Goals – Page 9 – mardihumphreys.com

SOS Emergency

Welcome to part three of the Motherhood is Leadership Training Series. Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting that every woman needs to have a child in order to be a good leader. I’m saying that motherhood is, by default, leadership training. In parts one and two we discussed how motherhood trains women to build confidence and develop their coaching skills. This week let’s examine how it inherently produces crisis managers. Take the pandemic for example. Twice as many people died of COVID-19 in countries led by men than in countries led by women and at least three of these leaders are mothers: Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland, and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. Let’s examine five areas of crisis management that motherhood innately teaches: plan, prevent, practice, perform, and polish.

Plan

Moms learn to keep over-the-counter children’s pain reliever, band-aids, a thermometer, etc., on hand to address their child’s middle-of-the-night health emergencies. Moms apply this principle at work by learning to keep alternative workflows on hand to address their team’s middle-of-the-project emergencies.

Prevent

Moms learn the best way to deal with a crisis is to keep it from happening. For example, at home Mom may buy a few duplicates of her toddler’s favorite T-Shirt. This makes negotiating what clothes to wear easier. At work Mom may share feedback with the team regarding what the client liked about their last campaign. This makes achieving the tone of the next campaign easier.

Practice

Moms learn that practicing what to do in a crisis when there isn’t one allows people to fall back on their training. For example, Mom may hold monthly fire drills to teach her child how to get out of the house in case of a real fire. At work, Mom may occasionally ask a team member for a last minute report to train them what to do if the CEO asks for a similar report while Mom is on vacation.

Perform

Moms learn how to execute the crisis procedure effectively. Each child has a different asset. For example, maybe one child is an athlete, another is an artist, etc. This gives Mom clues as to how to motivate them and boost their self-confidence during a crisis. Each employee has a different asset. At work, Mom identifies each team member’s talent. For example, maybe one staff member is good at calming an upset customer, another is good at spotting accounting errors. Mom knows how to appropriately assign tasks to motivate them and boost their self-confidence in a crisis.

Polish

Moms learn from mistakes. They constantly ask themselves whether or not they are doing a good job. They question: What can I do to be better prepared next time? At work, Mom holds post-event reviews to allow the team to vent, but not complain. Then incorporates the feedback to be better prepared for the next crisis.

Some keys to crisis management? Be gracious and empathic. Listen more than talk. Work together to solve problems both at home and at work.

Do you agree with this sentence? Proper planning prevents poor performance. Please tell us why or why not in the comments.

Put Me in Coach

Last week we looked at how women build confidence when they become mothers and how that skill transfers to leadership at work. I’m not suggesting that every woman needs to have a child in order to be a good leader. I’m saying that motherhood is, by default, leadership training. Here in Part Two, let’s examine how motherhood trains moms to become coaches and how that set of skills makes them influential leaders at work.

Moms learn that their children all react differently to the same situation. Managers learn that the members of their teams respond differently to the same situation. For example, at home when Mom says to her two children, “Let’s go to the library.” One child may jump off the couch and the other may refuse to budge. At work when Manager says to her two employees, “Let’s go to the conference.” One coworker may start registering and the other may start making excuses for why they can’t go. In both of these situations, the people need a coach to inspire, encourage, and motivate them.

Inspire

A mom models the way she wants her child to behave. If a child sees Mom celebrating successes both big and small, asking questions instead of blaming, and managing inconveniences with a positive attitude, then that child is inspired to act the way Mom does when they find themselves in similar situations. A mom who is a leader in the workplace operates the same way. For example, a leader gives her direct report credit for a job well done in front of the CEO. A leader asks an individual contributor why the deadline was missed instead of blaming them for missing it. A leader responds to a complaint by assuring the client that they are heard and working through lunch with her staff to rectify the situation.

