Community – Page 2 – mardihumphreys.com

Going the (Physical) Distance

Even we introverts are over this whole sheltering-at-home sequestration. Boredom has officially set in. The value of teachers, the healthcare workforce, truckers, and sanitation engineers is proved. The struggle with guilt is real. We’re asked to stay home with our snacks, entertainment, and stimulus checks, but we want to be out with our friends. We feel survivors’ guilt working from home (WFH) while 1 out of 10 other people in America have lost their jobs thanks to COVID-19. Instead of pining for what we can’t have, let’s give attention to what we can do.

Each Other

Let’s take a break from supervising our children’s online learning, WFH, cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc., and make virtual coffee dates with our families and play virtual games with our friends. It gives us peace of mind to see our loved ones safe and healthy. By the way, we have to initiate these. I posted offers on my social media for all comers to hang out and no one took me up on them. But, when I invited specific people to meet, they all accepted. This also goes for networking. Is there someone you want to connect with, but couldn’t pre-COVID-19? Plenty of people are now open to spending a few minutes on a meet and greet teleconference. Everyone just wants to know there’s life out there.

Emotions

Are you journaling more since sheltering at home? It’s good to empty our heads of negative thoughts and drag them into the light where we can see them more objectively. Our fear of the future can be analyzed. Our guilt over whining about WFH while our friends are furloughed may be admitted. Our anger sparked by the abrupt annihilation of our routines has a place to go. Then, we can deliberately relieve these negative emotions with positive actions. (E.g., help your first grader write a thank you note to his teacher for adapting to an online classroom.) In a few months we can revisit these journals and determine if we developed habits in quarantine worth keeping.

Envision

We can start thinking about life after lock down. We can update our resumes and LinkedIn profiles. We can touch base with warm contacts. Networking is easier right now because COVID-19 gives all of us something to talk about. We can plan a vacation for October, make a menu for Thanksgiving dinner, and start a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa gift list. We can think about what scheduling adjustments we want to keep, what lessons we’ve learned, and what technology we need to implement to improve our future work life balance.

My late maternal grandmother was famous for the catch phrase, “This too shall pass.” I hear it a whole lot these days, which is good. It’s a statement of hope. The world will probably never go back to the way it was before the pandemic, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But right now, let’s focus on helping each other get through today.

How are you encouraging hope during the pandemic? Please share in the comments section.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Sheltering at home has made me lose all track of time. COVID-19 didn’t take my job, so working from home means I’m always at work. I stress over emails. Do I ignore them outside regular office hours? Do I answer them because I’m bored? If I reply, does that set a precedent to answer email 24/7 when this is over? Where are my boundaries? I’m struggling with distraction, overthinking, and TMI. Do you feel the same? Here are some things we can do to exercise a bit of control over our time.

The Obvious

We know what we should do, let’s just do it. Make a new routine. Get dressed. (Slippers? Yes. Day time pajamas? No.) Eat healthy. Move our bodies. Start work at the same time every day. Connect with our teams. (And not just about work; how are they coping emotionally?) Take breaks (suggestions: listen to a podcast, walk the dog, study with the kids). Quit at the same time every day. Don’t work seven days a week.

Encourage

Until in-person networking events resume, we can spend more time on LinkedIn. Let’s wish someone a happy birthday, like an article a connection posted, thank those in healthcare, grocery, and other essential critical infrastructure for their hard work. I’m concentrating on both cheer leading for my connections and amplifying those looking for work.

Practice the Tech

We have to learn how to teleconference, decipher how our kids’ elearning platform works, figure out how much bandwidth we need, and which entertainment streaming services to use. It’s okay to take our time experimenting with features and figuring out what works best. Let’s not beat ourselves up for not being immediate experts on the new technologies all coming at us at once.

