I don’t know about you but the first half of the year has flown by for me. Time has a way of doing that, moving quickly. So, it’s important that we use our time well. Here are three tips for making the best use of your time:
1) Weigh urgency and importance. We all have things in life that need our immediate attention. We also have things that are important for us to achieve the outcomes we desire. They are not always the same thing. If something is urgent and important, it usually gets our time. However, if it’s important and not urgent it is very easy to not give it the time it needs. Take a look at how you’re using your time. Are the things taking up your time urgent? important? urgent and important? or urgent and unimportant. If too many are in the last category, you probably feel frustrated. Recalibrate and determine how to move those things off your plate and make more room for the important and not urgent.
2) Build mental breaks into your day. If you don’t build in mental breaks, you become less effective. And more prone to get distracted by Facebook, fantasy football or your text alerts. However, if you know you will be taking break to get your electronic fix, you can spend time truly focusing on what needs to be done rather telling yourself ‘I’ll only take a minute to check…’ Research shows it takes 25 minutes for us to completely refocus after an interruption. So that ‘minute’ becomes more like 30.
3) Create blocks of time for just you. When you lead other people or work in a team, it’s easy to have your time become booked with meeting after meeting or for people to continually stop in because of your open door policy. All of us have work that needs our undivided attention. Build times into your calendar that are sacred so you can focus on that work. Let your team members and other people who may need to know that at a certain time, you’re going to be in your office (or cubicle) with the door (or imaginary door) closed so that you can focus on work that needs your undivided attention. Ask them to please not disturb you unless absolutely necessary. Then close your door and get to work!
Anyone will tell you that attitude can make up for other things that may be lacking when it comes to success. Carol Dweck’s most recent research shows that attitude is a more effective predictor of success than IQ.However, what makes a difference is not whether you are Mary Sunshine, alway arriving with a smile and a spring in your step or Sam Schlubbum who greets interactions with a stoic face and isn’t excited about too much of anything.
The key difference is whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. A growth mindset embraces challenges, persists in the face of setbacks, believes effort will lead to a level of mastery, and learns from criticism. A fixed mindset,on the other hand, tends to avoid challenges, gives up easily, doesn’t believe effort will lead anywhere and ignores useful criticism. I’m sure we all know people who fit both of these descriptions.
If you’re stuck in a fixed mindset, don’t despair.Anyone can move into a growth mindset. The key is to start small. For example, when you’re faced with a challenge and ready to give up, decide to work at it for a few more minutes. Decide what you’re passionate about and find ways to incorporate more of that into your day. When the answer is no, don’t be afraid to try again. Countless successful people were rejected over and over again.
Watch the people around you this week. Who is exhibiting a fixed mindset? Who’s exhibiting a growth mindset?
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In a recent Huffington Post article, Harvard’s Bill George discusses the power of mindful leadership. Mindfulness, according to George, is the practice of self-observation without judgment with a focus on our minds and inner voices. It allows you to center yourself, step away from the distractions of technology, deadlines, daily demands and become more fully present in your daily interactions. Mindful practices include meditation, journaling, jogging alone, and prayer. They are practices that allow you to become focused, more self-aware, and intentional in your actions.
One of my premises in Getting Real is that to be effective in this increasingly more complex world where leadership occurs, you need to be aware of who you are, why you are a leader and to work to understand who your people are and why they are doing what they do. Leaders need to be intentional about their actions and interactions and understand their impact on relationships and results.
About this time last year, I began integrating mindfulness practices into my life. It is an ongoing journey. The biggest challenge I’ve faced is being disciplined and integrating it into my life every day. It’s the same with being a mindful leader. We usually have the best of intentions. We plan on being present. We plan on being intentional with our actions and interactions. Still, we’re not always very good at it. However, if we keep working at it, results are significant. Click here to read about the impact of mindfulness.
Earlier in my career, I was interviewing with the SVP of HR, the chief people officer, for a senior role in a large organization. He was still fresh to the company, having been there about 6 months. I asked him where the firm was going and what made him get up in the morning and go to work. He looked at me and with a shrug said “Edith, its insurance,” like it was the craziest question in the world. How silly to expect that a senior leader, six months into his job would be able to articulate a compelling picture of the place he worked. He had a golden opportunity to communicate his vision of what this organization was about and where it was going and he came up with nothing.