Encourage

A mom helps her child achieve goals. She learns to recognize when more training is necessary versus when it is time to gently push her child to accomplish a task on their own. A mom who leads in the workplace believes her team can accomplish their goals. She supports their efforts whether they need mentoring or monitoring and guides each team member accordingly.

Motivate

A mom uses what is important to her child as incentive. For example, Mom at home may say, “If you finish your homework now, then you can spend an extra thirty minutes playing Forza Horizon 4.” This same mom will use that skill to learn what is important to her direct reports. At work she may say, “If you work on Independence Day, you can have July 5th off with pay as compensation.” In both scenarios, everyone feels like they were treated fairly.

Inspiring, encouraging, and motivating require the capability to delay gratification. Moms labor for years to raise a child. There is no guarantee that child will learn what Mom is teaching and use it to become a productive member of society. Day after day moms model respect, positivity, and, hope. These are attributes every coach should have. A woman who can do that at home is an effective leader in any workplace.

Does your organization have people who are recognized, or unrecognized, as coaches? How many of them are moms? Please share what they do that makes you think of them as coaches in the comments.

The Home Team

While at the grocery store, I passed the coffee kiosk. It was fairly busy. The barista was at the register taking orders. A couple of women waited near the pick-up counter. A man with a sleeping baby in a carrier approached the pickup counter and found his coffee. He excused himself around the two women waiting for their orders. One of the women said, “What a good daddy you are!” I silently wondered, if it was a woman with an iced grande caramel macchiato in one hand and a baby carrier in the other, would the speaker have said, “What a good mommy you are!”? I hope so, but society does not train us to praise mothers for parenting.

From the Beginning

Let’s normalize a team approach to getting the invisible, unpaid work done; especially when it comes to parenting. In a heterosexual, two-parent household, when a baby is born the only thing the mother can do that the father cannot is feed the baby with her own body. Everything else is a level playing field. Mothers don’t instinctively know what a baby needs. For example, when a baby cries in the middle of the night, waking up, getting out of bed, and soothing that baby is not a talent unique to mothers.

In this Together

Let’s stop perceiving domestic work through the lens that society perpetually trains us to use. All genders can learn to change diapers, wash dishes, do laundry, take out the trash, get the kids to school, rehearsal, practice, the dentist, etc. Let’s rethink the assumption that the person in the couple with the lowest income (typically the woman) is by default the family manager. In a heterosexual household, let’s stop sending the message to men that they are “helping” around the house. Even if he takes on the burden of the physical work, the mental and emotional burden is still on the woman if she has to know and decide what, where, when, and how that work gets done.

For the Future

When/If you become a parent, if you have a partner, please normalize co-parenting. In learning to navigate the world they live in, children need each parent’s strength and time. One partner should not be limited to the role of financial provider. The other should not be limited to the role of domestic provider. Doing so denies parents the opportunity to model genderless behavior to their children. For example, it is extremely beneficial for children to witness their father supporting their mother’s passions and goals while managing his daily routines. When they see their father being patient, unselfish, kind, and collaborative, then they look for those qualities in the people they choose to be in their lives.

What are some things you do to promote co-parenting? Please share in the comments.

Nature vs Nurture

“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
Charles Kettering

Recruiting and retaining talent has been a challenge ever since prehistoric tribal chiefs realized that they had enough gatherers and began persuading some of them to try hunting. As the years passed, population growth allowed employers more choices. When they needed more workers some employers, like the prehistoric tribal chief, saw who currently worked for them and upskilled them to accomplish the new goal. This changed the company’s working environment. Other employers reached out and found people who already had the necessary skill and hired them. Employers’ expectations not only dictated who did the work, but also what, where, when, and how the work got done.