Communicate

Everyone who lives in our residences are home ALL. THE. TIME. And everyone is confused. Let’s ask for help. Can we stagger online meetings? Can we claim our own private work/school space? Can we respect a do-not-disturb note on the door when we need to work uninterrupted? Can we tag team supervising online learning? When our spouse has a virtual meeting, can we take the kids outside for recess?

Be Kind

There’s plenty of opportunity right now. We can check on our parents. Ask our neighbor if she needs something from the store before we head out. Video chat with our bestie. Stick a piece of paper on the refrigerator and ask everyone in our home to write one thing they’re grateful for on it everyday. Investigate ways our company can volunteer (e.g., help the local food bank or give blood). Hug the people we live with and stay six feet away from everyone else.

With our normal structure blown up, I think we feel pressured to be productive so we can prove our worth. But I think the source of that pressure may be ourselves. Our employers ask us to use our time wisely and that’s a big enough goal during this pandemic.

What are you doing to take control of your time during isolation? Please share in the comments section.

Here Comes the Judge

We judge situations and people every day: Is this job the best fit for me? Is this guy going to hurt me? Should I hire a math tutor for my son? Often, we have to assess them with very little information. We’re also on the other end of evaluation. We look in someone’s eyes, feel them examining us, and assume we come up short of their standards. That doesn’t make judging bad. It’s our mindset that’s in question. What happens when we judge ourselves? Why do we judge others? What habits can we adopt to turn our negative judgement into positive?

Ourselves:

We are inclined to be our own worst critics. If we weren’t, affirmations would not exist (e.g., “It’s okay to be a powerful woman”) We have to intentionally remind ourselves we’re good enough, we’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like us because we face adversity every day and we think we’re the cause of it. Yes, we reap what we sow, but sometimes life just happens. We can be really good at our jobs and then a pandemic comes along and our company lays us off. We habitually blame ourselves for the random misfortune in our lives, “If I were smarter, I would’ve sold my quota of widgets this month.” After a while, we maintain a low level of self-induced anxiety and it can be addicting. Why do we do this? Are we trying to protect ourselves from failure? Are we trying to use criticism to motivate ourselves to action?

Others:

Confession time: I’m judging people’s reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. I find myself thinking negatively about those who: aren’t in high risk categories being scared, are vocal about the inconvenience of their favorite doughnut shop being temporarily closed, or say our state’s leaders are overreacting. Then my own words slap me in the face: “Don’t judge others by the way you think.” I feel like fear is at the root of judgement. We’re jealous of what others have. We have to get along with people whose opinion is very foreign to ours. We think someone wants to take advantage of us. We’re afraid we’re wrong, we won’t have enough, or we’ll look stupid. Fear is useful when we use it as a warning system, but how do we keep it in its place?

Habits:

Realize we’re doing it. When we have a judgmental thought, we can stop and label it. Is it true? If not, let’s cast it aside and purposefully replace it with a true and positive thought.

Meditation. Whether it’s prayer, mindfulness, or quiet time, stopping to breathe, catalog thoughts, and decide which ones need redirection or discarded strengthens our accuracy in judging both situations and people.

Forgive ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes and they usually aren’t as consequential as we initially assume. Our culture pushes us to be better and do better; but if we do our best, that’s enough to feel good about and try again tomorrow.

What do you do to keep judgment in its place? Please share in the comments section.

Time to Tune Out

Have you noticed in meetings there’s at least one team member on her phone, tablet, or laptop the entire time? She could be taking notes, but no one assumes that do we? Hopefully, we make enough eye contact with the client to indicate he has our full attention. If we’re in front of our screens this much at work, how much more are we in front of them outside of work, and how damaging is it?

Break the Binge

Most of us spend more time in front of screens than we realize. On the average, Americans watch over five hours of television a day, and almost four hours on our computers, tablets, and/or smartphones. If we turn them off, we can buy ourselves a huge chunk of our day back and maybe our relationships too. Can we really concentrate on the story our partners or kids are telling us if we’re distracted by the puppy video we just scrolled to on Instagram? With all that time we could read a book on personal development, walk the dog, or have coffee with a friend.

