Emotional Intelligence – Page 7

Ghosting an Employer May Have Grave Consequences

A couple of months ago, my office was hiring for an entry-level position. We scheduled an interview with a candidate both we and our client were excited about. The day came, the client came, the time came, but the interviewee didn’t. No phone call, no text, no email. We waited half an hour. Crickets. Finally, our client gave up and left. Awkward. We were ghosted. Ghosting is a term usually reserved to describe cutting off communication without warning with someone you no longer want to date, but now employers are being haunted. All of us have found an open position we loved, spent hours adapting our resume to the job description and writing a clever cover letter, then sent it off only to hear silence from the employer. Kinda makes you feel entitled not to respond when the shoe is on the other foot, doesn’t it? But that behavior could have grave consequences on your career.

Why does ghosting happen? It can happen when an inexperienced candidate has multiple offers and wants to avoid conflict. Social media and texting help us communicate easily, but don’t allow for face to face bonding so relationships can be shallow and easily left. Another reason is now that there are more job openings in America than employees to fill them, ghosting seems to be a bit of payback to the system that allowed employers to only contact the applicant they wanted to hire and leave the rest of us hanging.

What can employers do? They could take a cue from the travel industry and overbook interviews like an airline over sells tickets. They could hold group interviews which both saves time and creates a sense of competition among the applicants. I was in a group interview for a side gig at a department store a couple of years ago and it made me want the job more. I not only saw who was up for the position, but also the interviewer’s nonverbal reactions to my competitors answers. I then tailored my answers based on her reactions to theirs. I got the job. Employers can call or text a new hire 24 hours before her first day with a friendly, “Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!” message. They can treat people with respect. If the candidate is not the right fit, communicate that message kindly and as soon as possible.

What should job seekers do? There’s a cliche that goes, “You meet the same people on the way down the ladder as you did on the way up.” The recruiter who found you for this job, may also work for another employer you want to work for later. People have long memories and tend not to forget who ghosted them. For example: Attendance was a crucial aspect of the job for which we were hiring. If you ghosted the interview, we can’t rely on you to show up for the job. It’s not like you can come back to us and say, “JK, changed my mind, I’ll take that job now.” You’ve broken trust with us and won’t get it back. If you accept another offer, respectfully tell the hiring manager as soon as possible. At least send an email, but best practice is to have the difficult conversation. Remember that department store side gig I mentioned in the last paragraph? I began onboarding and found out within two weeks this was a bad fit. Did I want to ghost? Yes. Did I? No. When I walked into the manager’s office to tell her, she took one look at me and said, “You’re quitting, aren’t you? Why do all the adults quit?” Bottom line: She thought I was mature and we parted amicably. If I want to go back, the door is still open. It was worth the forty-five seconds of discomfort.

Have you ever ghosted a potential employer? Have you ever had a interviewee just not show up? Share you stories here:

Spin Cycle

My manager called me into her office and, as gently as she could, informed me we were trending short on production for the month. To reach goal, we needed ANOTHER big push. The room started to spin. I felt lightheaded. All I could think about was how long and hard I worked to get our current production, how other urgent projects were clamoring for my attention, and how little time I had to generate more production before the end of the month. Sound familiar? Everyone works in demanding environments with lots of competing priorities and limited resources. There are interruptions: The phone rings, a delivery arrives, an email from the client hits my inbox flagged high priority. There are distractions: Coworkers’ conversations, scrambling to cover a shift when someone calls in sick, a customer’s poor planning requires an emergency site visit. There are personal issues: The aftermath of a death in the family, managing my diabetes, concern over our daughter’s out-of-town-big-city interview. These triggers cause a sort of paralysis because everything has to be done and it has to be done right NOW. Feeling overwhelmed is a vicious circle. Thoughts of everything I have to do leads to thoughts of not having enough time to do them which leads me back to thoughts of everything I have to do. To just stand there and let my head (and the room) spin, doesn’t help me to stop feeling overwhelmed. So, here’s what I do:

After a little Box Breathing, I write down everything paralyzing me. Then, I prioritize:

What is the item with the nearest deadline?
What is urgent? What is important? (You may benefit from the Eisenhower Matrix )
What absolutely has to be done today?
Do I have to do all these things? Can I task someone else with some of them?

