Office Life – mardihumphreys.com

In the Beginning

COVID-19 has cost some of my friends their jobs. After getting over the hurdle of finding a new position in a pandemic, now they have to adjust to new roles. Are you in the same situation? How can you successfully transition to your new company? Time to flex those soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership.

Communication

However you want people to think of you (professional, kind, capable, etc), project those positive qualities from your very first interaction. Ideally, an on-site meeting will be arranged to introduce you to your team as part of your on-boarding, but if social distancing makes that impossible, on your first day, mask up and go around to greet them individually. Is your team remote? Request a teleconference. Ask each member about themselves, listen more than you talk, and take notes. Pay special attention to the way they talk about the company. It will give you insight into its culture. Coworkers are unlikely to be transparent since you’re a stranger, but you could ask: How does the team resolve conflicts? How does the company recognize success? How does your manager support your professional development goals?

Emotional Intelligence

Find out how your role interacts with everyone else’s. How do you support your team in their daily responsibilities? Offering to help is a good way to build trust, but be wary of coworkers trying to foist too many of their unwanted tasks onto you. It’s okay to respectfully establish boundaries. Identify someone you can go to with questions ranging from, “What is the dress code?” to “Is Sam asking me to do a task she is actually responsible for?” Ask your most important questions. For the ones that aren’t so important, try to find the answers on your own. Look through the employee handbook, internal website, and on-boarding materials. If you can’t find answers, make a list and ask the appropriate people later. You don’t have to have all the answers now, and it will give you a reason to follow up with new colleagues. If you ask a question via email, you can prevent repeatedly asking the same one. If one of your questions regards how soon you can take time off (either paid or unpaid), best practice is to work 90 days before requesting it. Beware of office gossips. This early in your employment, they can only hurt your reputation. If you had a specific way of handling your projects at your last job, this is the time to be flexible. Until you’ve earned both the company’s and your manager’s trust, don’t demand changes.

Leadership

At a mentoring event in January 2020, Cassie Barlow, an outstanding leader in workforce development, reminded us a new role isn’t new just for the employee; it’s a transition for the whole team. She offered this great advice when starting a new job:

First day: Find yourself in the organizational chart, learn names (use mnemonic devices (e.g., Melissa has red glasses) to help you remember), be humble, have a growth mindset, be curious.

First week: Get a job description; meet colleagues and figure out how to interact with them. Who likes email? Who’d rather get a phone call? Who needs to meet?

First month: Set expectations, metrics, and milestones with your manager. Set expectations, metrics, and milestones with your direct reports.

Do you have any advice for starting a new position? Please share it in the comments section.

Remember the Future

I discovered Chronesthesia while listening to Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast. He interviewed Astronaut Scott Kelly who used it to deal with living at the International Space Station for 340 days. Grant described how it can help us cope with both living and working at home during COVID-19. Here is the article Grant wrote about Mr Kelly. It goes into more detail than the podcast episode. Chronesthesia was first proposed by Endel Tulving in 1985. It’s the concept of mental time travel. Now that we’ve lived in this pandemic over four months, it seems like a good time to acquire this skill.

What Is It?

Chronesthesia is the theory our brains are constantly aware of the past and future simultaneously. It combines episodic memory and mental time travel. Episodic memory is linked to time and provides data from our past. Mental time travel is the ability to use past events to conceptualize future events.

How Does It Work?

Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland who remembered the future, Chronesthesia involves two sets of processes. One set pertains to space: the who, what, and where of an incident. (E.g., we remember eating lunch yesterday: what we ate, where we ate it, whom we were with) The other set of processes pertains to time: the when. (E.g., did we eat lunch, yesterday, today, or tomorrow?) Chronesthesia theorizes the second set of processes is subjective. It’s mental time unmeasured by clocks or calendars. Consequently, our brains can travel in it and use it to shape our futures.

What Can Happen When We Try It?

Cons:

Worry – Chronesthesia offers plenty of opportunity to dwell on the negative. For example, looking forward to traveling to Orlando, Florida for vacation, but worrying about catching COVID-19 because it’s a hot spot.