There was no second interview.
This story is not meant to reflect badly on the insurance company. I know plenty of executives in insurance companies who would answer that question very differently.
This SVP obviously wasn’t able to communicate a vision. Over the past 18 months, many of our organizations have been lacking in “the vision thing.” We’ve been focused on a lot of things that were important but that people perceive as negative — cutting costs, losing sales and revenues, reducing headcount. But as the recovery starts, we need to think about where we want to go from here, because it won’t be where we were before 2008.
Whether you are hiring to rebuild your team, developing employees, or trying to retain or more fully engage your talent, the first step for taking performance to the next level and creating competitive advantage is to develop Compelling Clarity. Compelling Clarity is about creating a vision and expectations that are so clear it is difficult to say ‘where are we going?’ or ‘what should I be doing? ‘and so compelling no one needs to ask ‘why am I doing this?’ Instead, they say ‘I need to be a part of this.’
Ask yourself these questions:
Where does my organization (or division or group or…) need to go?
Why are we going in that direction?
What will we look like a year from now?
What top priorities will get us there?
How will we know we’re successful?
Why do I want to be part of this? Why should someone else want to be part of this?
If your answer is “I don’t know” to any of these you’re going to be less able to attract or retain top talent as you move forward. You’ll be appealing to people who want a job but not attractive to people who want to make an impact. Without a sense of where they’re going you’re people can’t perform at the high levels you need.
Be ready to talk about your vision and gauge the reactions. After all, you don’t want to find yourself saying, with a shrug, “Edith, it’s…”
Think about all the different leaders you’ve known. Now think of three words, maybe a short sentence, to describe each one. There may be one who was the company’s ‘go to guy.’ Maybe there was the one who was ‘good natured but inept’. Another could be ‘the one who wanted great people around’.
Each of these describes a brand. We hear the word brand thrown around a lot these days. Companies or products have a brand. We hear about our social media brand. We’re told to cultivate our brand. Whether we like it or not, each of us already has a brand that has been developed over the years by our words and actions.
A personal or leadership brand is important. It gives people a quick way to think about who you are, and what they can expect when interacting with you; or when asking you to get involved in a project, or asking you to take on a new role.
The question is how do you cultivate your brand? Some things to think about are:
Who are you, really? We all have things that we value. We all have strengths. Your brand should reflect who you really are. If it’s not genuine people will see that.
How do your actions reflect who you really are? If you say you are all about getting results but never create them, your actions don’t reflect that brand. Be careful of latching onto what you think others want to see.
Are you making yourself visible? Like it or not, organizations are not pure meritocracies. People have to have visibility to who you are and what you’re all about. Keeping your head down and just getting your work done is not all you need to be doing. Making others aware of what you’re doing and how that is adding value is important. Volunteer for projects that will allow you to highlight your brand. Engage in conversations with others to learn how they are adding value and letting them know what you are doing too. Step out of your zone. I know someone who had some perspectives on how her company was approaching diversity. She contacted an executive in her company about an article he wrote for an internal newsletter on the topic. He asked her to write an article sharing her views and soon she was put in charge of diversity for the company.
Create your personal branding action plan. Let people know who you are and the great things you’re doing.
Edith Onderick-Harvey is a recognized organizational and leadership development expert. She works with Fortune 500 firms, growing companies, and universities to design their organizations, develop their leaders and continually elevate performance. She has been quoted in The New York Times, Human Resource Executive, CNN and is the author of the newly released book “Getting Real: Strategies for Leadership in Today’s Innovation-Hungry, Time-Strapped, Multi-Tasking World of Work”
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I listened to a TED Talk yesterday while I was on the elliptical (got to keep up with that New Year’s resolution). It was about how we are losing our ability to listen. As leaders or business owners we spend a lot of time talking. We are giving direction or input to our employees. We’re talking with customers. We’re talking with people at networking events. We spend a lot of time working on getting our story out there. This talk reminded me of how critical listening is for those of us who are leading others.