Then I take one problem and come at it from a different direction:

Can this problem be turned into a project?
Can the project be broken down into a process?
Can I take a step to start the process?

When I’ve got a plan to solve the first problem, will that strategy work for any of the other problems on my list?

Sometimes I pick the low hanging fruit: Reply to easily answered emails, update the shared calendar, or take the mandatory company-wide security training. And sometimes I take a bite of the elephant: I do the task I dread the most so it stops haunting me.

I stop thinking.

I clear my head by walking around the office complex, going to lunch with a friend, praying, running the dog to the groomer, or listening to music or a podcast.
After leaving the office for the day, I write down tasks I don’t want to forget, but don’t need to do right this second. I hide my laptop and phone. Out of sight out of mind. If I walk past my phone, I want to see if the customer replied to my voicemail yet. If I don’t walk past it, I don’t think about it. Sometimes, I leave my laptop in my car (my car is in a garage). I have it if I need it, but it’s not beckoning me.

It seems counterintuitive to stop hacking away at my to-do list, but sometimes throwing more brain-power at the problem doesn’t solve it. It just makes my head hurt. A solution often comes quickly after I allow the problem to simmer for a while and stop overcomplicating it.

If it solves the problem, I work during my time off (vacation, weekends, etc). I hustle, but I try to be realistic about what I can control and what I can’t. The nature of my job is to fish. I don’t hunt. (I’d like to hunt, but I can’t force the customers take my wares.) This helps me focus on what I can impact.

Work can be hard. I hope these suggestions help. Share some of yours here:

Back-handed Benevolence

WARNING: The following post is more savage than usual. Read at your own risk.

I’ve already commented on sexism in this blog, but another form of it has hit my radar and I can’t get it out of my head: Benevolent Sexism. How have I missed this?! This has happened to me throughout my career. In fact, I use it to my advantage whenever possible. Am I being lazy? Am I taking advantage of an unfair societal norm? Am I overthinking this? Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske did an extremely thorough study on sexism in 1996, in which they defined two types of sexism: Hostile and Benevolent.

Summary: Hostile Sexism (HS) is insulting women because of stereotypes; IE: objectifying women and/or degrading women. Benevolent Sexism (BS) is complementing women because of stereotypes; IE: always being told you look good and never being told your work looks good. Thanks to the Me Too movement, hostile sexism will probably not be tolerated in the office. Women would likely rebel against overt efforts of control. But the facade of BS makes women think this control is okay. After all, men are trying to take care of us, right? It’s all warm and fuzzy until you realize you’re contributing to the sabotage of your leadership goals.

Stereotypes:
Women are born kind, emotional, and compassionate. You grab a coffee for your male coworker while getting your own. He praises you for your thoughtfulness. When you suggest he get it next time, he calls you,“bossy.”

Women are weak, sensitive, and vulnerable. Your male coworker gently takes the five gallon water bottle from you to lift it up onto its pedestal then hands you the stack of notes he was carrying and asks you to go make him copies while he changes out the empty bottle for the full one.

Women are more intuitive than men and are naturally more organized. This assumption has you doing the heavy lifting of mediating conflicts, buying the boss’s birthday gift, and being the default note taker in the budget meeting because women are naturally better at those things.

I thought these stereotypes were trivial until my research revealed the attitude behind them. Those men aren’t thinking they’re helping you, they think you’re not capable. Not speaking up leaves your manager with the impression you’re not capable. Consequently, expectations of your job performance is low and you’re overlooked for career-advancing projects. BS seduces women to stay in stereotypical roles reinforcing inequality in both promotions and raises.