Frustration – Our visualization may not be flexible enough. For example, a client agreed to an in-person brainstorming session. We mentally rehearse for a week prior. We see ourselves at a whiteboard using a rainbow of dry erase markers. At the last minute, the client wants to switch to a teleconference.

Overthink – Pondering what could happen denies the pleasure of living in the moment. For example, fretting over the pipeline instead of celebrating a finished project.

Pros:

Adjusting – We can learn from the past and use that knowledge to change future behavior. For example, if we know a coworker gossiped about us last week, we’ll be very careful what we say in front of him today.

Marketing – Remembering the future is great for storytelling. For example, recall how your company helped a client. List the facts, their problem, and your solution. Then, think about the result. How did it make the client feel? Tell their story in a case study. Attach the positive emotions they felt to what you can do for future clients.

Goal Setting – Chronesthesia is a natural exercise for setting goals. For example, your career isn’t going the way you want. Travel back in your memory. Was there a project/client/offer you turned down that negatively altered your career’s trajectory? Think about why you turned it down. Imagine accepting that offer instead. What would the work be like? What skills/certifications/contacts would you need to succeed? Set S.M.A.R.T. goals to get them. Envision yourself achieving those goals.

What memories can you project into the future to help you keep moving your career forward during this pandemic? Please share in the comments section.

It’s Alright to be Wrong

Father’s Day has me thinking about how patient my dad was.

There was the time I:

woke the whole house by climbing up in the attic and walking on the creaky floor over my parents’ bedroom early one morning
overcorrected a turn and drove into a yard at the top of a hill while learning to drive
flushed an item down the toilet and clogged the septic tank

These mistakes were explained to me (usually) calmly and corrections were requested (usually) just as calmly. He made me feel like I made a mistake, not like I was a mistake. There’s a big difference and it’s easy to miscommunicate. He made sure I knew my imperfections didn’t stop him from loving me. How often do we beat ourselves up because we feel like we failed? Three instances occur to me.

Failed Goals

When setbacks happen at work, it helps to remember our past successes. (If you don’t keep a success list for performance reviews, start. Now.) After reassuring ourselves, let’s reframe. This isn’t a failure, it’s an experiment. Was it a S.M.A.R.T. goal? Can we extend the deadline? Do we need additional resources to reach it? What if we tweak the process? We can analyze the data, then make a decision.

Failed Expectations

I registered to attend a free webinar given by a colleague. It was his second one. For the first one, he requested my help cohosting and I assumed (you know what assuming does) he’d want help again. Then I discovered a meeting scheduled for the same time that I’d rather attend because I’d have an opportunity to invite those participants to a webinar I was presenting the following week. I was disappointed I couldn’t attend the meeting. Then, I thought. “Why can’t I?”

The angel on one shoulder argued with the devil on my other shoulder:

Angel: Because you made a commitment.

Devil: They’ll be another webinar next quarter. Cancel the registration.

Angel: Your colleague will want your help again.

Devil: He hasn’t asked for it.

Angel: But you always put others’ interests ahead of your own.

THAT did it. I decided to attend the meeting instead of the webinar and if people think less of me for choosing what’s best for me, so be it.

Failed First Try

The team shot down my first idea for the website refresh in the project meeting this week. Does that mean I shouldn’t suggest another one next week? Is everyone judging me? Should I give up trying to be creative because I’m obviously embarrassing myself? Truth: my team probably forgot about my idea as soon as they left the Zoom room. I can’t remember what Joe’s big-SEO-lead-magnet-idea-that-tanked at last week’s meeting was. No one is holding our imperfections against us; except us. Let’s throw out our fixed mindsets and adopt growth mindsets. What exactly was it about my idea the team didn’t like? Was there a kernel of the idea they did like? Can I cultivate it and bring a revised idea to next week’s meeting? Struggling reminds us we’re stretching. Let’s not allow our mistakes to define us.

What flavor of imperfection is bugging you this week? Please share in the comments section.

Performance vs Potential

In America, 49.6% of the workforce is female, but less than 5% of Fortune 500 companies’ CEOs are female. I found several variables contributing to this confusing proportion. Since this is an election year and we’ve seen glaring examples of performance vs. potential, let’s focus on that variable for this discussion. A Presidential campaign is a job interview. During the democratic campaigns, the female candidates highlighted their resumes (what they did) while the male candidates promoted their plans (what they intend to do); evidence that women are judged on past performance and men are judged on potential. How does this societal inclination to evaluate a gender show up in the workforce?

