Attention – Page 6 – mardihumphreys.com

The First Step

The glass ceiling is cracking thanks to so many women beating our heads against it. The light filtering through these cracks reveals that the ladder we’re climbing to get there has a broken rung.

What is it?

At the beginning of 2020, for every 100 men who stepped onto the corporate ladder by accepting their first role as a manager, only 85 women were hired and/or promoted from individual contributor to manager. That statistic refers to white women; the statistics for Black women and Latinas are even worse. The first rung on the corporate ladder is broken for women and it has a negative effect on our talent pipeline. While more women are getting hired for senior management, there aren’t enough at junior management levels to promote. This lack of diversity in management denies our organizations an array of ideas, input, and solutions which adversely affects our bottom lines.

Why Does it Happen?

Women are subject to unconscious gender bias. Adapting to work during COVID-19 has awakened us a bit. Who hasn’t been on a Zoom call where someone (male or female) commented on a female coworker’s children playing in the background? When schools went online and daycares shuttered for months, working moms took on the majority of both housework and childcare. The statistics are worse for single moms and moms of color. Because of the pandemic, over two million women are considering an extensive leave of absence or even leaving the workforce. This makes the broken rung even harder to repair.

How Do We Fix It?

Continuous Development – Women need skills including strategic thinking and negotiation to level the playing field. If your company doesn’t have an official leadership development program, find your own. It’s a good investment of your T.E.A.M.

Get a Mentor – If your company does not offer an official mentoring program, seek one outside the company. Research shows mentees were promoted five times more than an employee who didn’t have a mentor.

Network – Collect people: mentors, coaches, sponsors, peers. A support network makes it 2.5 times more likely you’ll be seen as a high performer and ready for advancement.

Visibility – Share what you’re learning in leadership development with your manager during your 1:1s. Forward reference materials to colleagues and copy your manager. Bring up your development plan during reviews. Post about your progress on LinkedIn. Let the world know you’re taking responsibility for your growth and are ready to serve as a leader.

Stand up for Yourself – If you get passed over for promotion, ask why. Your manager should give you clear feedback regarding what you lack. If you feel the suggestions are vague, press for specifics. Is it a skill? Learn it. Is it not enough experience? Ask your manager to give you assignments that will help you gain it. Make these your immediate goals and achieve them before your next promotion attempt. Keep your manager apprised of your progress.

Have you experienced unconscious gender bias? How did you call attention to it? Have you ever been unconsciously gender biased? What are you doing to be more aware? Please share in the comments.

A Matter of Trust

**Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels**

This is the last article of the series Know, Like, Trust. If you missed the first two, you can find them here and here. I saved trust for last because it’s pretty hard to achieve without the other two. Let’s say a Potential Client (PC) knows and likes us. Now, how can we earn their trust?

Respect

Becoming known and liked can happen relatively quickly, but trust doesn’t. It takes time to demonstrate integrity, dependability, and consistency. PCs trust our companies after they trust us as people. We need to accurately represent what our companies stand for and broadcast those core values through multiple communication channels. We should be prepared to answer frequently asked questions like:

Can your company really do what you say it can? We’re able to answer this with a testimonial page on our companies’ websites.
Do you really want to help my business succeed? We prove this by sharing our PCs’ “We’re Hiring!” posts on our companies’ social media platforms.
Are we like-minded in our values? We affirm this with a how-we-help statement in every employees’ elevator speech.

We know we’re earning our PCs’ trust when they begin liking, commenting on, and/or sharing our social media content. Sharing is especially exciting. It indicates our PCs are engaging with, endorsing, and embracing our companies’ value-driven content.