Struggles: Since men and women are born physically different, does that mean we should treat each other differently? Since women physically suffer once a month and make, carry, and give birth to children, aren’t we owed some car maintenance and bug killing? Where is the line between chivalry and BS? If we believe a woman isn’t capable of changing a tire, do we then believe she isn’t capable of running a company? If your boss asks you to plan the office holiday party instead of asking the guy in the cubicle next to you who has the same status in the company, has he revealed his assumptions about what men and women are good at? Will those assumptions influence his business decisions (he lets you plan a project, but not manage it) and performance reviews (he then penalizes you for not managing any projects)? Will your male coworker get a bigger raise than you because he has a family to support even though you both do the same job? If you decide to have a child, will the boss judge you as a bad mother for returning to work?

This is a cultural phenomenon that won’t be solved with a blog post. But we can recognize it, call it out, and talk about it. So, what can we do? Share your thoughts here:

Office Vampires

“You aren’t listening to me are you?” My coworker asked. “No.” I admitted. “I’m really not. Sorry.” But I wasn’t sorry. I was working. And he was telling the same story he told yesterday. TWICE. I’d just come from an extremely long meeting with a high maintenance coworker, the office was full of chatter, and I had four hours worth of work to do in the twenty-five minutes left in the week. My coworker was in the middle of his story before I entered the room and my back was to him so why did he assume I was listening?! He wasn’t being malicious, just annoying and inconvenient, but did I have to sacrifice productivity for the sake of politeness? No, I didn’t. But, I did have to gently point out that I had to concentrate on a project with a hard, rapidly approaching deadline. Office vampires come in many flavors, but they all suck. Here are three examples and suggestions on how to cope:

Gossips: Henry Thomas Buckle said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” I try really hard not to say anything behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to his face. I learned this lesson early in my career. My office was on the corner of a busy intersection of the building and coworkers liked to drop in and chat, usually about other coworkers. With an amazing amount of frequency, I’d be in a gossipy conversation with someone and the subject of the gossip would walk into my office. This happened so often that one of the people who regularly came by to chat noticed. “Every time we talk about someone, he walks in! Maybe we should talk about Elvis to see if he’s still alive.” At that point, I knew I needed to change. So my strategy became asking my coworker for the source of the gossip. When a coworker came to my office and said, “Everybody says the manager is a jerk.” “Really?” I said. “Name three.” He couldn’t. Asking for sources and facts to back up his claim became my favorite way to shut a gossip down because it takes away his fun. If he pressed on, I let him know he’d hit a boundary: “Sounds like office gossip to me. I just don’t have time to deal with stuff like that.” I also realized that if he gossiped to me about other people, he was also gossiping to other people about me. To better protect yourself from these types of coworkers, be careful what and whom you talk about at work. It’s wise to save your personal life for your friends and family.

One-uppers: Much like Kristin Wiig’s Penelope character on SNL, these are conversational narcissists. I once had a coworker who only asked me about my weekend so she could tell me about hers. She’d ramble on and on as if she was delivering a monologue. When it was my turn to speak, she used filler words (ie: “That’s interesting, but when I…”) to rush me through my end of the conversation so she could speak again. When she was in the workroom talking to someone and I entered, she’d call my name to get my attention and expand her audience. These types of coworkers are seeking attention. It’s best practice to act uninterested. Maybe go to the ladies room or make that follow up phone call. Be kind, but don’t be their spotlight.

Parade-rainers: Some coworkers find your success threatening and will try (consciously or unconsciously) to bring you down in order to feel better about themselves. For example: Once while I was celebrating the completion of a difficult and time consuming project, a coworker said to me, “Good luck getting them to pay on time.” I snapped. Although, I like to remember it as being assertive. I said, “Let me have my moment, please. We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” Misery loves company. Don’t provide company to these types of coworkers. It’s not really about you. They single you out because you’re convenient. This is a good time to practice your emotional intelligence. You have to get along with them, but you don’t have to care what they think or how they feel.