This study on hiring reveals when the past performances of female and male candidates were equal, the female candidates were held to a higher standard. Unconscious bias lessened the women’s leadership potential in the hiring team’s opinion. These negative labels pervade the workforce. They’re exhausting to fight and often invisible. Let’s say Jane and Joe have the same position, the same resume, and are up for the same promotion. If Joe receives it, Jane probably won’t ask her boss if he chose Joe because he thinks Joe has more potential than she does. Instead, Jane will probably feel like she doesn’t belong at her company and look for a more welcoming environment. We have to realize unconscious bias is someone else’s opinion of us; not the truth, and have the endurance to battle it day after day. But, who has the energy to constantly validate her ideas to upper management while simultaneously doing the job?

Traditionally, when a project succeeds, a female leader shares credit with her team and a male leader assumes the credit for himself. Diluting her contribution, the female leader is easily overlooked for bigger projects. A man claiming credit gets leadership roles because no one asked how the project got done. They only saw who claimed credit for getting it done. The performance review process is a minefield of subjectivity and unconscious bias. One answer is to make the evaluation more about whether last year’s performance goals were met (this is typically how a male is evaluated), not how hard the employee had to work to meet them (this is typically how a female is evaluated). This challenges HR to rework the process using a filter of diversity and inclusion, which may require both training and a review committee. When women have to keep proving competency over and over, this slows down our advancement. How can we excel at past performance if we’re denied opportunities to perform?

Speaking of HR, in this poll of women working in the IT industry, 63% of them said the hiring process in the market is biased against female IT applicants. When women are hired, we start dropping out of the advancement track around middle management for obvious reasons: no women in next-level positions in whose footsteps we can follow, no access to casual networks (the old boys’ club), and lack of mentors (male or female) in upper management. But there’s also a not-so-obvious reason: a culture of embedded mindsets and entrenched beliefs. (E.g., men make better leaders because they’re more analytical and less emotional than women.) How much talent is wasted because of these barriers?

As usual, I have more questions than answers. If you have answers, please share your experience in the comments section.

How Did We Get Here?

For the last two (plus) months, COVID-19 has thrust circumstances on us: our jobs are harder (or gone), household chores multiplied, the kids’ online school had to be supervised, loss of autonomy, using technology to stay in touch with those we aren’t supposed to physically touch, etc. I’m sure your list is different and longer. I’ve awakened every day wondering, “What fresh hell can this be?” George Floyd’s death was a horrifying answer. Now that I’m awake, it’s time to stop and think about what I can do to make a positive difference; especially in the workforce. We were inundated by information last week. This is simplistic (Look, Listen, Learn), but I’ve got to begin my education in systemic racism somewhere.

Look

When it comes to work, I’m task oriented. I want to get through the Zoom, email, or report and get back to the work ASAP. I don’t often stop to acknowledge what’s going on outside the office even when it’s a protest. I don’t talk about how what I experience outside of work affects my ability to work. But systemic racism exponentially affects society’s ability to get anything done. How can our team do our best work if a coworker’s opinion gets discounted because of the color of her skin? Here is a good article on ways we can support our Black coworkers. Here’s a good article on what not to say.

Listen

It’s no longer enough to be non-racist. It’s time to be anti-racist; especially if we are in leadership positions. Here is a good article with practical suggestions. We must initiate the difficult conversations. We have to listen, particularly when it’s painful. Treating others the way we want to be treated isn’t enough, we must seek to understand. We have to make sure our teams know they are seen, heard, and we have their backs. We need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The truth will hurt, but we could have a change of heart if we would only change our minds. We have to use our vote to demand accountability from our elected officials.

Learn

I don’t know what I don’t know, so research is my first instinct. Because racism can come in the form of being dismissed, (“What did he do to draw the attention of the police?”) I thought racism was like sexual harassment. I felt like, on a shallow level, I could empathize. But it’s not like sexual harassment, is it? For example, I’m not afraid of a police officer stopping me on my way to the office because I’m female. How did we get so messed up? Trevor Noah gives a good summation.

