Mardi Humphreys

Gratitude Works

Thanksgiving is the time of year we discuss gratitude, but 90% of Americans started talking about it a few weeks into the quarantine as a way to fight stress. COVID-19 has given us plenty of time to think. If we dwell on what we’ve lost instead of what we’re grateful for, we’ll get depressed. Research indicates practicing gratitude has physical health benefits like better sleep, a stronger immune system, and lower blood pressure. It also benefits the health of your business.

With a Bit of a Mind Flip

Pre-COVID-19, gratitude in your workplace may have looked like Free Doughnut Fridays, employee of the month awards, or celebratory team lunches at the country club. Those are nice, but they don’t inspire company loyalty. Historically, work is a place for competition. Everyone battling for the same promotion or the biggest percentage of the limited raise pool. Would it surprise you to learn the key to retaining talented people is expressing gratitude, exhibiting patience, and excusing mistakes? When these habits are ingrained in a company’s culture and practiced by everyone from the C-Suite on down, they create a place where employees want to work. Why should you thank someone for what they’re paid to do? Studies indicate employees who feel valued are not only more productive, but also support the company’s goals. Gratitude reinforces trust. It bonds teams and reduces employee burnout which are especially important right now during the pandemic. Expressing gratitude is not only good for the person receiving appreciation, but also for the person giving it. Using positive words, recognizing a coworker for their contribution, or thanking a direct report’s effort, alters the mindset of the praise giver. You feel good when you see you’ve made someone else feel good.

I Have to Praise You Like I Should

The holiday season is a logical time to begin the habit of a company-wide gratitude practice, but don’t stop January 2. Put triggers in place to keep it going throughout the new year. Gratitude isn’t a feeling, it’s an action, so you must choose to express it and can give it anytime. The key is consistency. Think about putting someone in charge of identifying employees who deserve recognition and determining how they should receive it. For example, if an individual contributor is shy, putting him on speaker view at the company-wide teleconference to thank him may backfire. Being the center of attention may embarrass instead of appreciate him. Something else to consider: it’s logical to praise success, but you can be grateful for failure too. Every failed iteration of your process brings you closer to the solution. This allows you to thank team members for their soft skills (e.g., patience, perseverance), as well as their job performance. It’s work to give sincere thanks and make sure everyone is included, but the ROI can be huge. An employee who feels appreciated does more than the bare minimum her job requires.

COVID-19 Era Gratitude Suggestions:

Thank you emails – to individual contributors from their managers
Thankful Thursdays – managers send reminders to individual contributors to thank a team mate for something they helped with this week
Begin 1:1s with something you appreciate (e.g., unique insights, positive attitude, critical thinking, sense of humor) this can come from either the manager or the individual contributor
Create a page on the company’s website devoted to staff thanking each other

How does your company thank its employees? Please tell us about it in the comments section.

Thank You, Future Self

As the global pandemic drags on and reshapes our economy, I’ve learned a few things. Spending our money on local small businesses is more important than ever, I can make really good coffee at home, and I should not look at my 401 (k) statement right now. What are some things you can do to financially sustain yourself through this seemingly endless crisis?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce – It may be difficult to increase your income right now, but you can find ways to save it. You aren’t driving your vehicle as much as you did pre-COVID-19, so you’re saving money on gas, oil changes, and wear and tear. Working (or not) from home eliminates the need for walking around money (e.g., money spent on coffee shops, lunches out, parking fees, etc.). You’re saving money simply by not being able to spend it. This should have added up fairly significantly eight months into the stay-at-home order. Move that money to your long-term savings account where it will earn interest.

Reuse – Stay away from online shopping. Yes, those yoga pants you found on Amazon are cute, but don’t you already have three pair of cute yoga pants? Cancel automatic renewals. Don’t you have enough goodies from Watch Gang, Trendy Butler, or BREO BOX to last a while?

Recycle – Compare your monthly expenses from February to October. Note any savings and why they happened. Can you sustain any of the circumstances that caused those savings once the world opens up more? For example, you saved money by working from home. Is it possible to make remote work more permanent? You’ve probably already thought about it, so take the next step and make a list of what it would require. Then, you’ll be ready with a plan to present to your manager when the time is right.

