illuminated in my mind an important communication tool to use when someone seeks your advice. I had asked my friend about a decision I needed to make. His response was, “I was hoping you would ask me about this, but I didn’t want to interfere. Are you sure you really want my answer? Because if you do, I’m happy to give it. But if you’re just looking to affirm a decision you’ve already made, you’re asking the wrong guy.”

Most of us have been in my friend’s situation. Most of us, though, don’t always have such a wise answer. I have broken his response into five different tactics. Each one is important if you want to be effective at giving advice.

1. Wait until you are asked. No matter how qualified you may be to help someone, you will not be well received if they’re not ready for your counsel.
2. If you aren’t qualified to give the advice, say so. At that point, you can empathize and commiserate, but not advise. Sometimes, that’s all that’s needed, anyway.
3. Determine whether the person asking really wants your affirmation, rather than your advice. If you are unsure, do what my friend did and ask.
4. If you discover that they really do want your advice, give it clearly, honestly, and kindly. Kindness is key. When someone opens up enough to ask your advice, he is likely feeling quite vulnerable and is trusting you with his feelings. Try hard not to step on them.
5. There’s one more: don’t be offended if the person doesn’t take your advice. It’s difficult not to get attached to our own view of things, but it’s important to disengage once you have offered your opinion. Free will must rein.

As we progress through life and build a database of experience, people will need and ask for our help. It is a privilege to be asked to share our thoughts. In doing so, I hope these five steps will be useful to you.

Finally, the irony of my offering you unsolicited advice, as I regularly do in these posts, is not lost on me. I hope you get as big a chuckle out of it as I did when I realized what I was doing.

Marriage and Business: Not So Different

More than once, I have described partnerships as having all the disadvantages of marriage and none of the advantages. This morning, my husband and I were talking about why we have a happy marriage of nearly 22 years duration (in truth, I was talking and he was listening, which is part of what makes our marriage happy). We came up with three simple things: we love each other, we walk through this life together, and we always have each other’s backs. It occurs to me that perhaps those three things apply to happy organizations, too.

Love each other. We can apply a broad definition of love to business. Love encompasses respect, courtesy, responsibility, talking, listening, boundaries, and tenacity. All of these apply to healthy work relationships.

Walk through this life together. In marriage, this means spending plenty of time together, finding ways to enrich the relationship. It also means enduring the lows and exulting in the highs, together, sticking with it as long as love remains. As partners, employers, and employees, we can vow to walk together toward clear and unifying goals, for the duration of our relationship. We can deliberately seek out ways to strengthen the bonds between us. I believe that the more we are together, the stronger our relationships can become. Maybe that’s not “until death do us part,” but thinking this way sure beats “until a better offer comes along.”

Always have each other’s backs. No matter how much I falter, I know my husband supports me; he understands that I, too, support him the same way. We don’t always agree, and we don’t have to. But we know that presenting a unified front to the world sends very clear messages to anyone who’s paying attention. This principle applies equally well to partners and executives. You are free to disagree with each other, but when you face your employees, managers, and customers, you send a powerful message to all of them when you are united.

When you look at it this way, it becomes clear that strong relationships, whether marital or business, are similar. Assess your organization by applying these three simple principles. What you discover may help guide you to the next right action.

Audit Yourself

As a regular reader of this post, chances are you have experienced a few things that are truly a big deal: illness, divorce, death, job loss and the like. Nowhere in that list will we ever see these: a co-worker wrote me a mean-spirited email, my boss displayed his typical sense of superiority today, or I had to clean the office coffee pot again. 

So why do we allow such pettiness to charge us up? And what can we do to respond more productively?

Maybe we permit the pettiness because it feels so very real in the moment, where the bigger life issues seem more distant. Maybe we feel we must react to the smaller issues because we (usually mistakenly) think we have the skills to do so. Or maybe we watch too much reality television, where all issues rise to the nuclear level.

In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron examines emotional reactions and offers great advice about what we can do. She asks us to consider a reasonable approach: what if we simply decided that whatever we are going through just wasn’t a big deal? What if we neither suppressed our emotions nor reacted to them, but studied them instead? We could then look at the emotions more objectively, take some time away from the current petty drama, and perhaps return with a more productive response...or perhaps no response at all. I don’t know about you, but I relax just thinking about the possibilities.