This week try to spend more time listening. Here are some ideas how to do that:
1. Open every conversation by asking the other person a question. This question should not be a perfunctory ‘how are you?”. Make it a question that is really about something. Focus on listening to the answer, not waiting for the other person to be done so you can get on to your real agenda.
2. When you have listened to what someone has to say, reflect or summarize. Anyone who has taken an active listening course knows that this is a technique to show the other person you are listening. I’m not suggesting it for that reason. Rather, by verbally saying what you’ve heard out loud, you are hearing it again and increasing the likelihood that you are actually listening to the words meaning.
3. Institute the ‘no multitasking’ rule during conversations. More and more I attend meetings where people think it is perfectly okay to have a laptop or smartphone in front of them so that they can multitask. This may sound efficient, but in reality it completely undermines the ability to listen and engage in what is going on. The human brain doesn’t work that way. It needs to be focused on what is being said. When you are visually looking at something, the sound becomes background noise. Most of the time, the person sending the text or email can wait for your reply.
4. Create listening posts. Create opportunities for others to have your undivided attention. Establish a regular time when you’ll be available for an individual or group to speak with you when you will give them complete, undivided attention. Make it immutable.
At the end of the week, assess the impact of your listening on your decision making, your relationships with your team and your awareness of what is happening in your organization.
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Over the past several years this saying and many others about change have become rather trite. “Change is everywhere and to be successful you must embrace it.” “Change is the new normal.” “Champions eat change for breakfast.” Yeah, we’ve heard it all before.
What is somewhat new about change is the sheer pace of it. With the advent of breakneck technology advances, change is not only constant but accelerating. Every few months there is a new social media outlet that can help you reach your customers while you’re still trying to figure out Twitter. Some businesses are wondering if they should create an app for their services. Messages can travel around your company, not to mention the world, in nanoseconds. And there are still the usual changes like new product introductions, reorganizations, and new workflows.
– How should you take a leadership position around change in the 2015 workplace?
– Answer the big question, “WHY?” People yearn for context. They want to understand why things happen and how they fit into that equation. As things move ever more quickly, we often forget to answer this simple question in our haste to “just get it done.”
– Listen to the reactions. Sometimes we think that in order to lead change, we need to be the cheerleader, playing down the realities that change is hard and that there will be bumps along the way. Take the time to listen and to respond in a realistic way to the reactions people have — the good, the bad and the ugly. In some situations it’s okay to say, “Yes, this stinks and at times it is going to be difficult. When we get through this, here is how we will be in a better place…”
– Know that some people will be more ready to change than you. When it comes to introducing technological change, there are people in your organization who will be asking why the company isn’t moving more quickly. We have a whole generation who have grown up with IM, texting, Facebook and other forms of social media. Harness their enthusiasm to learn all you can about the benefits and the drawbacks of various technologies. Engage them in understanding how it could be used in your business or why your business isn’t ready for it.
– Be a storyteller. Think back to your childhood. I could probably mention a story that you haven’t heard in 30 years and you could tell it to me. If I asked you to explain Freshman Algebra concepts to me, that would probably not be so easy for most of us. We are wired to remember stories. They help us put ourselves in situations and to remember information. Tell stories about the successes of previous changes where people first had doubts. Tell stories about how a team worked together to make it happen. Tell stories that help people paint a picture and understand how to move forward.
-Use social media. More and more of our organizations are using social media as way for people within the company to communicate with each other. Use social media yourself to ask questions, share updates, talk about successes, and ask for ideas. Again, if you need help in this area, there are people in your organization who are social media savvy. Encourage your team to use it as a way to have a productive conversation about the changes that are occurring. Soon you’ll see leaders emerge on your team, taking the reins of championing change.
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While traveling a few weeks ago, the USA Today appeared under my door. It’s Money section cover story was Do Happy Workers Mean Higher Profits? Looking at stock prices and earnings, the evidence suggests the answer is sort of, YES. You see the real payoff is not just how happy people are, it’s how engaged they are.