Let’s Make a Deal

Credit card companies make money selling debt and counting on you to pay it back with interest. If you have run up over $5000 in charges, (especially if you’ve lost your job) call your lender. Ask them to suspend payments for two months and to permanently lower your interest rate. Do not take them up on their offer to sell you more debt. With so many borrowers unable to repay due to COVID-19, credit card companies are in a bind and willing to work with you now more than ever. Take this opportunity to renegotiate the terms of your credit agreement. A new arrangement will protect your credit score.

You Can’t Touch This

Your assets are low right now, so don’t sell them. If you have a 401(k) and/or an IRA and get scared easily, don’t look at your account statements. If you get another stimulus check, consider putting it in your IRA if you can currently live without it. The people who managed to save money back in the recession of 2008 are still hitting their long-term savings targets. You have more financial support from the government than during the last recession. It’s not a lot, but it’s useful.

It feels like the pandemic will last forever, but nothing does, so resist the urge to live for today and think of your future self and what that person will need: food, clothing, and shelter. Even if you move just $25 a week to your long-term savings account, after one year, that’s $1300 your future self can live on.

How are you resisting the urge to panic over your budget? Please share in the comments section.

Getting to Know You

I’ve disappointed Rick Springfield. He told me not to talk to strangers, but I lean more toward young Forrest Gump’s philosophy of business development. There are plenty of services that allow your sales team to send hundreds of emails extolling the virtues of your products/services to strangers. There are even companies with the technology to make hundreds of cold calls for you and when the prospect answers the phone, transfer the call to a sales rep waiting to pitch. I’m usually a big fan of automation, but why would a company reveal their pain points to you when they don’t know, like, or trust you yet? This is why Relationship Marketing is so important.

What Is It?

Relationship Marketing is simply building long-term, trusting relationships with strangers; essentially, developing clients into friends. When your friends face challenges, you want to be the first person they contact for a solution. You should feel the same way about your clients. People need to know you’re authentic in order to trust you. You must be the same person to your clients as you are to your cousins. Unless you’re Tom Hanks, you can’t act like different people in your relationships. Being inauthentic is exhausting and counterproductive.

How Does It Work?

Mom is right. If you want to make a friend, be a friend. Take the initiative. Network. Communicate. Be curious. Provide value without an agenda. Businesses are run by people. Go where the people are. Get personal. Do your homework. There is so much information at your fingertips (e.g., company websites, LinkedIn, business newspapers/websites), find out what their business does and their role in it. Figure out how you can help. The companies you want to partner with need revenue to survive. How can your company help them either attract customers, or save money on their operations? Do they have a problem your company doesn’t fix? Do you know someone who does? Introduce them. While this doesn’t bring you revenue now, proving you want what’s best for their business demonstrates you can be trusted to put their interests before your own. Have a mindset of their success means your success. We get further together than we do on our own.

Why Does It Work?

Giving your clients great experiences differentiates your company from your competition. You have to go beyond persuading them to believe in your brand. Your clients want to be seen. They want you to help them solve their unique issues. They want to give you permission to be on their team. They do not want content forced on them. They want to learn what your company has to offer and what you can do for them in their own time using the communication channels they favor. I can’t think of one business owner who enjoys having their day interrupted by a cold sales call or sifting through all the cold emails they daily receive. However, I can think of several who appreciated a congratulations-on-your-latest-success LinkedIn message.

How do you make new friends in this COVID-19 enhanced Relationship Marketing era? Please share your story in the comments section.

Vuja de (This is Not a Typo)

As a result of COVID-19, a major employer in my community has decided to have their 1600 employees permanently work from home. This could signal the beginning of a mass transition to permanent remote work for many of us. Obviously, there are some jobs that cannot be done from home (waiter, mail carrier, fire fighter, etc.), but if you used to be in an office under the watchful eye of your supervisor and now she’s not in your residence dictating how you spend 40 hours a week, this is a chance to vuja de your role.