Realign

The biggest mistake we make in communication is assuming it has happened. Paraphrasing what our PCs said, reflecting it back, and repeating the process until we verify we heard correctly, demonstrates we not only want to understand the problems, but we are also actively listening. Initially, this exercise is time consuming, but realigning our communication style to our PCs’ streamlines the process for future conversations. Being in accord with our PCs is crucial when it’s time to address sensitive issues. For example, how we will handle our PCs’ customers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Resource

After all this work, we may discover we aren’t the best solution for a PC. Our role then becomes connecting them to someone who is, because we are in relationship with our PCs for the life of their businesses. We demonstrate both trust and courage when we offer, “What you need isn’t what we’re best at, but I know someone who is.” It’s important to have an established network of colleagues we know, like, and trust to partner with so when this happens, we’re ready to refer them. It not only solves our PCs’ current problem, but also sets us up as the future go-to, trouble-shooting resource. When our PCs’ next crises strikes, we will be the first people they reach out to for help. Referrals build trust between all businesses involved in reaching solutions. People love to connect people they trust to one another. When we pay it forward, our colleagues feel obliged to repay in kind by connecting us with one of their PCs whose problem we can better solve. The loyalty these relationships inspire can help everyone’s companies grow exponentially. When our PCs trust us, they want to keep collaborating with us. Who doesn’t want to work with someone who solves their problems?

What do you do to prove your trustworthiness to PCs? Please share in the comments.

Resume Refresh

Multiple companies in my networking groups are hiring and there are a plethora of position postings on my social media platforms. Sufferin’ Succotash! This seems to be a hint to update our resumes.

Then and Now

When our grandparents first entered the workforce, they looked through newspaper help-wanted ads, typed up a resume and cover letter, mailed it to the hiring company, and waited by their rotary phones to be called in for an interview. Technology has exponentially streamlined the job hunt. Networking is a major factor, but that is another post for another day.

Individualize

Best practice is to get your resume into the email of an ally who will personally forward it with a recommendation to the hiring manger. If you must use a job search website, (Indeed, Monster, etc.) be prepared to sift through scads of subcategories using keywords to drill down through their specializations and/or certifications. Edit your resume to match the job descriptions of the returned results. It takes a lot of attention, but tailoring your resume to fit each position you apply for is essential.

Short is Sweet

Your resume is an advertisement enticing recruiters to call you for interviews, so leave them wanting more. It shouldn’t be longer than two pages and one is preferable. If you need to cut something, make it the reference section; save those for the interview. Only list your job history for the past 10 years unless the experience you gained is crucial to the job for which you’re applying. If the applicant tracking system (ATS) doesn’t force you to list beginning and ending dates of past employment, omit them. As for hard copies, if you aren’t Elle Woods, stick to black font on white paper. Proofread your resume multiple times before hitting send. Have a friend proofread it. Read it out loud. Print it off and read it. Let it sit for an hour, then go back and read it again.

By the Numbers

Hiring managers want to see you’ve either made your employers money or saved it, so quantify your accomplishments when possible. For example, “My outreach efforts increased my company’s revenue by 3% last year,” or “I initiated the move to an online fax service saving my company about $2000 by not purchasing paper and ink.”

Hello SEO

Even if you have an ally in the company campaigning for your hire, you’ll likely still have to apply for the position on the company’s website. The ATS scans your resume looking for keywords from the job description. Match your skills to the role using the words they use. For example, if the job description says, “Fluent in Spanish,” make sure those exact words are on your resume.

Entry-Level Irony

Many jobs require experience, even for entry level positions. Experience you gained as a volunteer counts. Were you the president of your fraternity? Did you manage a household budget for five people? Have you moved your local animal shelter’s donor information records from spreadsheets to a CRM? You can also showcase your soft skills. List examples of problem-solving, communication, and/or teamwork.

LinkedIn Better

Yes, I just used LinkedIn as a verb. LinkedIn is an interactive resume and interview combined and on steroids. It’s one of the main resources recruiters use to vet candidates, so be sure to put your LinkedIn URL on your resume. Audit your LinkedIn profile. Invest in a good headshot. Follow companies you want to work for and look at the marketing or sales employees’ profiles. Model yours after theirs (e.g., add appropriate keywords from their headlines to yours) so their recruiters can find you. Start a conversation: congratulate them for an award they won, thank them for posting an insightful article, or mention a non-profit you both support.