Daily working life is filled with opportunities for conflict, embarrassment, hurt feelings, and negativity. Each of these kills creativity, innovation, and productivity, so it’s smart to find an effective way to deal with emotions that arise at the office. 

The way that makes most sense to me is to stop reacting to our emotions so quickly. Slow the whole process down by mentally stepping outside ourselves to examine the emotion we’re feeling, spend a little time with that emotion internally, and describe it to ourselves simply as interesting. And then let it go. Don’t feed the emotion; study it and release it.

If we all started refusing to get charged up over life’s daily insults, it’s quite possible that conflicts would decrease and cultures would strengthen. Strong cultures mean less turnover, more teamwork, and greater collective and individual performance. And that is a very big deal, indeed.

Effective Leaders Create Effective Followers

We’re consistently hearing and reading about what makes an effective leader. We don’t hear as much about what makes effective followers. It makes sense to figure this part out, because there will always be more followers than leaders.

First, let’s determine what effective followers aren’t. They aren’t good soldiers who march to a steady drumbeat. They aren’t indentured servants waiting in line to become partner (at least, they aren’t anymore). And they aren’t passive order-takers. 

Here’s what effective followers are. They are technically strong critical thinkers. They are confident enough as individuals to question what they don’t understand. They make a conscious choice to follow their leaders based on careful analysis, solid decision-making, and commitment to something greater than themselves.

Leaders, please read the previous paragraph again. Ask yourself how many of your team can be described this way. If your calculation leaves you less than inspired, the first person you need to hold responsible is yourself. If you want effective followers, you need to help create them. Here are three ideas:

1. Clarify in your own mind your take on the present and your vision of the future. Share both of these pictures with everyone in your firm. Do this regularly and often. Use every outlet at your disposal to distribute this message. Your followers want to know what and how you think.
2. Be completely clear about your expectations of individuals and departments in the firm. Share those expectations face-to-face with people. Let them know what you want from them. Be as specific as you can without diving into micromanagement. Give them direction. Don’t make them wonder. Tell ‘em and tell ‘em again, not just during their evaluations.
3. Be the loudest cheerleader. Celebrate every achievement, whether firm-wide or individual. Don’t delegate enthusiasm.  

Leadership is critical to success. So is having great followers. Remember to develop both. 

Creating Happiness When the Job Doesn’t Do It

In a recent conversation with a young professional, he lamented that he did not really care about his job. He said he feels like every day is drudgery and that what he does makes little or no difference in the greater scheme of things. 

Our conversation got me thinking about what it takes to maintain job happiness when either the work or the organization isn’t fulfilling. Two basic principles immediately came to mind:

First, accept that happiness in any part of your life starts between your ears. The way you choose to think will always affect how you feel. 

Second, realize that no job will always make you happy. It's like any long- term relationship, filled with highs, lows, and plenty of in-betweens. I think that's why it's called work, not vacation. 

If you can agree with these principles, here are three tactics you might consider to increase day to day happiness when your job is less than ideal:

Create professional relationships, both inside and outside your firm. It can be difficult to feel passionate about an organization as a whole. Expecting to do so may be too tall an order. But feeling strongly about individuals is much easier. So seek out those within the organization who make you feel some sort of positive emotion. Talk with them, listen to them, share ideas and interests. They can sustain you through your dissatisfaction, and they might just change your perspective.

Compete. Compete with yourself, with other team members, or with outside industry members. Find something you’re good at and decide you want to be the best. Focus on doing what you need to do to be the best at that one thing. Develop a plan around becoming the best. Then implement it. This will give your mind something to do besides ruminate on your lack of satisfaction. If you get to be the best at something, you will be recognized for it within and perhaps outside your organization. You will feel great about achieving a competitive goal and meeting it. 

Find one thing at work that intrigues you, either emotionally or intellectually. Maybe it’s a particular service or product; maybe it’s a specific market. Learn everything you can about that single thing and focus on it. It may have nothing to do with the job you do. That doesn’t matter. Just learn everything you can and see if there’s some way you can eventually become associated with it. Even if you can’t, your mind will be engaged in learning something new, and you will be thinking about something more positive than your dissatisfaction.

What it comes down to is this: if you can’t care about your job or your organization as a whole, try to find some part of it that you can care about. By doing that, you give your mind something productive to focus on in the present moment. And who knows? Maybe by focusing on your present, you will begin to shape your future.