Vuja de means looking at something familiar in an unfamiliar way. Before the pandemic, did you feel limited? Did you have little control over how you did your job or what tasks you had to accomplish? The upheaval of quarantine is a logical time to explore aligning your passions, abilities, and standards with your job. For example: Let’s imagine your job is recruiting college seniors for internships. One of your tasks is to discuss next steps with them and answer their questions. Pre-COVID protocol was to spend hours at the office surprising them all individually with an unscheduled phone call. This is a perfect time to book a teleconference and invite a dozen interns to attend. This saves you time, allows recruits to meet whom they’ll work with, and prompts follow-up questions relevant to the whole group; questions no one thinks to ask when put on the spot during a spontaneous phone call.

We have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate we can adjust our positions to better fit both our strengths and our needs and still get our work done; in fact maybe even get more work done. At the beginning of sheltering from home, most employers were skeptical full-time employees would actually work the traditional 40 hours every week. Turns out, they were right. Research indicates employees are working longer to prove we’re actually productive. With a long term crisis on our hands, we’re compelled to view our jobs as flexible because the conditions under which we perform them have to be.

During this time of returning to the office, we can ask ourselves, “What needs to get done?” “When is the best time to do it?” “Where is the best place to do it?” For example, if you’re working on a budget report, and you need to concentrate, the best time and place for you may be 11:00PM in your home office while everyone else is asleep. But if you’re brainstorming ways to automate a client’s requisition process, you may need to be in the office with your team and a wall full of whiteboards. The tasks should dictate the schedule and venue and will likely produce a hybrid model of working from both home and the office.

It would be wise to document your responsibilities since sheltering at home began. What projects have you completed? How much time did you spend? Who worked with you? How did you communicate (e.g., in person or remote)? You can use this data to produce a case study for your manager proving the benefits, both to her and the company, of allowing you the freedom to vuja de your role.

How have you adjusted your job description during the pandemic? Please share in the comments section.

What Are You Afraid Of?

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels

There’s an old adage: if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. When it comes to work, let’s just say, I’m in the correct Zoom room A LOT. I like to think it’s just a diversity of gifts. My coworkers bring the technical knowledge necessary for building solutions and I bring them challenges to solve. But every little mistake I make feeds a low grade lack of confidence and makes me wonder, “What if I fail?”

When the thought occurs, I have to stop and remind myself that everyone fails. In fact, failure is a necessary step to success. If I approach projects with curiosity, seek to understand, and demonstrate I’m both listening and learning; then failure becomes part of the problem-solving process. It can even help bond the team. Failure presents opportunity to highlight everyone’s unique roles and particular skill sets. This allows me to frame failures as experiments I need the team’s talents to finish. We can analyze where things went wrong, gather data, and move on. We want to fail fast, forward, and with feedback. Not every piece of code is written correctly the first time. It’s why development, staging, and production environments exist. Development and staging are places designed for experimenting, testing, and failing before putting the final solution into production. This method doesn’t have to be used exclusively for software development. It can apply to any project team.

Development: This is the brainstorming phase. Wacky ideas are welcome in this no-judgement-allowed preliminary formation of plans. Blue sky thinking happens here. At this point, we know where the client is and where he wants to go. Now, we figure out how to get him there. Everyone is encouraged to contribute then go test their ideas on their own. Think proof of concept.

Staging: This is the evaluation phase. Still a no-judgement zone, everyone brings their idea that passed testing and combines it with everyone else’s bit; much like connecting to a network. The results of wacky-ideas testing are discussed. Would this idea actually work? Do we have the necessary resources to make it happen? The team looks for obstacles to the solution’s success and adjustments are made. Will the client be able to afford this? Does an off-the-shelf solution already exist? Think prototype.

Production: The individual experiments have been combined, vetted, tested, run, and are ready to present to the client as a solution or at least a road map. Think demonstration, or, if more fully evolved, think deliverable.

This approach produces more ideas and more solutions more quickly. Business moves at the speed of trust. If we create a safe environment in which to fail, it not only saves time, but also creates a more compassionate, patient, and bonded team. Embracing failure can turn smart people into leaders, mentors, and coaches who will help the team build sustainable trust. Shifting to this mindset frees us from the fear of failure. It inspires us to use failure as a tool and puts us in the same category as Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and Sara Blakely. Talk about great company to be in!