CVS is a Not Just a Drug Store

Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) can happen when we spend hours looking at a computer or phone screen. When we use a computer at work, then go home and check our social media, that’s a lot of time exposed to screens. Do you use the 20-20-20 rule?

Couch Potato Chip

If we’re binge watching Netflix or spending the evening gaming after work, then we’re probably sitting still. If we aren’t moving around, we’re not burning calories or stretching our muscles, and we’re likely snacking. We’re not deeply connecting with people, but instead seriously considering feeding the Trolls. More good reasons to use the phone to either call a friend or play music while on the stationary bike instead of using it to cruise Twitter.

Put it Down and Walk Away

Here are the Mayo Clinic’s suggestions to help us put our devices away.

Here are mine:

Turn off notifications – If someone needs to get ahold of me in an emergency, they’re going to either text or call; not Facebook messenger me. Getting distracted by notifications on my phone throws me out of my flow while working. It takes so much time to recover, it’s not worth knowing which friends just added to their stories. Eliminating this distraction helps me be more productive and get things done then give my full attention to my friends Facebook stories at a more appropriate time.

Get rid of cable – My husband and I spent so many nights looking for (and failing to find) something to watch on our 189 cable television stations that when we moved three years ago, we didn’t bother subscribing to cable. We’ve found plenty to watch with an antenna and streaming services.

How do you convince yourself to step away from the screen? Please share your suggestions in the comments section.

Not Your Grandmother’s Resolution

As we prepare to celebrate the end of 2019, (after tornadoes and a mass shooting here in Dayton, OH, we say good riddance) and prepare for 2020, we think about making New Year’s resolutions. How about instead of resolving to stop smoking or lose weight, let’s:

Treat others the way we want to be treated

For example, when I have a new project at work requiring the talents of someone from another team, I first approach the person whose talent I need and ask if he’s interested. If so, I then approach his manager and ask her permission to assign him to my project. I outline the work, the time I expect it to take, and how it will benefit both the talent and the company. Respectful communication helps us all get more work done.

Listen and learn

Let’s seek opportunities that put us in the same room with people who have different backgrounds and lifestyles than us and listen to their stories. I’ve gotten to know some excellent people by scheduling a follow-up coffee after meeting at a networking event. Seeing the world from someone else’s perspective expands our own.

Flip the script

Much like Joan Jett covering the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, let’s do something unexpected. This takes a lot of energy. It’s easier to sit and complain about the way things are instead of leaving the break room and doing something about them. For example, if we usually wait to be asked for our ideas, let’s take initiative, write up a brief proposal, and email it to our manager.

Stop comparing

Our journeys are unique. If we compare ourselves to someone with fewer resources to make ourselves feel important, how petty is that? If we compare ourselves to someone further down the career path to make ourselves feel unimportant, how degrading is that? Let’s focus on improving our good habits one percent every day. Let’s only compare ourselves to who we were yesterday. Did we take a step toward our goals or improving our systems today? Let’s make that the bar we strive to meet.

Rise

For example, if we habitually complain about other women, why? Are we jealous? Do we think success was handed to them? Does it relieve us of the responsibility of hustle and sacrifice? Let’s stay in our lanes, assume they got where they are through hard work, and support them to advance even further. When we add value to someone’s life, the law of reciprocity kicks in and we can end up benefiting. Let’s intentionally lift each other up.

These resolutions build our self-esteem and confidence. Not only will we like ourselves more, but others will like us too, and that’s good for business. Some people light up the room when they walk in and some people light up the room when they walk out. In the new year, let’s aim to be the former.

Please share in the comments section how you resolve to stretch yourself in 2020.

Christmas Time is Here

The end of the year brings extra work at our companies: performance reviews, customer appreciations, year end financial closes, etc. Unfortunately these tasks happen at the same time we want to celebrate the holidays. How can we make the most of our time off work?