Office vampires are usually negative people, but they’re still people and as such, deserve respect and consideration. Set boundaries, kill them with kindness, and be assertive. Then, don’t think about them outside the office. They suck up enough of your time already.

Do you have suggestions on how to deal with an Office Vampire? Share them here:

Would You Rather? A: Face Scylla OR… B: Face Charybdis

I had a front row seat to the series of unpleasant decisions one has to make when caring for an aging and ailing parent. During the final years of my ninety-year-old grandmother’s life, she lived in her house. Both she and the house needed lots of care. She had a son, a daughter, and two adult granddaughters. She didn’t want to live with any of us, she didn’t want any of us to live with her, and she didn’t want to live in an assisted care facility. We worried constantly about her driving, her falling in her home, and her taking care of herself. My parents and uncle worked very hard for two years managing both their own households and hers. It was like a job: Grammy was the boss and the family was her team. What do you do when seemingly impossible demands are made of your team? What happens when you don’t like any of your choices? Here are three lessons I learned that may benefit you at work:

Communicate: During the last two years of Grammy’s life, she went to the hospital’s emergency department several times. These visits were unplanned and usually happened at inconvenient times. She had seven family members who could either take her or meet her there. These trips required communication and negotiation among the family. Who was on scene when the decision was made? Is this trip necessary? Are there other options? (Is her Primary Care Physician available? Is this really an Urgent Care visit?) It was like an emergency at work. Has this ever happened to you? You have a 5:30PM appointment across town and the boss hits you up at 4:55PM for a report he wants by 8:00AM tomorrow. What do you do? Cancel your plans because he needs help immediately? Remind him that poor planning on his part does not constitute an emergency on yours? Neither choice seems wise. This is the time to compose yourself, keep calm, and communicate. Start a dialogue enlisting your manager’s effort in the solution. It’s perfectly respectful to say, “I have an appointment, what are our options?”

Step away: We had a difficult time making plans during the last couple years of Grammy’s life because there was always a chance we’d have to cancel them. For example: We wanted to take Mom to see an exhibition of the Terracotta Army for her birthday, but we needed to buy tickets in advance. After much deliberation, we decided not to go because the odds of Grammy needing us were pretty high at the time. We ended up celebrating with brunch; a shorter event closer to home. Sound like a familiar work situation? For example: You need to take vacation or otherwise lose those days, but someone quit and your responsibilities increased. If you can’t manage to take a few days off in a row, at least take a long weekend to let your brain rest and reboot. Exercise, go to a movie, go to brunch, read a book, listen to music. Your brain can come up with creative solutions by associating unlikely connections. Give your brain more resources, experiences, and connections to access. You never know where inspiration will come from.

Be kind: Everyone wanted to do what was best for Grammy, but what was best for her was both subjective to and exclusive to everyone involved. It’s often like that at work too, right? Your manager’s priority may be whatever the corporate office dictates. Your coworker’s priority may be whatever keeps the customer off her back. Your priority may be whatever gets you to hit your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). When all those priorities collide, Ask yourself: Which solution causes the least amount of damage? Which solution is the most kind to the most people involved? Filter your choices through your moral compass. Remember the situation is temporary and don’t allow emotion to cloud your judgement. Stress will exacerbate the situation, so take a time out to stop and think. Make a list of just the facts. Don’t color this list with feelings or judgements. Next, list all the possible options for resolving the situation no matter how outside the box. Then, look at the list and decide what solution does the most good for the most people. Even if you can’t make the situation a win for everyone, at least you can see who will be impacted the most and do the best you can for them.

What are some hard decisions you’ve made lately? Tell me about them here:

Vacation or Workation?