What tricks do you use to get over your fear of failure? Please share in the comments section.

Self-sufficient Social Security

The headline in our wealth manager’s newsletter read: “Almost Nine Out of Ten Women Qualify for Social Security on Their Own.” I wondered, “Why is this newsletter worthy?”

Milestone

More women enter the workforce every year. Since most people have to earn 40 credits to retire, you have to work (and pay into Social Security) for at least 10 years to qualify for retirement benefits. The fact that the percentage of women ages 62 to 64 who meet these requirements based on their own work records has risen 24% since 1980, means women are staying in the workforce long enough to earn their own benefits.

How it Works

There are three types of Social Security benefits: retirement, disability, and survivors. In a nutshell, when you are employed by an organization where the Social Security Administration (SSA) takes a percentage of your paycheck in taxes, it uses those wages to fund a program that distributes payments to retirees, the disabled, and their families who qualify. The assumption is eventually most Americans will qualify for Social Security and draw money from it. We’ll stick to retirement benefits for this conversation. To qualify for SSA retirement funds, you must reach your full retirement age, accumulate enough credits, and apply for it. Here is a good explanation of Social Security benefits.

What Women Should Know

Almost 55% of people receiving Social Security retirement benefits are women. Not only do women earn their own benefits, they can qualify for a spouse’s benefits. This is significant because women tend to live longer and earn less than their spouses. Social Security will not be as much money as your current paycheck. You can expect it to be about 40% of what you’re currently earning. Social Security should only be part of your retirement plan. You can use it as a foundation to build on. If your employer offers a 401(k) (or a 403(b)) plan, you should participate. If your employer contributes to it as well as invests a percentage of your paycheck for you, contribute at least as much as they do and increase your percentage beyond their contribution every year. It would also be wise to open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). The current rule of thumb is saving 15% of your income for retirement. Three sources of retirement income seems like overkill, but a quick Google search indicates a nest egg of $1,000,000 will only last 19 years in retirement. Social Security benefits last until you die, but you won’t receive the same amount throughout your retirement. Payments are made monthly and usually by direct deposit. Every year, the SSA considers adjusting retirees’ payments for inflation and decides whether or not it will increase them to reflect the cost of living. The SSA has explanations for how changing your name, becoming disabled, or divorced or widowed affects your social security benefits. You can read about it here.

The increase in women who earn their own Social Security benefits means more people are paying into the program. It also means more people intend to be paid from it. Could this be an incentive to prompt thinking on how we can empower more women to stay in the workforce so Social Security can sustain funds?

What do you think? Please share your opinion in the comments section.

I Wish I’d Known

“Mom had made sure we were exposed to ideas and information that were not available to her as a young woman.” Brene Brown, Rising Strong

When I ran across that quote, it reminded me there are umpteen things I want my daughter to know about work because she’s a woman. Here are three.

Assertive and Likable

If you intend to be a leader, that violates current gender stereotypes. Research shows when a woman’s behavior violates gender stereotypes, it’s harder for her to advance in the organization. At my first full-time job, a male coworker chuckled at me, “Stop working so hard. You’re making the rest of us look bad.” The very behavior that could put me on a leadership path, made him uncomfortable. I navigated this by asking for help and including others (particularly male colleagues) when making decisions. To get promoted, I had to be both assertive and likable and that is not easy. Unfortunately, the business world hasn’t changed much.

Work-life Balance

If your job is building dependent (e.g., hospital, school, grocery), you have a better shot at work-life balance because you leave your work at the building. But you may be putting in more hours there keeping up with the demands of COVID-19, particularly if you work a frontline job. The pandemic revealed plenty of jobs aren’t tied to a specific building and can be done any time of day, blurring the line between work and home. As a woman, the work-life balancing act is more difficult thanks to stereotypical gender roles. The term work-life balance has a negative connotation, as if work isn’t part of your life. I suggest you strive for work-life integration. Pre-pandemic, this worked particularly well for those who have control over how and where they spend their workday. COVID-19 forced more employers to not only allow employees to work remotely, but also consider the possibility of making remote work a permanent option. Consequently, you have more opportunity to shape your day now than ever before and for the foreseeable future. It’s easy to go overboard and work too much, and there will be times when work is slow and life demands more of your attention. But if you create a schedule, coordinate with your partner and kids, unplug regularly to intentionally rest, work-life integration is more practical than work-life balance.