I apologize for my ignorance. I’ve got a lot to learn and maybe even more to unlearn. I hope you’ll be patient with me. When I’m quietly standing beside you, it’s not because I won’t defend you; it’s because I want to amplify your voice.

If you have trusted resources for learning about systemic racism, please share them in the comments section.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Playlist Work

After so many times asking each other, “Have you heard this song?” my best friend, Kelly, suggested we start a playlist in Spotify to keep track of them. Because we’re both rule followers and goal oriented, we had a couple of guidelines. The originals were: Listen without distraction (no driving, working, social media, etc. on first listen), preferably through headphones, and post at the same time every week. We inadvertently stumbled onto something deeper than trading songs. In this new world of COVID-19, people are turning to music and using it almost as a healing balm to our psyches.

Our original intent was to have fun in sampling each other’s taste in music, but after being at it for over a year, it’s evolved into a means of communication. We use it for commemoration and encouragement. We acquire a clearer understanding of each other’s worldview because our song choices reveal our personalities. The anticipation of new music (I’ve heard artists I never would’ve known otherwise), and trying to guess what the other is going to add, makes it a game. An unexpected side effect of building our playlist is how it’s affected my job.

Teamwork

Team members have to know what the goal is. I asked Kelly what she thought the goal of building our playlist was. She said, “…to share ideas, thoughts, and feelings that we may have had during the week through music. Doing this often generates conversations we may not have had otherwise, and can get us thinking about various things in ways we might not have before.” A team works toward the goal together, but we come at it from different perspectives. Building our playlist helps me be open to my team’s opinions on how to reach our goals.

Perseverance

I keep my ears open throughout the week and seek unusual sources for songs to surprise her. At work, this translates into pushing me to seek new and unusual ways to help my company grow.

Communication

We often ask each other why we chose that song this week, usually via text. We have to corral our thoughts and boil them down to those most important and present them briefly. I find myself editing my work emails down to short active sentences; a hallmark of good communication.

Deadlines

Sundays come with excruciating regularity. So do work deadlines. Our playlist helps me remember not to wait until the last minute to research my share of the project.

Relax

Our playlist reminds me to take a break from working. It’s something fun to look forward to instead of thinking about COVID-19 all the time.

One of the reasons humans love music so much is because it helps us express our feelings. Why try to put them into words when a musician has already done it so eloquently? Sometimes there aren’t adequate words to express our feelings. We need a crunchy guitar (or maybe a plaintive violin) solo to do it for us. Let’s think about adding music to our self-care routines. We can intentionally build a playlist for lifting our spirits. If we need some ideas, we can ask a friend to build one with us.

Do you have a song that makes you happy every time you hear it? Please share title and artist in the comments section.

What Comes Next?

We talk about what we’ll do after COVID-19. What changes to work life will we keep? How has our perspective changed? How much weight will we have to lose? What will we do next? Like Inigo Montoya after he finally got revenge on Count Rugen, next can leave us feeling lost, bereft, or untethered. Fortunately, Westley had a goal to offer him, but since the position of The Dread Pirate Roberts is currently unavailable, what should we do after we’ve reached a goal?

Celebrate

We can take a break and pat ourselves on the back, but let’s put a time limit on the celebration; somewhere between the length of a nice dinner and a week’s vacation. We should thank everyone who contributed to reaching the goal; especially those whose help we’ll need to reach future ones. We could reward ourselves with a gift card to a local business (e.g., coffee shop, independent bookstore, salon). That would both support a small business struggling to survive COVID-19 and give us something to look forward to.

Reflect

We should push pause and ponder. What did we do right? What could we improve? How do we maintain this new level? Who helped us get here? When in the process did we mess up and why? Where can we put triggers in that process to prevent mistakes from happening again? What is our next logical goal? The answers to these questions give us data to analyze. We can use this for refining our process and determining metrics.