Have you updated your resume lately? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

How Do You Spell Relief? E-m-p-a-t-h-y

The longer COVID drags on, the more fragile we feel. If everyone feels this way, it’s affecting the companies we serve. We need clients to buy our products and services, but desperation has a way of creeping into our subconscious and leaking out in our presentations. It’s neither attractive nor productive. We have to be willing to brainstorm our clients’ current problems and help them weigh the value of possible solutions – even if we are not the relief for their immediate pain point. Should we pay more attention to the role empathy can play in business? If so, how do we communicate it?

Care

It’s nice to do business with nice people. Given current events, even nice business people are stressed and stress can shorten anyone’s fuse. We have no idea what is going on with our clients outside of our relationships with them, and they may not be comfortable sharing. We should not take any atypical negative attitude personally. We should assume in showing up, our clients are coping as best they can. This is an opportunity for us to provide them with a respite. Remind them blue-sky thinking with us is a valuable idea-generation tool. Validate their efforts by telling them they’re doing a good job.

Pay Attention

When we meet with a client, we need to read the room (or the Zoom). Is she fidgety, grumpy, quiet? Does she look tired, worried, distracted? What about her body language? Is she slouching? Avoiding eye contact? The words she uses are also a clue. We should listen for emotionally charged words and the tone of voice she uses to say them. To find the emotions underneath the exterior, we can start the conversation with the obvious, “How are you doing? How is the family? How is business going?” We are looking for a point of connection. This is trickier than it sounds. For example, empathy is not the client laying out a scenario and me replying, “I know exactly how you feel because that happened to me too once.” While I may have experienced the same situation, my interpretation of it inevitably differs from my client’s. I discredit myself and discount my client if I say I know exactly how she feels. My goal is to understand her experience and feel her unique position with her in the moment. It’s more genuine to say, “Tell me more,” than “ I know how you feel because I…” We’re working to create a safe and judgement-free zone.

Listen

It’s extremely counterintuitive, but don’t problem solve at this point. It’s way too early in the process. Our clients want to feel heard and understood. They’re in pain and need relief. We have to demonstrate our desire to uncover why the pain exists in the first place. How would we feel if we were the ones experiencing this pain?

Not every meeting has to end with submitting a proposal. People can tell when we’re in relationship with them just to see how much we can gain from it. With a mindset of our success is tied to the success of our clients, we develop a sustainable business model based on mutual respect and trust and can build relationships that last for years.

How do you empathize with your clients without veering into problem solving? Please share your story in the comments section.

Can You Feel the Heat?

This COVID Christmas feels off just enough to make us lose our balance. For example, our daughter called me during her commute home the other night. She was stressed. She’d spent eight mask-wearing-social-distancing hours at her office and was rushing home in Chicago traffic to set up the work station in her apartment. She was scheduled to guest on a college’s webcast to promote her company to their student listeners. As I tried to extinguish the fire of her burnout over the phone from 316 miles away and five minutes before Jeopardy!, she accused me of speaking in lyrics from Hamilton, an American Musical. Can you blame me? It has several relatable scenes of characters striving for work-life balance; “Non-Stop” being the most obvious.

The focus of the song “Non-Stop” is Alexander Hamilton writing The Federalist Papers, but he’s got a lot going on in addition. He’s practicing law. He’s a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He’s distracted by Angelica Schuyler’s move to London and impending marriage. His wife, Eliza, pressures him to accompany her and their children on a summer vacation to her dad’s place, and George Washington enlists him to lead the Treasury Department. Alexander was both working from home and homing from work. Sound familiar?

Maybe you don’t practice law, but you do own a business
You aren’t a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but maybe you are a board chair
Maybe you aren’t distracted by a friend moving across the ocean, but you are preoccupied by your child’s intent to move into his college’s student housing
Maybe you aren’t being pressured by your wife to accompany her and your children to the in-law’s place for a holiday, but, wait; maybe you are
Maybe you haven’t been approached to lead the Treasury Department, but you are concerned about leading your sales department through the rest of Q4

Add the holiday season to any one of the above scenarios and you’re on the road to burnout. So what can you do? Tap the brakes.