Own Your Success

In school, you work hard and get noticed. That doesn’t happen in the workforce. You have to promote yourself. First, internalize the fact you earned the right to recognition. We tend to remember our failures better than our successes, so keep a running list of your wins (e.g., attained goals set in your last performance review, clients you’ve landed, the number of clicks on the page you created for the company’s website). Second, accept compliments. Women are famous for diluting our achievements. We attribute our success to luck or we overshare credit. You work hard; accept recognition for it. This is not bragging. Just say thank you. Express gratitude for the contributions of coworkers who helped you, but don’t exaggerate their efforts and underestimate yours.

What advice do you give your daughters about work? Please share in the comments section.

A Mind at Work

I got offended at work. I sought clarity from a couple outsiders. Both suggested I check my ego. Turns out, ego doesn’t always mean liking ourselves too much. Do you know ego also causes us to stay quiet to protect ourselves from perceived harm?

Fight or Flight

The fight or flight response kicks in whenever our sense of self is challenged. If we find our identity in our job and we’re asked to do something that’s not our job, (e.g., a CEO asked to serve coffee at a board meeting) our boundary is crossed and fight or flight activates. This could look like getting defensive, “I’m the CEO, not the barista.” Or, allowing the breach, “Do you want cream and sugar?” Ego can convince us to do things that undermine our success. For example: If I binge watch Hulu the night before a webinar instead of rehearsing, when I deliver a lousy presentation, I can blame Hulu instead of acknowledging my failure. If I give a lousy presentation, it’s unlikely I’ll be asked to give another one, thus preventing the possibility of future failure. Ego mitigates risk for us to protect our self-esteem, but that protection may deny us opportunity for future success.

Ego or Calling

Both feed ambition, produce comparable results, and spur us to work hard. Is calling healthy and ego not? Actually, they need to work together. Ego is our mind’s bodyguard. It protects us from worrying so much about what others think that we’re too paralyzed to make decisions. It’s the version of ourselves everyone sees. But its operating system is based on fear. Its tone is urgent, implying something bad will happen if we stop hammering away at the project. Ego needs to be balanced by calling. Calling is our authentic self. It whispers reminders of what we care about and encourages us to see our work through its filter.

Asset or Liability

The boss wants employees who get things done. She’s likely too busy with her own responsibilities to monitor ours. How will she know we do good work unless we tell her? Ego can help us track when we go above and beyond our job descriptions, especially when those efforts pay off big time for the company. This is not bragging. This is owning the fruits of our labor. If we have regular 1:1s with our managers, that is the time to shine, but if not, we can draw on ego to prepare a list for the next performance review. This is also a good time to use ego to inform our supervisors of our career development intentions. Going for a promotion? Use ego to voice that desire. It can help us illustrate how we already fulfill the responsibilities of the next title on the company’s career path.

Ego is a powerful tool and we need to wield it for good. If we can recognize when we’re in a situation that triggers ego, we can stop and question why. Then use it to navigate the situation. Do we need ego to cheerlead? (“I can do this hard thing.”) Or do we need it to go back in the tool box? (“I can let my team help me do this hard thing, and share the credit.”)

How have you focused your ego lately? Please share you story in the comments section.

Tick Tock Your Life is a Clock

You don’t have to make sweeping changes to the way you work to be more productive. COVID-19 has already brought sweeping changes to the way you work. Whether you are back in the office or still remote, little tweaks to your processes can have big results by the end of the week.