Unplug

This isn’t practical if we’re on call (doctors, firefighters, retailers, developers, you get the picture), but if we’re not, let’s avoid checking email the entire time we’re off. If we simply can’t bear the thought (guilty), limit it. How do we recognize our limit? If we’re constantly wondering whether or not that elusive client has replied yet, then for peace of mind, check. Consider checking email or noodling on projects at a set time every day (e.g., when you get up in the morning over coffee); only work at that time and for a certain amount of time (thirty to sixty minutes, maybe). I realized it was time to do this when my mom told me to stop checking my work email during our Thanksgiving meal prep.

Volunteer

We can go with a group or on our own. We can greet at our church’s Christmas Eve services or bag at our local food pantries. Giving our family and/or friends our full attention while serving our communities creates bonds that strengthens both our relationships and our mental health. Besides, we never know whom we might be serving alongside. Plenty of people meet potential employers while volunteering.

Relax

Holiday commitments often mean doing things we don’t want to (travel, making small talk with distant relatives, etc.). Let’s set aside a day, or at least a few hours, before January 2, to do something we want to do. Need some suggestions? If you’re an introvert, curl up with a book and hot cocoa or get that massage you desperately need but keep putting off. If you’re an extrovert, meet up with some friends for last-minute shopping, brunch, or a spa day.

Sleep

Time off is an opportunity to start a healthy routine of going to bed and getting up at the same time every day. If we’re visiting family or friends who want us to stay with them, but we have to crash on the couch, consider getting a hotel room. To me, having a place to retreat to rest is worth the cost.

Make Memories

Part of the fun of the holidays is remembering them for years afterward. Let’s create and participate in activities we can reminisce over. They don’t have to be expensive: make gingerbread cookies, embark on a selfie scavenger hunt, hold a board game tournament. Any activity that’s out of the ordinary (and maybe out of our comfort zones) will help us make memories to fondly recall in the years to come.

No matter how we choose to spend our time off, let’s commit to being present, eliminating as many distractions as possible, leaving our phones and laptops in another room, pushing some social engagements into January, and making time to focus on nurturing relationships and recharging ourselves.

Please share in the comments section how you intend to spend time away from work this holiday.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

And just like that…it’s December. Welcome to the end of the year! As we push to make our quotas, thank our customers for their business, and prepare for holiday celebrations, let’s schedule time in our calendars for play. You read me. I wrote p-l-a-y. There are plenty of opportunities this month for frivolity and we should take advantage of them for a very practical reason. Play helps us work.

Lynn Barnett, a professor of recreation, sports and tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, “At work, play has been found to speed up learning, enhance productivity and increase job satisfaction.” In this article, she also says, “Highly playful adults feel the same stressors as anyone else, but they appear to experience and react to them differently, allowing stressors to roll off more easily than those who are less playful.” In his book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Dr. Stuart Brown says, “Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job…work does not work without play.”

For example, when we concentrate on figuring out a problem, our minds can get stuck in an endless loop going over the same details. If we take a break and focus on something else, we get new data to process. Although it’s counterintuitive; the more stress we’re under, the more we need play in order to function. When we get up from our desks and move around, blood flow to our brains increases and we think better. If we walk to the break room and enter a conversation, we foster teamwork. These activities refresh our energy and can prevent burnout by letting our brains reboot and receive input that has nothing to do with our problem. We naturally apply this new data to our challenge. We start to think creatively. We stop thinking about how we’ve solved problems in the past. We stop worrying about the consequences for a minute and imagine what would happen if anything goes. This permits us to relax and look at it from another angle. The situation looks totally different if we’re standing on our heads instead of our feet. When we see something differently and present it in a new light, that’s innovation and it might just trigger a solution. Gymnastics anyone?