Another one

Do we go after a bigger client? Start grad school? Lose another 10 lbs? If we have simultaneous goals set in different areas of our lives, when we achieve one, we have another one to work on. This helps us maintain dopamine levels to stay motivated and avoid the arrival fallacy (A theory introduced by Tal Ben-Shahar). Another option is to come up with a two (or five or ten) year plan so once we reach our current goal, we can immediately start on the next one even if it’s a preliminary activity (i.e., research, gather materials, etc). If looking that far down the road doesn’t make sense, we could set both short term goals (e.g., be the team leader on the next project) and long term goals (e.g., get promoted next year). When we achieve the short term goal, we could focus our energy on the long term goal while setting another short term one.

Help others

Is it time to be a mentor? Teaching someone else a skill we just learned reinforces it for us. We could also share what we learned by writing a white paper or case study and posting it on our companies’ websites.

Remember Why

We can achieve goal after goal, but still feel unfulfilled. If this happens, stop and ask, “What do I want to do with my life?” Do we want to end domestic violence? Affect climate change? Make sure every dog has a home? When we determine what we want our world to look like, we can align our goals with our life’s purpose and make that world a reality.

What comes next for you? Please share in the comments section.

The Uns

James C. Collins coined the phrase, “Good is the enemy of great.” He suggests we have to remove some good things from our lives so we can focus attention on achieving bigger goals. Since we are stuck sheltering in our homes a little longer, (Thank you, COVID-19.) maybe now is an appropriate time for evaluation. Are we satisfied with the state of our lives? Do we need to take a hard look at our priorities? Should we trim some good items so we can excel? Are we ready to make some uncomfortable but necessary choices? If so, how?

Uninvite

We are highly influenced by the people who surround us. They can determine the quality and direction of our lives; much like the wind influences a sailboat. People treat us the way we let them, so let’s make respect one of our boundaries. Let’s be intentional about networking with positive people who have standards we admire. Let’s treat coworkers the way we want to be treated and associate with those who reciprocate. This can be hard. We don’t always have the luxury of choosing whom we work with and our emotions can get in the way, but let’s not reward bad behavior (e.g., our opinions and/or feelings are ignored). If a team mate consistently gossips in the break room, shoves her busy work on us, or complains about how she never gets high-profile assignments, it’s time to uninvite her from our projects.

Untie

Time flies when we’re making a living. In our efforts to keep moving forward, we neglect to stop and assess where we are, what has changed, and how outdated thinking may be holding us back. Do we believe we can’t do something just because we’ve never tried it? Thanks to technology, what was unthinkable 10 years ago is now normal. (Think Lyft, Instagram, Amazon Echo) Are we making choices based on what our circumstances were then? We can’t use the same decision making criteria on our first full-time job that we used in college. We can’t use the same criteria as a spouse that we used when we were single. We can’t use the same criteria as a parent that we used before children, but we can untie ourselves from the past by using a filter like: Is it worth my T.E.A.M.?

Unexpected

We can’t predict there is anything better than what we have now and we don’t realize we’re settling for good. Going for more requires change and we don’t like what we can’t expect. Maybe we start by asking ourselves what we do better than anyone else. If we don’t know, we can ask a friend or trusted coworker. We’re usually counseled to build up our weaknesses in order to succeed, but I think we should spend more time cultivating our strengths. Getting less weak at something takes more time, energy, and attention (for marginal improvement) than getting better at something we’re already good at. Let’s stop binging Tiger King and read a leadership book, listen to an industry podcast, or take an online class.

What are some good things you need to eliminate to make room in your life to pursue great things?

I Ran So Far Away

Erma Bombeck was right. The grass is always greener over the septic tank. At some point in our careers we’ve all had managers we loathe for any (or all) of these reasons:

He lives in his own reality
He takes credit for our success
He belittles our opinions
He doesn’t respect our boundaries

Then, we get a job offer. It’s:

More than 40 hours a week
Less money
A longer commute
The benefits aren’t as good as our current job
The required skills aren’t exactly in our wheelhouse

We impulsively quit the job we hate instead of asking ourselves, “Is it worth our T.E.A.M.?” Taking a job out of desperation to get away from the job we have allows our emotions to make the decision, and putting them in charge is usually not a wise choice. We should run to a new job, not from our current one.