Priority Shift

Since the information age began in the 1970s, the evolution of work and the workforce needed to do it, have incrementally shifted the power of negotiating the terms of employment away from the employer and toward the employee. COVID-19 ushered in the Great Rs (Retirement, Resignation, Reckoning, Reshuffle) spotlighting the fact that employees feel like they are done with living to work and instead want to work to live. They want to integrate work into their lives, but not necessarily make their job their top priority. Yet plenty of organizational leaders are resisting this change. They insist on maintaining a traditional, pre-pandemic business environment while simultaneously trying to both retain current employees and attract new ones. You can spot some of these companies by their reactions to the workforce shortage. For example, their attempts at luring talent include hour wage hikes and signing bonuses. This practice is not only unsustainable, but also unattractive to potential employees and resented by current ones.

Share and Share Alike

Wise leadership will retain and recruit employees by cultivating a more transparent and inclusive work environment. COVID revealed that traditional hierarchical leadership is a lot less valuable now. Business runs at the speed of trust. A company managed by leadership that keeps both data and opportunities to themselves, instead of being open about employee pay metrics and career growth, won’t stay in business very long. These are the organizations who continue to believe in the myth of the messianic figure with a Midas touch that will fix everything. They continue to ignore the tendency of this type of leader to be a fixed-mindset dictator. Employees used to work for this type of leader because they were afraid of losing their jobs, but now, not so much. The companies run by servant leaders who both hire talent with strong soft skills and create a culture of growth by implementing diverse ideas, building a strong foundation of trust, and sharing credit for success, are the companies that will successfully retain and recruit talent during the next Great R.

This evolution was happening pre-pandemic, but progress is like turning the Titanic around. Those in power naturally want to maintain the pre-pandemic status quo, but there’s no going back to what was considered normal. Smart employers will figure out whether or not they want to stay in business and what changes they are willing to make to do so.

What changes would you like to see regarding the way work gets done? Please share in the comments.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Income tax filings are due next week. If you owe, then you have my sympathy. If you will receive a return, congratulations! (Although, perhaps we should discuss how using the government as a forced savings account may not be the wisest choice…) While waiting, you may already be contemplating what to do with your income tax return. Should you save it? Should you treat yourself? Should you invest it? Your self-control super power can help you make this decision.

Stop and Think

Should you buy the Apple Watch Series 6 or stick with the SE you currently own? Should you deposit the return in your long-term savings account so that it’s easily accessible when you want to spend it later? Should you invest it in your IRA and not spend it for several years? You know putting money away in your emergency fund is always a wise choice, but it’s hard to fight the temptation facing you right now. To control your spending, stop and consider what you already have. Then, determine the value of buying more stuff. For example, Is the Apple Watch Series 6 an exponential upgrade from your SE? Do you have to purchase it right this second? Walk away while telling yourself that you’ll revisit it after your income tax return arrives. There’s a good chance that the Series 6 you feel like you can’t live without today will lose a bit of its lure by then.

Pause and Play

Can you afford to be generous? Think about allocating a percentage of your income tax return to spend on someone or something you love. For example, you could plan to take your kids out to a movie, your partner to a minor league baseball game, or a friend for a manicure. Are you back to eating out at locally owned restaurants? Make a mental note to generously tip your server. Do you go to church? Consider dropping your designated dollars in the offering plate or use the giving app. Is there a nonprofit organization you feel passionate about? Donate to it. Fun fact: if you donate to a church or nonprofit, you may be able to claim it as a tax deduction for this year.

Refine and Iterate

Use the wait to audit your budget process. Evaluate whether or not it still serves you well. If the word “budget” feels too restrictive to you, then call it something else, like “freedom plan.” A budget is simply a strategy that empowers you to reach financial freedom. The typical budget advice is to divide your net income into a 50/30/20 split: 50% should go to your basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Spend 30% on self-care. Save or invest 20%. Disclaimer: This is not my favorite advice because it makes no mention of charitable giving. If you feel overwhelmed, try a budgeting app.

If you adopt a mindset that it’s fun to speculate what to do with your income tax return, then it’s easier to exercise self-control over where it will go. That gives you something money can’t buy, peace of mind.