Recently, I spent four hours of a paid vacation day working from home. I simply couldn’t stop. It was so quiet I could think. As ideas came, I could act on them without interruption. I got as much done in four hours at home as I usually do in eight at the office. I felt like I should stop, but I had so much to do. There’s no end to follow up and clients who want my attention, so how do I know when to quit working and actually relax on my vacation days? A few weeks ago I told you why you should take a vacation. Now I’m going to tell you why it’s okay to work (a bit) during it. Normally, just the thought of working while on vacation makes me nauseous, but here are three reasons I get out the antacid and the laptop:

It Demonstrates Commitment: It’s not fair, but it’s true. Plenty of companies expect employees to at least check email if they are going to be away more than a day; and so, the workation was born. 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women plan to work on vacation this year. Other members of my team with similar responsibilities work while they’re on vacation. I’ll look bad if I don’t. For example: If a customer voicemails me on Monday, and I wait until the following Monday to return his call, I might lose him. Since I can’t risk losing a lead, I email my designated backup and ask her to follow up. Then, I make note of it for my next performance evaluation. What good is my commitment to the company if they don’t know about it?

Less Stress on Vacation and at Work: I met with my manager the day before I left for vacation and we set ground rules. What work was I willing to do on vacation? Check email/voicemail? Attend client sponsored events? Handle an emergency? What constitutes an emergency? We set some boundaries. We determined whom in the office should be my designated back up. I gave them both a list of my projects that need monitored and their status. I told them who might call looking for me. I set an out of office email message referring to my designate and included her contact information. I proposed a time of day when I’ll consistently check messages. Fifteen minutes first thing during my morning coffee is what is convenient for all of us. I’ll either answer the messages, flag them, or pass them along to my delegate. I promised not to sabotage myself by responding to messages outside of that set time. When I stay connected and know things are running smoothly, I don’t worry. When an emergency happens, I handle it and don’t worry. When my inbox isn’t overflowing upon my return, I don’t worry.

No Guilt: I have too many pressing deadlines to take time off, yet I risk burnout if I don’t take it. Does this sound like you? Paid vacation is one of my benefits. If I don’t take it, I’m sending a message to my company that they’re wasting money. Yet, I’m expected to check messages because I have a laptop and a smartphone. If I want to totally unplug, I vacation somewhere I can’t get an internet connection. If I stay at a hotel with a designated business center, I take advantage of it. I can get plenty done in a short amount of time with free wi-fi, a secure internet connection, and a printer. Then, I tune out and enjoy the rest of my day. Tuning out is actually work for me. I have to make a conscious decision to live in the moment and enjoy it. I have to decide to stop thinking about what might be going on at work and concentrate on relaxation. I don’t mind checking in because I don’t want an important task to fall through the cracks. I enjoy my time off more when I know things are okay back at the office. I have an innate FOMO, but as long as I’m working because I want to and not because I have to, my peace of mind is worth it. And it’s worth my T.E.A.M.

Do you take vacations or workations? Tell me about them here:

Pardon the Manterruption

Manterrupting – When a man unnecessarily interrupts a woman who is talking. Example: Last week during a meeting, I was making a point. One of the men at the table jumped in with his opinion. He seemed to think he was doing me a favor by adding to my narrative. I wasn’t finished making my point and he steered the conversation in a direction I didn’t intend to go. He made it all about him because he “needed to clarify for myself.”

Bropropriating – When a man takes credit for a woman’s idea. Example: Returning from lunch, I found one of the account managers on speaker with a contractor. We have an open floor plan in our small office and I heard every word of both sides of the phone conversation. The contractor had purchased television advertising. He was writing his own script and having trouble. In a former job I wrote television commercials, so the conversation piqued my interest. I asked a few questions, made a few suggestions, and eventually offered to write a script. His shoot was scheduled for the next day, so I had to email the script to him immediately. I did. I received no reply. Crickets. Three weeks later I’m sitting in my living room on Saturday morning watching the local news and what do I see? The contractor’s commercial that I wrote. Writing scripts is not a service we normally provide. I did it to be a team player. Not only did I not make any money from my intellectual property, but the contractor also didn’t even acknowledge my contribution.