We tell ourselves:

We can make it work
It’s not as bad as our last position
We’ll talk the boss into quickly advancing us

But after a couple of months, it’s not looking good. Now that we’re stuck, what do we do?

Give it Time

If we can stand it, we should stay in a job for one year to get through the normal growing pains of getting used to a new routine, new people, and a new environment. For example: we’ve joined an already established team. We won’t make friends on day one. We have to research:

Who is territorial?
Who is threatened by our being hired?
Who is jealous we got the position they were going for?
Whom can we trust?
Who pushes their own agenda?

If we assume an attitude of learning and ask how we can make our team mates’ projects easier, we’ll quickly find out what motivates them and how to best communicate with them.

Do a Self-assessment

What drove us away from our last job?
Was it only our toxic boss or were there other factors?
Was the environment dysfunctional?
Was there no diversity on our staff?

Make notes. If this job doesn’t work out, we don’t want to repeat history. We need to figure out our strengths. At our last job, were we in the field visiting clients the majority of the day and now we are tied to a desk and hate it? As for the current job, we should think about why we are unhappy and what it would take to make it work. Can we mold the position into something fulfilling? (Can it be more client facing than Excel facing?) Does it give us access to a better network? (Can we leverage networking events to find out who is hiring?) Will it pay for professional development opportunities? (Mastermind groups, Leadership cohorts, or an MBA?) Let’s consider what we really want from a job, so we can form a plan to move forward.

Talk to Someone

Vent to a friend, trusted coworker from our last job, or mentor; then ask them to objectively analyze our situation. Their encouragement and support will help, but the most valuable thing they can do is repeat back to us what they heard us say about our job. It will take some emotion out of the situation and help us think more objectively about our next steps.

Have you ever taken a job because you were desperate to get away from your current one? Please share how that worked out in the comments section.

Die Hard

B2B cold calling is a hot button. Sales professionals have strong opinions and compelling arguments both for and against it. 2019 data says it doesn’t generate business 90% of the time and it takes six hours of calling to set one appointment, (which may not lead to revenue, btw) but companies who didn’t do it grew 42% less than companies who did. Everyone agrees it’s a huge time waster and isn’t the best way to attract clients, but most also say to do it. Not helpful. What are some of the problems and how can we solve them?

Problems:

It’s outdated

Invented by fellow Daytonian John Patterson to sell his cash registers in 1873, cold calling is no longer novel and it’s developed a bad reputation. It’s considered selling, but isn’t it just hunting? We call a stranger and try to ferret out if they need what we have. I interrupt someone’s work to pitch my company. Is this the first impression I want anyone to have about us?

No Gatekeepers

With companies phasing out admins, decision makers have to answer their own phones and they usually just don’t. They get so many sales robo-calls, they don’t consider it rude to hang up on us. People would rather receive texts than calls. They’d rather receive emails than texts. They’d rather ignore all three.

Buying has changed

The seller used to be in control of the information the buyer needed. Thanks to technology, information is available at decision makers’ fingertips. Customers prefer to check our websites, Google us for reviews, and talk to people we’ve worked with to find out if they want us. Customers want personal service from trustworthy local businesses. They want to discover us and enlist our help in solving their problems.

Solutions:

Qualified leads

Narrowing down not only the companies we contact but also the appropriate personnel is crucial. It saves time and puts us in contact with the person who knows if their business has problems we can solve. This is a big deal and big business. There are a ton of companies who supply sales leads.

Inbound marketing

If we analyze our data and determine what our customers have in common, we can reach out to similar businesses through our websites and social media channels. We can attract those who need us by demonstrating who we are and what we do. We can earn clients’ trust by giving them content they can use. We can establish ourselves as the SME to solve potential clients’ problems, then invite them into conversation.

Develop relationships

Let’s make friends now, so people know and trust us in the future. If we can do someone a favor, we should; even though there’s no revenue in it for us. We never know who a potential client is and “Bacon’s Law” is real. We can like and/or comment on new acquaintances’ social media posts. We can send them emails with helpful content (e.g., an article regarding an industry trend) without including a sales pitch.

When we can’t find businesses who need us, is picking up the phone and calling random companies the answer, because at least we’re doing something? What do you think? Please share in the comments section.