As we have often heard, engaged employees tend to do a better job, work harder, put in extra hours and stay longer. When you dig a little deeper, the article cites some real evidence to support this:
Companies on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work for tend to have significantly lower turnover. In the IT industry, which is known for frequent job moves, companies on the list have a 5.9% turnover vs. a 14.4% rate industrywide. In professional services, it’s 11.3% vs. 24.7%.
In the past year, many of the publicly traded companies on Fortune’s list beat the S&P 500 by a mile. While the S&P was up 13%, Whole Foods rose 31%, Marriott gained 28% and AmEx was up 22%.
While benefits and financial perks definitely have an impact on happiness and engagement, according to Julie Gebauer of Towers Watson, it’s those things without significant cost that really make a difference, “What makes the biggest impact are things that don’t have significant costs. How expensive is it for a senior leader to give an employee a pat on the back, or give someone the opportunity to work from home for a day or two?” (I’ve spoken many times about the impact meaning, autonomy, competence and the ability to make progress at work all have sustained engagement)
So, what do you think. How do happy employees impact your bottom line?
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. — @MichaelEPorter
I was recently having a conversation with someone about strategy. He noted that at the end of the day, strategy is simply about choice. As someone who does a lot of strategy work, I was taken by this elegant definition of strategy. A well-defined strategy should be an articulation of a choice you are making about how you will achieve your vision. It is also the choice of what you will not do to achieve your vision. It is saying yes to some things and no to others.
It’s also a guide for the choices you make about how to implement the strategy. On a tactical level, it serves as the guidepost for the daily choices and decisions that get made about what markets to pursue, what products to introduce, who to hire and promote and where offices should be located. It can be a touchstone for difficult decisions, providing criteria for weighing your options.
For the strategy to play its important role in guiding choice, it needs to be widely communicated and understood. It needs to be discussed on a regular basis so it is top of mind. Too many times I hear Directors or VP’s in large organizations that the strategy is not clear. If they don’t know it, how can anyone else?
Edith Onderick-Harvey is a recognized organizational and leadership development expert. She works with Fortune 500 firms, growing companies, and universities to design their organizations, develop their leaders and continually elevate performance. She has been quoted in The New York Times, Human Resource Executive, CNN.com and the author of the newly released book “Getting Real: Strategies for Leadership in Today’s Innovation-Hungry, Time-Strapped, Multi-Tasking World of Work”
One of the speakers at my daughter’s recent high school graduation was a retiring art teacher. He had taught at the high school for seven years after a very successful career in a variety of commercial ventures. A child of the 60’s, he encouraged the graduates to challenge authority, find their voice and push the boundaries. During the speech he also told them to not lose their idealism when they head to the cubicle farm.
What a great term — the cubicle farm. I flashed forward 10 years and wondered just how many of these kids, who are ready to take on the world, will be feeling deflated, hemmed in and not-so-idealistic because they are living in the cubicle farm.
Many of us have been there. That 8 x 8 space. Or worse, the 6 x 6 space. One of many in the rows and rows of identical spaces. A killer of creativity and innovation. A space that literally causes you to think inside the box. I’ve never heard someone say, “I love going to my cube every day.”
Thankfully, many companies are creating spaces for collaboration and creative thinking that get people outside the clutch of the cubicle. Some are doing away with cubicles all together. That arrangement can cause its own set of issues. In a time when innovation and creativity are needed to create better products and services, better customer experiences and better working lives, cubicles are the antithesis of the answer.
Take some time to think about your space and what life is like on the cubicle farm in your company. How’s it impacting people’s enthusiasm for the work? Does it interfere with collaboration and idea generation because people have to plan time for collaboration — and that’s dictated by the fact you don’t have enough conference rooms? How can you get people outside the box?
About Edith Onderick-Harvey
Edith Onderick-Harvey is a highly regarded consultant, leadership and talent expert, and speaker. Edith is frequently quoted in the media including The New York Times, CNN.com, HR Executive, and American Executive. As the President of Factor In Talent, Edith works with leaders to take performance — their own, their team’s and their organization’s — to the next level.
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