Ways to Combat Holiday Burnout

Take a day (or even just half a day) of vacation and get your hair done; particularly if you get a paid holiday off this month. The extra time spent on your appearance will make you feel better
Phone a friend. We’re all feeling a little mental right now. Find out how he is coping. Stay connected to people; especially the ones you care about and who care about you
Find your release. Take a walk outside. Listen to a true-crime podcast. Take a power nap. Snuggle your pet. Browse memes. Whatever it is, take fifteen minutes to decompress
Change your scenery. If you’re working from home, don’t conference call in the same room every time
Do something holiday themed. Wrap a Hanukkah gift. Bake Christmas cookies. Plan the Karamu menu. Switch to egg nog instead of coffee

I can’t believe I just suggested a drink other than coffee.

What are you doing to battle holiday burnout? Please share your tips and tricks 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.

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.

Stress Fractures

My husband and I took a walk. As we cut through an apartment complex parking lot, I pointed to some cracks in the asphalt. “Isn’t this relatively new?” I asked. “It’s less than two years old,” he said. “Those are stress fractures.” That is the perfect way to describe my psyche right now. COVID-19 feels like death by 1000 paper cuts. Every setback stings, but the wound isn’t deep enough to kill. The entire planet is in a strange kind of war. The enemy is a virus we can’t see with the naked eye and everyday it torturously takes something or someone away from us. To fight this enemy, it may be time to employ survival psychology. We can start with the advice of someone who has fought in a more traditional kind of war: Admiral James Stockdale.

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end-which you can never afford to lose-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – James Stockdale

That is the crux of the Stockdale Paradox. Introduced by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, the Stockdale Paradox is the mindset the admiral developed while he was a POW for over seven years during the Vietnam War. Stockdale was the highest-ranking United States military officer held in the Hanoi Hilton. He had other prisoners to lead. He was tortured over 20 times. He had no set release date. He survived by blending hard pragmatism with unwavering hope for the future. Here is more of his story.

Problem:

Our current problems are epic: the pandemic, global racial unrest, the weather is threatening all over the planet, the global economy showing signs of disintegrating. We talk about a vaccine like it’s going to rescue us and magically return the world to our pre-COVID-19 state; but the people, places, and things we’ve lost since March are not coming back. We have to adjust to the new abnormal. But how do we develop a mindset that keeps us going?

Solution:

The Stockdale Paradox has two directives: have faith we will prevail in the end and discipline to face the facts of our current reality. Here are some ways we can practice it.

Faith – the pandemic will end; discipline – doing our part (e.g., wearing masks in public, social distancing, etc.) to keep each other safe until it does.
Faith – people of all colors can work together; discipline – we can encourage, listen, and learn from difficult conversations.
Faith – we can slow climate change; discipline – unplugging our computers when not in use.
Faith – we can survive an economic recession; discipline – only use our emergency funds for legitimate emergencies.

Result:

Notice the Stockdale Paradox doesn’t espouse optimism. Admiral Stockdale said the optimists were the ones who did not make it out of the Hanoi Hilton alive. You can read about that here. Managing both of the instructions in the Stockdale Paradox results in hope. If we hope for the best and prepare for the worst, we can give and receive compassion, support, and community. It’s uncomfortable, but we can do this.

How are you keeping hope alive? Please share in the comments section.

Multitasking = Multidistracting

Humans were never meant to multitask; that’s a computer’s job. The word was invented in 1965 referring to an IBM computer’s capabilities. We aren’t talking about listening to a podcast while on a run here. More like texting while driving a car. Have you been forced to multitask more than usual as we shelter from home during the Coronapocolypse? Answering email while home schooling while folding laundry during a teleconference, perhaps?

What we think of as multitasking (doing multiple tasks simultaneously) in reality, is task switching (doing multiple tasks in rapid succession). If we make a habit of task switching, we lose the ability to focus. If we lose the ability to focus, we lose the ability to learn. Multitasking robs us of the ability to separate relevant information from irrelevant details. It negatively impacts short term memory; the brain’s clipboard. Also known as working memory, it’s the brain’s power to contain and shape information for a limited time. It’s the foundation for all thought processes; from memorizing your spouse’s favorite Chipotle order to learning how to code. The data suggests it takes longer to finish multiple tasks and we make more mistakes than if we pay attention to each task individually. Habitually shifting our focus is mentally exhausting and makes us 40% less productive. Eventually the attention drag will burn us out.