For play to have a positive effect on our work we should do it everyday, so we need to schedule it and give it priority. Play is an activity that has no purpose and is considered non-productive. We can do it alone or with others. Here are some examples of play that don’t necessarily cost money:

Read a book
Pet your pet
Watch your favorite artist’s concert footage on YouTube
Drive around looking at neighborhood Christmas lights
Toss a football
Crossword puzzles
Board games

George Bernard Shaw said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” This holiday season when kids are defined as from one to ninety-two, let’s make time to play.

Please share how you’re going to incorporate play into your seasonal celebration in the comments section.

Royal Pain

Ever wonder what happens when a mean girl grows up? She becomes a Queen Bee (QB): a female leader insecure in her position who treats her female employees worse than she treats her male employees. Obsessed with maintaining her authority, she views other women as competitors and excludes them from high profile projects that could advance their careers. What does a QB act like? How do you deal with one? Short of a giant flyswatter, how do we eliminate QBs?

Beehavior (see what I did there?)

A QB:

Dismisses our ideas without discussion
Interrupts us mid-sentence
Excludes us from meetings
Chips away at our confidence (e.g., yells at us for not performing a task we weren’t aware we’re supposed to do)
Undermines us behind our backs (e.g., gossips about us to colleagues)
QBs are effective because they prey on unique female vulnerabilities men don’t usually think about (e.g., not smart enough, dressing inappropriately, too emotional, not committed to our careers because we’re mothers, etc.)

Until there are as many female leaders as male, freezing out the competition is an effective survival strategy.

Remove the Sting

A young woman starting out her career naturally looks around the organization for a successful mature woman to emulate. The chosen mentor may see this as competition and in the vein of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, actively subvert the younger woman’s efforts to advance her career. If we aspire to be leaders, we have to stand up for ourselves. Note instances where the QB treats us differently than our male coworkers and ask why. Let’s politely ask for details on our job performances and in what areas she’d like us to improve. When she gets mean, we’ll keep our composure and take her assessment respectfully. We’ll admire her work, tell her we want to be as good at our jobs as she is at hers, and ask her to share the secret of her success.

Extinction

In the good news department, this article says there aren’t as many QBs as we think. The assumption there is something in women’s genes that make us unable to get along with each other is a myth. QBs are the result of inequality and gender discrimination. Women protect our territory because we’re the non-dominant group, not because we’re women. As more women reach higher levels of management, being punished (e.g., low job performance ratings, not getting promoted) for promoting diversity by elevating other women, should decrease.

Learning to Fly

Women should mentor other women and publicly celebrate other women’s accomplishments. When a woman behaves like a man, let’s stop judging her so harshly. Let’s call both men and women out on the language they use to describe our female coworkers. For example, in a recent interview, Taylor Swift pointed out, “…A man does something, it’s strategic; a woman does the same thing, it’s calculated.” So let’s watch our mouths; no trash talking other women. People view us as women, not as professionals. Let’s use that bias to our advantage. Let’s embrace other women on our teams, work hard together, support each other, and deliver the goods. Let’s earn reputations for increasing revenue and giving excellent customer service. When we’re in positions to promote women, let’s do it. Let’s create a sisterhood of success. When women have each other’s backs, we all rise.

Have you ever experienced Queen Bee Syndrome at work? What did you do to change the relationship? Please share your story in the comments section.

You May be a Leader

Time for a riddle:
What’s the difference between someone who is a leader and someone who is in charge?

Answer:
Leader = one who glues a team together and gets things done
Bureaucrat = one who is titled and officially in charge

Can this be the same person? Sure. Is it always? (That’s not a riddle.) If you don’t have a managerial title, how can you tell if you’re a leader?

Leadership is simply influence and everyone has it. You probably lead something or someone whether or not you recognize it as leadership. To find out, ask yourself these 10 questions.

1. Do I live in the future?

If you look two weeks down the road, plan two steps ahead, or see what currently exists and how it could be used to create something that doesn’t yet exist, you may be a leader.