Manterrupting and bropropriating are linked. One often leads to the other, particularly in meetings, and especially in meetings where men outnumber women. There is even an app you can use to to track manterruptions during conversations. I once worked for a church where bropropriating was intentional. I was the only female on a team of four. We met weekly to plan creative elements for future worship services. The man in charge referred to taking someone’s idea and running with it a “stepping stone”. Gee, that’s a nice term for bropropriating. As if it’s normal. As if it’s not just taking credit for another person’s creativity. Here’s how it worked: A topic was introduced and the first person they looked at to offer suggestions on how to present it was me. Ladies first, you know. How convenient that I was the only “lady” in the room. Then they’d proceed to tear down the idea and offer their “better” ideas. Then we’d circle back around to my idea that they decided they liked after all. They just didn’t like hearing it from me. I was outnumbered 3 to 1. Now I know why my ideas were seldom acknowledged as my own . There were no other females in those meetings to amplify me. This process made me not want to attend these meetings. What was the point of being creative if someone else got credit for my creativity?

To make things worse, women are in competition with each other. As if there isn’t room enough for all of us. Where did we get that idea? If you are the only female on staff and another female is hired, do you partner with her or undermine her? The system is hostile by nature, but this doesn’t have to be the case. We can influence our environment by promoting the fact that the team will get further together than we will on our own. If we’re in a meeting where men outnumber us, we need to speak with authority. None of this, “Well, I don’t know whether this will work or not, but…” We can use non-verbals and power poses like lowering our tone of voice, walking to the front of the room, pointing, and placing our hand on the table to imply command of the conversation. When another woman makes an intelligent point, we can amplify it by immediately speaking up and agreeing with her and giving her credit for coming up with the idea. We can look interested when she speaks, nod our heads in agreement, and lean forward in our chairs. If a man interrupts a woman, interrupt his interruption by saying, “Jim, I’d really like to hear the rest of what Susan has to say.” It feels like trying to turn the Titanic around, but the workforce needs everyone’s brains; not just the brains attached to the loudest mouths.

Please tell me your manterrupting and bropropriating stories here:

When Can-do Becomes Can-don’t

Our daughter always wanted to be on the go. From the time she was born, I took her to appointments, meetings, and to the office. When she was three years old, she wanted to go to preschool. Then she wanted to have play dates, then she wanted to play volleyball, then she wanted to play club volleyball, then she got an after school and summer job. My husband (her father) and I usually encouraged these activities because they kept her out of trouble. In hindsight, I think we may have gone too far. Now a senior in college, she’s just a girl who can’t say no. This summer she worked for her campus recreation center, a kids’ camp, our local minor league baseball team, and she house/pet sat. Currently, she’s a resident advisor for her college, the fitness supervisor of development at her college’s campus recreation center, a member of her college’s power lifting team, and the vice president of operations for her college’s campus activities board. She’s extremely busy and classes haven’t even started yet. (Is it ironic that she’s so busy at college she doesn’t have time to attend classes?) All these items look fabulous on her resume, but she’ll quickly burn out. Can you relate? Here are three things to consider before taking on another task.

Know Your Limits: You want to be perceived as helpful or “can-do.” But you can’t do your best work when you’re over-committed. You risk missing deadlines. You get distracted by tasks that are urgent in multiple projects and neglect the tasks that are important in each project. You have physical boundaries. There are 24 hours in a day and you shouldn’t spend all of them working. Learn to recognize time vampires. These are tasks that suck the time right out of your day, but get you no further to reaching your goals. Ultimately, they make your job performance suffer because you are wasting time doing those tasks instead of concentrating on hitting your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Before accepting an additional assignment when your schedule is already full, ask yourself: “What’s the worst that can happen if I say no? Will I miss the opportunity of a lifetime?” When you do many things, you can’t do any one of them with excellence. The job market used to favor the jacks of all trades and masters of none, but not any more. Employers have a specific pain they’re trying to relieve by hiring someone. You want to find the employer for whom your skills are the cure. Be careful to not waste time on projects that water down your resume instead of honing the skills you’re developing.