Concentrate

Multitasking is a myth. Even if you only spend five minutes concentrating on one task, you’ll get it done faster. You can’t prevent interruptions, but you can minimize distractions like silencing your phone and putting it out of reach so you can’t hear the social media notifications going off. Be proactive and don’t instantly react. Let the phone call go to voicemail. Let the email that just arrived sit in the inbox. Refuse the ad hoc meeting. Turn off instant message. Mute the computer. Are you a procrastinator? If your manager does not do regular accountability meetings, assign yourself project deadlines and write up your own weekly status reports. Take the last half hour of the day to determine what can be put off until tomorrow. The list should be both specific and realistic. For example: achieving inbox zero is not an acceptable task. Return Boss’s email regarding corporate holiday gifts, is. Calendar tasks that are important, but not urgent for times in your day you can count on having a quiet space in which to work.

Control

Most of us are really bad at estimating the passage of time. Keep track of how much you actually spend on tasks, including checking social media. An app may help. If the task is something you can do in less than five minutes, do it. Is there a task you’ve been dreading? Do it first and get it over with. When you receive a meeting request, ask yourself if your presence is necessary. Can you request an email summary or delegate someone else to attend? Speaking of email, most of it is someone adding a task to our list. Check your inbox at regular intervals. (Because you’ve muted the notification, right?) As soon as you log on, reply to every message that takes no more than two minutes to answer. If the message takes longer, write a rough draft, but don’t send it. A couple of hours later, refine it, and send it if you’re satisfied, then, repeat the process with the emails that arrived during that time. Schedule tasks according to when you feel most alert. Do deep work when you have the most brain power and routine tasks when you have the least.Take a break. Get up and stretch, walk around the block, or check social media. Change your scenery. Going outside or even just to a different room can boost your productivity.

You will get distracted and you will get mad at yourself for it. Forgive yourself and move on. Don’t overthink. Complete is greater than perfect. Do it. Leave it. Return to it. When all you’re changing are nitpicky details, submit it.

What are your productivity tips? Please share them in the comments section.

Shop Smart

Another stimulus check may (or may not) be coming. Stores are reopening and we’re bored in the house. This combination is dangerous because it gives us opportunities to spend money we either don’t have or can’t afford to waste. With the end of the pandemic nowhere in sight, the impact on our finances is really just beginning, yet we want to support the economy. What can we do to be smart shoppers?

Food

Make a grocery list and stick to it. If the store’s displays are just too tempting, shop the store online and use their pickup or delivery service.
Download the store’s app and activate their loyalty card.
Download the store’s coupons, but only for items we regularly use.
Wait for sales on the items for which we’ve downloaded coupons.
Eat before grocery shopping. This makes a huge difference for me. Walking through the bakery (or the valley of the shadow of death, as I like to call it) isn’t nearly as tempting on a full stomach as it is on an empty one.
Recognize some food manufacturers are playing sleight of hand with us. For example, the brand of chicken wings we buy used to put a dozen hot wings in a bag. Now, the price is the same, but there are nine wings in the bag.

Clothing

Shop Goodwill, Salvation Army, and local thrift stores.
Opt for classic pieces instead of trendy. I found this suit and loved it in cobalt blue, but it was also available in black. Guess which color I purchased. Yep. I’m more confident a black suit will still be in style next year than I am about a cobalt blue one.
Wait to purchase until the end of a season. Swimsuits are cheaper at the end of July; winter coats are cheaper in March.
Leave items in our online carts for 24 hours. This cooling off period allows us to contemplate whether we really need the merchandise. When I do this, some retailers email me a reminder I still have items in my cart and offer a discount to entice me to finish the transaction.

Shelter

Borrow maintenance equipment we need for one-time only use; think a ladder or steam cleaner.
For items we’ll use more often, check a price comparison app before purchasing.
Think about how often we use something. For example, when it’s time to replace my coffee pot, I go for quality because we use it every day, then, I look at the price. It’s cheaper to invest in a well-made product than frequently replace an ill-made one. Since I don’t drink tea every day, I purchased a cheap electric kettle.

When in doubt, we shouldn’t spend money right now. If we can live without the items, let’s do. There will always be fun stuff to spend money on. Self care: yes, Treat yo self: not right now.

How do you practice shopping smart these days? Please share your tips in the comments section.