2. Do I look at current processes and imagine how they could be improved?

When a coworker says, “But this is the way we’ve always done it.” If you say, “Yeah, but what if we can find a better way?” you may be a leader.

3. Do I communicate clearly?

If you can present the overview of how to achieve the project’s deliverable, as well as the steps necessary to create it, you may be a leader.

4. Do I collect people into teams?

If you identify coworkers who share your value system, solicit their opinions on your projects, invite collaboration, and facilitate partnership, you may be a leader.

5. Do I hate waste?

If you know a teammate has an underused ability that can enhance the project, and you appeal to their sense of purpose to focus it on accelerating the project, you may be a leader.

6. Do I reproduce myself?

If you teach teammates how to do what you do thereby sharing your power and encouraging them to find theirs, you may be a leader.

7. Do I connect people?

If you meet someone at a networking event and immediately think, “How can I help this person achieve her goals?” you may be a leader.

8. Do I eliminate obstacles?

If you know what action to take to keep the project moving toward completion and do it, if you ask for forgiveness instead of seeking approval, or if you think any decision is better than no decision, you may be a leader.

9. Do I make wise choices?

If you filter decisions through your company’s mission statement, you may be a leader.

10. Do I think more about others than about me?

If your main concern is advancing the project, even if it means a coworker will outshine you, you may be a leader.

The bureaucrat has the fancy title and big salary because he is held responsible for the team’s success. The leader has influence to achieve that success. If that person is not one and the same in your workplace, follow the leader.

Do you have managers in your office who aren’t leaders? Do you have managers in your office who are leaders? Please share your observations in the comments section.

Summer Slump?

Summer weekends bring more daylight hours, lots of community activities, and plenty of opportunities to get outside and forget about work. It almost feels like a mini-vacation. Then Monday comes. My inbox overflows because something happened on Saturday. A project halts because a coworker is on vacation. Interruptions prevent me from completing anything. Mondays seem more difficult during the summer. Here are some things I do to make them easier.

Saturday: I sleep in thirty minutes later than during the week signaling my body the routine is different today. During the week, I allow stuff to pile up: laundry, bills, personal email, etc., so I tackle the low hanging fruit early in the day. Saturday is the day to grocery shop, clean bathrooms, change bed linens, and food prep. This leaves the rest of the day to relax. Unless a work emergency happens, I don’t think about the office and I don’t check my email.

Sunday: Again, I sleep in thirty minutes later than normal and get stuff done early. I like to do something meaningful like take a walk with my husband to watch the sun rise, watch our church’s service, write a LinkedIn article, or read. I also try to connect with other people by FaceTiming our daughter, texting my parents, or having coffee with a friend. (Some other suggestions: volunteer, ride bikes with nieces/nephews, brunch with friends.) Then, I get a head start on the week. Around 6:30pm I glance at my calendar for the upcoming week and check my work email in case something’s come up affecting one of Monday’s meetings. I don’t reply unless it’s an emergency. The only thing I may do is send myself a reminder note regarding what’s coming up this week and what I need to do to prepare for it. After that, I set out clothes for the next day so I have one less thing to think about on Monday morning. These minor actions eliminate the Sunday Scaries so I can enjoy my last evening before work.

Monday: I get out of bed at my normal work-week time and try to ease re-entry. I get to the office about ninety minutes before my first meeting of the day to set up my work space, get coffee and water, take action on any reminder emails I sent myself yesterday, and check my notes from Friday. As the day progresses, I take short breaks to increase my productivity. During these breaks, I may reward myself by checking social media, but just one platform so I don’t fall down that rabbit hole and lose track of time. I also try to change my scenery. If it’s nice outside, I can walk around the building. Thirty minutes before before the end of the day, I take stock and make to-do lists for tomorrow so that summer Monday feeling doesn’t bleed into Tuesday.

Do summer Mondays seem harder to you too? Please share what you do to combat the summer slump in the comments section.