Be Careful Whose Approval You Seek: I once had a manager whose motto was,“If you want something done ask a busy person.” A reputation for getting things done makes you a target. You become her go-to person when your boss realizes you work harder than your coworkers. Are you constantly working more hours to accommodate additional projects? Are you committing to another task when you haven’t finished the last three you started? If so, then your dependability is a liability. Part of your job is to make your manager’s job easier, and you want her approval, but she most likely expects you to tell her when your plate is full. She’ll probably keep piling on the work until you gently tell her to push pause. It’s uncomfortable to turn requests down while your supervisor looks at you with her big Puss In Boots sad eyes. No is a whole sentence, but you want to be perceived as polite, efficient, and a team player. So when turning down a task, be kind, authentic, and offer an alternative. For example: “I’m sorry Sue calling in sick puts you in a bind. I can’t take her shift, but have you asked Diane?” As for your coworkers, it’s pleasant to get along, but their approval is desired, not required. We tend to assume everyone else is as busy as we are and feel like we are letting them down if we deny their request. Stop. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. You are responsible for you. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you have to get comfortable with disappointing people. Be careful whom you want to impress and whose approval you seek.

Use a Decision Making Process: Recently, I was approached to take on a volunteer position. I immediately filtered it through my decision making process. I asked myself: Will this be worth my T.E.A.M.? If a project or request gets caught in that filter, then I say no. Don’t take on extracurriculars because you have FOMO. People aren’t having as much fun without you as Snapchat wants you to believe. Will this project distract you from pursuing your goals? For example: If you have a physically demanding day tomorrow, should you really go out with friends tonight? People learn to respect you when you say no to things that pull you away from your priorities. Your example may even empower someone else to say no to something that is not a wise choice for her. Sometimes you have to say no to good things so you have bandwidth to do great things.

Share your stories of saying no to good things to make room for great things here:

I’m Sorry (Not Sorry)

Haters. Don’t you just hate ‘em? Why do people think it’s okay to judge your behavior? I mean, kvetch all you want, but don’t say it out loud. How rude! (Mardi said in her best Stephanie Tanner voice.) Ever feel like some of the things for which you’re criticized are just plain dumb? Here are three things for which you should not apologize:

Taking Time For Yourself: Hang out at Starbucks before work. Skip that invitation to go out in favor of staying in and reading or watching Hulu or napping or whatever. Take a vacation day from work and go to the movies. Attend that personal leadership conference. Book that spa day. Develop that exercise routine. You have both mental and physical limits. You have to refuel. If you don’t, it gets harder to focus on tasks and solve problems. I know it goes against the dominant “do whatever it takes to get the project done” mentality, but working non-stop actually prevents you from getting the project done. When you’re rested you work smarter and not harder. It isn’t just your body that needs rest, your brain has to stop thinking about work in order to reboot. So take a few hours and stop thinking about work. When you return, you’ll be surprised how ready your brain is to think differently about the task you left.

Setting Boundaries: “No,” is a whole sentence. You are not obligated to attend that event, serve on that committee, or mentor everyone who asks. Is it worth your T.E.A.M.? Leaders know their time is precious and limited and they learn how to say, “No.” You demonstrate self-respect when you refuse a commitment for which you know you cannot make time. You absolutely have to say no to situations that endanger your safety or integrity. If you work in an environment that supports work-life integration (handling tasks for your personal life while at work and vice versa), work will infringe on your personal time. It’s difficult not to think about work while you’re at home and sometimes it isn’t practical to leave work at the office. Just like it’s not always feasible to leave what’s happening at home outside the office. Be aware of your level of frustration. When it gets overwhelming, take a break. Identify what needs immediate action and what can wait. Then train your mind to focus only on what needs done and to ignore what can wait.