Spend, save, give, or invest. Which are you doing with your income tax return? Please share in the comments.

Join the Resistance

When you give something your attention, you’re letting it rule your life for however long you think about it. This can be good, like visualizing what you want your slide deck to look like for next week’s presentation, or bad, like reliving last week’s argument with your supervisor. When it comes to deciding the best use of your time, energy, attention, and money, what you say no to is just as important as what you say yes to.

Attention Management

Attempts to increase productivity trace at least as far back as 1890 when William James wrote The Principles of Psychology. One of his statements is profound in its prophecy. He said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” Managing your attention is key to maintaining your priorities. Sounds easy, right? Then what’s stopping you from achieving your goals?

I can resist anything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde

The brainpower necessary to make wise choices is exhausting. Should you eat the doughnut or the apple? Should you watch TikTok or go for a run? Should you proofread your report or text your friend? When you concentrate on trying not to do something, it captures your attention. You’re more likely to give in to the temptation and do the very thing that you’re trying to resist. Instead, distract yourself. Also, limit your proximity to the temptation. For example, if you want to resist the doughnut and eat the apple instead, then hide the doughnut and put the apple at your workstation. Go for a walk around the block before eating anything.

Recognize the Real Enemy

Setting boundaries is easy. Holding them is difficult. Attention is like a muscle. You have to build it. You strengthen and lengthen your attention span every time you identify who, what, when, where, why, and how you got distracted from your goal. Then, change one or more of those variables to produce your desired result. For example, I’m a process improver. I analyze undesired results and reverse engineer them to identify where the outcome began to veer off course. Then, I imagine different choices to envision how they each may produce more desirable results. In terms of self-control, this could look like:

Undesired Result – Your deliverable was late
Veered off course – You missed one deadline
Analyze –
- Were other projects with similar deadlines competing for your attention?
- Was the deadline not communicated?
- Was the deadline communicated but you forgot to calendar it?
- Were you waiting for someone to get back to you with key information?
- Were you interrupted by an emergency?
- Were you distracted by social media?

The answers will dictate the next iteration of the deliverable process. For example, if you missed the deadline because you couldn’t resist the temptation to scroll through social media for hours everyday, then locking your phone in a drawer until break times will be added to the process because it will help you control your technology, behavior, thoughts, and environment. All these are factors that can distract you from reaching your goal.

How do you manage your attention? Please share in the comments.

Minimize to Maximize

Social media bombards you with images of your connections allegedly living their best lives. FOMO compels you to keep up, but that doesn’t make you feel any better. It’s time to embrace JOMO (Joy of Missing Out). This acronym is usually associated with redefinitions of productivity and/or self-care, particularly in terms of disconnecting with social media. Here are three other ways you can apply it.

Sift Through Stuff

You still have the interview suit you bought five years ago because it may come back in style later. You saved 198 business books to your Amazon Wish List because you may want to read them later. You’re thinking about renting a storage shed because your twenty-five-year-old daughter may need her American Girl Doll collection later. (No? Just me? Okay.) At some point, you have to acknowledge that now is actually later. It takes energy both to identify what you don’t need and to let it go. Learning to be content with what you have, instead of being afraid you’re going to miss stuff after it’s gone, is a major mindset shift. Start small. For example, go through your closet and remove items you haven’t worn for five years. (I’m spotting you a couple of years to allow for COVID.) Bag them up for donation drop off, but don’t take them. Set the bags on the floor of your closet. If you don’t miss the bagged items after three months, then donate them.

Use a Filter

Instead of saying yes to every volunteer opportunity, choose the nonprofit you most connect with and put your energy into that one instead of exhausting yourself trying to serve several. Use your personal mission statement to set a boundary. For example, if your personal mission statement is, “I want to help people obtain what they need to succeed,” then that may translate into “I want to volunteer at The Foodbank four hours a month.” Then focus your efforts and your mind on that experience.

Narrow Your Choices

The classic example of having too many choices is the jam study by Iyengar and Lepper. They set up a display of 24 gourmet jams at an upscale grocery. They offered a $1 off coupon to shoppers who sampled a jam. At a later date, they set up the display with the same offer, but only made six gourmet jams available. The display with 24 choices received more traffic, but the display with six choices resulted in more sales.They concluded that it is good to have options, but too much of a good thing is still too much. If there are only six jams to choose from, then you are more likely to be satisfied with your purchase. If there are 24 jams to choose from, then you are more likely to wonder if maybe you should have purchased the blueberry bourbon pecan flavor instead of the balsamic fig. It’s like your performance review. For example, you can give your manager a list of all the great things you did last quarter, but you benefit more by reexamining what your manager’s goals were for last quarter and only presenting illustrations of how you helped them reach those goals. Maximize their satisfaction by minimizing their choices.

How have you avoided FOMO by embracing JOMO this week? Please share in the comments.

I’ll Think About Procrastination Tomorrow

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make when they go by.”
Douglas Adams

I felt bad about moving the T in my S.M.A.R.T. goal back. AGAIN. Then I discovered Hofstadter’s law. In 1979 cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter said any plan you make will always take longer to complete than you expect it to; even if you over estimate how long the plan will take to complete. So, it’s not just me; it’s all of us. In fact, intentionally pushing back deadlines, or procrastination, can be a useful tool.

Purposeful Delay

The key to making procrastination a superpower is to do it intentionally. In 1927 Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnick proved that if you are interrupted during a task and you leave it unfinished, then you actively remember it until the task is completed. When you purposely leave a task unfinished in order to remember to do it, that is active procrastination. It’s different from passive procrastination, which is leaving a task unfinished because you don’t want to do it. For example, if you binge watch euphoria to avoid returning a client’s voicemail, then you are passively procrastinating. However, if by the end of an episode you discovered how to address the client’s concern and return their call, then you are actively procrastinating.

Problem Solving

If you pressure yourself to get everything done by the end of the work day, (shoutout to Team Inbox Zero!) then it takes self-control to let an issue go undecided. But when procrastinating to problem solve, you have to allow enough time for creativity to happen. The trick is knowing how long the creativity will take. You can’t tell your manager that you missed a deadline because you were thinking about all the possible solutions. For example, set a time limit, like half an hour, and do something totally unrelated to the challenge you’re trying to resolve. Walk the dog, play solitaire on your phone (or with a real deck of cards), shoot some hoops. Switch to a physical activity that engages more of your senses and less of your brain. Revisit the project after your set time is up. Whatever new avenues you now see to explore, limit your choices to those.

Priority List

Intentional procrastination is useful for prioritizing. In some cases if you put a task off long enough, then you realize you don’t need to waste your time doing it. For example, at the end of your work day you make a list of what you did not get done today and intend to get done tomorrow. If there is a task that ends up on that list every day for a week, then at the end of your work week think about why you didn’t accomplish it. Is the task necessary? Is it a lengthy process that needs to be broken down into multiple tasks? Is it a task you can delegate to a direct report?

How do you make time for procrastination and still meet deadlines? Please share in the comments.

Fake It Till You Make It

I was really excited to listen to this episode of Adam Grant’s podcast, WorkLife because it featured comic Taylor Tomlinson. The topic of the conversation was imposter syndrome. You have to have a lot of confidence to be a stand-up comic so I was surprised to learn that Tomlinson struggles with it. Volumes have been written about imposter syndrome since the concept was introduced in the 1970’s. How is it still a thing?

Old Assumptions

From its inception as a theory, imposter syndrome had a negative connotation because it induces sabotaging emotions like mistrust and fear. It is a mindset of self-doubt that plagues high-achievers. You think you don’t deserve your current level of success and any minute now you’ll slip up and be exposed as a fraud. But is that belief always bad? Can that fear be employed as motivation to become as competent as you want to feel?

New Data

Basima Tewfik is an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In October 2021, she released her study on imposter syndrome. She hypothesized that people with imposter syndrome have a gap between the perception of their competence and how competent they actually are. She worked with three different test groups in three different situations. In all three groups she found that the imposter-syndrome sufferers performed their jobs just as well as, if not better than, the test subjects who did not experience imposter syndrome. She concluded that the imposter-syndrome sufferers put additional efforts into their interpersonal skills.

Apply It

How could this new knowledge work for you? For example, you’ve probably heard that women apply for jobs when they meet 100% of the criteria in a job description, while men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the qualifications. If women saw jobs they wanted, decided to acquire more of the skills listed in the description, and applied for the job anyway, then they demonstrate curiosity, continuous improvement, and problem-solving skills. Hiring managers crave these characteristics.

Thought Experiment

Imagine someone exposes you as a fraud. Picture the scene in your head with as much detail as possible.

Who is it?
What expertise do they claim you don’t have?
When in the process do they call you out?
Where are you when they challenge you?
Why do they say that you don’t know what you’re talking about?
How do you respond?

Your answers empower you to acquire knowledge, learn new skills, and practice emotional intelligence. These enable you to bridge the gap between what you perceive and what is real. You can feel like you earned your success.

Imposter syndrome involves both how you see yourself and how you think others see you. Here’s something else you can try: Ask three people you trust what they think your strengths are. If their feedback does not match how you want to be perceived, you now have information to plan your next goal.

How will you use this new research to make imposter syndrome work for you? Please share in the comments.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

While researching for last week’s article, I came across Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” How have I gone my whole life, including college English and history classes, and not known about this?! I fixed that oversight in my education. The 20-page letter is an eloquent expression of indignation and disappointment. How demoralized King must have been every time he banged his head against the brick walls of racism. His determination to wield his disappointment as a catalyst for change is a master class in rhetoric. His example can inspire our behavior at work.

Open Your Mind

When you are disappointed because you didn’t get the reaction you wanted, pause long enough to let the emotion finish its cycle. Then, analyze the situation with as much objectivity as you can muster. With that particular door closed, what window just opened? For example, if you were rejected for a promotion, then you need to consider your role in the organization through the selection committee’s eyes:

Did you work really hard at projects they consider housekeeping?
Did the person who received the promotion spotlight themselves more than you did?
Is the promotion political instead of based on merit?

The answers to these questions plant another decision tree:

Will the selection committee give you feedback regarding why you weren’t promoted?
Are you willing to do what it takes to get promoted?
Do you want to remain an employee of this company?

When eight fellow clergymen publicly criticized King for his Birmingham Campaign, he chose to use his time in jail to write a treatise that still speaks to us today. Even though his body was incarcerated, his mind was free.

Practice Emotional Intelligence

When you are disappointed because your expectations are not aligned with your coworkers, communicate.You are probably not alone in your disappointment. You can state in a meeting or an email what you perceive, then ask for clarity. For example, Does everyone on your team know what their role in a project is? Do they know what each other’s roles are? Does everyone know which project has priority and when it is due? Not all projects are equal. The client who supplies your organization with the most revenue will receive most of the team’s energy even if they are not the team’s favorite client. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is King’s comprehensive effort to communicate with his fellow clergymen and align everyone’s expectations.

Level Up Your Goals

When you are disappointed because you failed to reach one of your S.M.A.R.T. goals, use the setback to refine and iterate your next one. For example, is the system you’re using to qualify leads not helping you meet your monthly quota? Analyze your process. Are all the elements sound? Did you not make quota three months in a row? Were any external circumstances negatively impacting your process? In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King broke down his process of the non-violent campaign into four basic steps and gave examples of how he and his coworkers for justice moved through them.

How do you use disappointment to push yourself forward? Please share in the comments.