Distractions like email and instant messages slow us down. It’s hard to avoid the temptation of the relentless barrage of information, but we’re probably fooling ourselves if we think we’re good at multitasking; 98% of us aren’t. Best practice is to focus on one thing at a time for a certain period of time; maybe try the Pomodoro Technique and guard that time as sacred. It will be difficult, but unless someone is bleeding, on fire, or hurt, no interruptions are allowed. When we can focus, get into a flow, and accomplish something, it lowers our stress. This means saying no to everything that is not the most important thing at the time. This seems limiting given everything we need to get done, but it actually allows us to employ Parkinson’s Law and be more productive. The word “priority” means one thing. Priorities is a made up word to indicate everything is important and must get done. (If your manager insists on using the word priorities, and suggests everything needs to be done right now, it’s time tor a 1:1.) What is the one thing that must get done today? That is the priority and we must give it our full attention. It’s non-negotiable. The work day revolves around it.

We can’t eliminate all of life’s interruptions, particularly if everyone is doing everything from home. Clients will have emergencies, technology will fail, our partners, children, fur babies, neighbors, (etc.) will need our immediate attention at some point during our work day. But we need to try to concentrate on doing one thing at a time as often as possible. Our mental health depends on it.

What strategy do you use to monotask? Please share it in the comments section.

Meeting Manners

Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

Finding and maintaining business relationships is so important it has its own word: networking. Pre-COVID-19, the default technique was in person, in a group, with snacks. Meeting people powers business. We get together to build trust, show respect, demonstrate commitment, and form long term relationships. When we connected with someone, we’d further the conversation at a later date, either at one of our offices or restaurant.

When instructed to shelter at home, we immediately virtualized it, but now we’re dipping our toes back into the networking and 1:1 meeting ponds. It’s not unusual to run from a teleconference in my home office to a 1:1 at a coffee shop.

This transition is exhausting, but it helps when I remember guidelines for COVID-19 change daily for the entire world. We can’t realistically absorb all the available information, and no one has all the answers. We can have patience, extend grace, and be prepared to pivot. For example, when setting an appointment we acknowledge we’d rather meet in person, but offering a teleconference as a back up is currently the best practice.

We could just talk on the phone. (Remember when talking to someone was the only thing we did with phones?) I had a couple of 1:1 calls recently and they were refreshing! Eliminating the sense of sight allowed me to concentrate on the person’s voice and take notes. I didn’t have to wonder if I was using enough non-verbals to show I was paying attention. I had to remind myself to respond with verbal cues (e.g.,“uh-huh,” “yes,” “tell me more,” etc.) so the speaker would know I was listening. It was a great communication exercise.

When we meet face to face, it’s prudent to call the venue ahead and ask if they allow indoor seating yet. If they have outdoor seating, that’s even better, but requires the weather to cooperate. We should move our chairs six feet apart. If we purchase drinks or food, we should pay with our credit/debit card. We should wear a mask, carry hand sanitizer, not shake hands (and maybe comment on it; e.g., “I hope someone comes up with a substitution for handshaking soon.”) We should take our temperatures before leaving the house (and tell our 1:1s upon arrival). We should be prepared for cancellations as COVID-19 conditions daily change.

Now that we’ve had over three months experience with teleconferencing, here is something I’ve found useful. Begin the meeting at five minutes after the hour or half hour and end five minutes before the hour or half hour. Odds are the person meeting with me is coming from an earlier meeting, and/or has another one after ours. Giving them five minutes to transition demonstrates consideration for their schedule.

Respect is the key, both giving it and requesting it. When choosing whether to meet in person or virtually, it’s fair to say, “I’d rather teleconference. My family is taking social distancing very seriously.” We should also not be surprised to hear that sentence from the person we intend to meet. COVID-19 is turning into a marathon rather than a sprint. Minding our meeting manners is a small way we can help each other to the finish line.

Are the majority of your meetings still virtual? Please tell us about them in the comments section.