Spending Money You’ve Saved on Yourself: You work hard for the money (shout out to Donna Summer) so give yourself an allowance every week and let it add up. It takes discipline and restraint to leave that money alone, so when you want to spend it, do so with zero guilt. If you want to buy a necklace, laptop, or Michael Kors handbag, and you have enough cash set aside, do it. In fact, it makes you a better employee. How? You become persistent. You’re motivated to work in order to buy things you want. When you reward yourself, you want to do it again, so you have to go back to work to earn the money to do it. You also learn how to achieve your goals. When you want a promotion, you have to figure out what you have to do to get it and how long it will take. You use the same skills with a purchasing goal. You also became self-aware. What you buy says a lot about what you find valuable. When you identify your values, you can translate that to your job. What excites you about your work? How can you use that to stay motivated to get your job done?

Tell me some things people make you feel like you should apologize for here:

Who Are You Calling Old?

More frequently I hear, “You look great for your age,” as opposed to, “You look great.” Sometimes I shop in the junior department to get the right size and I get “the look” from the other shoppers. You know, the look that says, “You’re too old to wear this style.” Men and younger women offer to carry heavy things for me. I lift weights four days a week. I can carry three 12 packs of Caffeine Free Diet Coke, people! When I just wear mascara, I look fine in the mirror, but Snapchat tells a very different story. In getting to know a new coworker, she asked if I had any children. I replied, “Our daughter is a senior in college.” She said, “You still have a child in school?!” Nice. Merriam-Webster defines ageism as “prejudice or discrimination against a particular age-group and especially the elderly.” Did you know there is a longevity revolution? It’s discussed mostly in terms of economy and health care, but I feel like it means, “Hey, we’re all living longer, so stop treating me like I’m irrelevant.” That’s the fear, right? Being irrelevant? Your needs are unmet because you get marginalized? As usual, I have more questions than answers:

Why Is Ageism a Thing? Everyone is getting older by the second. Isn’t it counterproductive to assume someone can’t contribute to society because they’ve reached a certain age? This has been going on a long time, like at least since 1967. Ever heard of “Logan’s Run?” The perception is old people consume resources without contributing to their replenishment. At what age do you think that happens? It depends on how old you are. (Isn’t it ironic?) People 18-29 years old think 60 is old. Middle aged people consider 70 old. People aged 65+ years think 74 is old. We’re afraid we won’t be able to get what we want when we want it. We resent a percentage of our paychecks going to Social Security to support retired people whom we imagine use the money to take a month long trip to the Grand Canyon.

Can You Fight It? You want to work and advance in your career, but your appearance and your resume expose you as a woman over 40 years old. Not only are you fighting a glass ceiling, but now you also have to negotiate a glass floor of hiring managers younger than you who assume you’re neither tech savvy nor value your industry experience. What do you do? Update your resume. It should be one page long. Get an appropriate Gmail address (your.name@gmail.com) and include it in the contact section of your resume. Use a font that is modern and easy to read like Calibri or Garamond. In interviews, if you’re asked a sneaky question, like, “How long do you plan to keep working?” Emphasize how much you enjoy it. Mention things you do that reveal you’re always learning: reading the blogs of famous business thought leaders, using a trendy app, a TED Talk you posted on your social media.

Can You Win? It’s an endless uphill climb. You have to stay engaged, grow thick skin, and develop a sassy attitude. Oprah Winfrey said, “We live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we are not young, and we’re not glowing, and we’re not ‘hot,’ that we don’t matter….I refuse to let a system or a culture or a distorted view of reality tell me that I don’t matter.”

What Does Winning Look Like? Getting paid for a job based on your skill, abilities, and experience, and not getting turned away because of how long you’ve been in the workforce. Here’s what winning looks like in the volatile and youth obsessed music industry: The rock band U2 have been together 42 years. Not only do they stay relevant by working with artists like 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Kendrick Lamar, but they also make money. U2’s 360º stadium tour in Jun 30, 2009 – Jul 30, 2011, made $736,421,584. It is currently the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. These guys are 56 (Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr.) and 58 (Bono, Adam Clayton) years old.

I could spend hours talking about ageism, but we are getting older by the second. If you want to continue this conversation, please use this form to send me a question or comment: