Leadership – Page 12 – mardihumphreys.com

Setting the Standards

If your husband is also a father, do you get him a gift for Father’s Day? Why do we lump husband and father together? The roles are very different. Here’s what I’m thinking.

Criteria for Husbands

Be a friend – Your wife should be the first person who hears your breaking news, whether good or bad. You are the person your wife should be able to trust the most, so keep her secrets. Everyone has faults, and your wife is probably painfully aware of hers, so resist pointing them out.

No wife jokes – Like these. I propose the traditional marriage vows be amended to say, “to love, cherish, and respect until parted by death.”

Ride or die – You and your wife are a team. Your first loyalty is to her for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, yada, yada, yada.

Responsible – Do what you say you’re going to do. If you tell her you’re going to mow the lawn today, do it. If you change your mind, tell her.

Unselfish – Put your wife’s needs ahead of your own. Has she worked overtime this week? Then suggest she stay home from your company softball game tonight.

Affection – This isn’t necessarily public displays of physical affection or mushy social media posts. It can be as simple as letting her know you’re paying attention. For example, my husband doesn’t usually tell me when he’s read something I wrote. After I published this he bought me a coffee mug. I thanked him and mentioned that it matched the article’s specifications. In his best Han Solo imitation, he said, “I know.” I not only love the mug, (and him!) but I also love knowing that he read something I wrote.

Communication – Disagreements are a given, but fights don’t have to be. It helps to remember that it is the two of you against the challenge not the two of you against each other. Even when the challenge is your wife, speaking the truth in love will resolve an issue faster.

BTW, You should expect these same considerations from your wife.

Criteria for Fathers

Physical security – You contribute to the provision of food, clothing, and shelter.

Emotional safety – You enforce the rules. When you show your children where their boundaries are, it instills confidence in them. Kids want to make dad proud and now they know how.

Relationship role model – If you are loving and kind, then your children will seek those qualities in the people they choose to allow into their lives. Their behavior in their relationships will also be loving and kind because they saw their father model it.

Unconditional love – Consistently reassuring your children that you will love them no matter what gives your kids peace of mind.

Proactive parenting – You are raising your children to be adults capable of functioning without you. You plan your time with them to achieve that goal.

Present and involved – You set aside time (and your phone, and your laptop, etc.) to focus on your children and what they are interested in and/or struggling with.

Respects the mother – Whether you live with your children and their mother or not, you present a united front with her. You keep your disagreements between the two of you and resolve them in private.

Do you agree with these theories? What did I get wrong or forget to mention? Please share in the comments.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

It’s Memorial Day weekend; the official start of summer recreation. School lets out, community pools open, and outdoor concerts shift into high gear. Does anyone else feel weird about kicking off summer fun with a holiday based on mourning the military personnel who died while serving in the United States armed forces? No? Just me? Okay. The sacrifices they made secured the freedom we enjoy. We pause, remember, and are grateful.

Speaking of weird, how is your adjustment to working in person going? We endeavor to discuss the evolution of work in dispassionate, detached, and practically Vulcan tones, but under the calm exteriors, all the feels are brewing.

Employees want more freedom over where and when work gets done. Employers are afraid to give up that much control. Changes like a four-day work week, WFH options, and bringing your dog to work are just the beginning. They lead to other debates like, What about unlimited PTO? How about healthcare insurance coverage from day one? Will the company offer stock options?

The attention both employers and employees have to pay to these emotionally charged topics is exhausting on top of the work that needs to get done. Often, when you’re weary, emotions, especially the negative ones, lead the conversations instead of interpret them. Under what circumstances is it okay to express strong emotions at work?

Emotions are contagious and can escalate an exchange into an argument. In the absence of communication, negative emotions are even more dangerous because where information is absent, your brain fills in the blanks.

For example, if your manager keeps putting off approving a time-sensitive decision, you don’t know why they aren’t giving you an answer. You can assume they are thoughtfully processing the possible implications of their decision. It’s more likely you’re going to assume they’re putting you off because they forgot about you or don’t respect you. These negative thoughts produce negative emotions that fabricate a story you believe is the truth. Then, you may get angry and make a decision without your manager’s sign-off. You tell yourself you will ask for forgiveness if it turns out they don’t approve.

But, what happens when you discover the story you told yourself is false? Now you’ve damaged the trust between you and your manager. How do you recover from that? What do you learn from it? How do you fix it? What triggers do you put in place to prevent it from happening again? (Recommended reading: Rising Strong, by Brene Brown)

During this transition from the way work was done to the way it will be done, it’s crucial that you manage your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. You must pay attention to what you give your attention to. Be an active listener. Summarize and repeat back what you think you heard. Presume everyone is on the same team and working toward what is best both for the organization and for each other.

When was the last time you had to stop your brain from filling in a communication gap at work? 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.

Time for a Change

Given my fascination with the Great Resignation and all its iterations, it was only a matter of time (or, in my case T.E.A.M.) before I participated in it. I dove into the Great Reshuffle when I recently accepted a new position. As a former Change Agent, you’d assume that I’m prepared for the adjustments necessary to negotiate the transition to a new job. Well, you know what assuming does. (If not, DM me.) The phrase I used to calmly repeat to clients, I now have to incessantly repeat to myself, “Change is hard; even when the change is good, it’s still hard.” If you’ve ever changed roles, moved to a new team, or joined a new organization, you feel me. Here are three things I’m still learning about change.

Failure is Data

You’re going to make mistakes and mistakes do not equal failure. The only time failure happens is when you quit trying. Mistakes provide valuable information for improving your processes. They reveal where you need to set triggers so that you will avoid making the same mistake twice. You can use mistakes to both increase the speed at which you learn new procedures and decrease your learning curve.

Slow Your Roll

I often preach at you to stop and think. You should also stop and feel. What are your emotions telling you? Is joy cheerleading? “Wow! I can’t believe I’m on this team!” Or is fear whispering? “Wow. I can’t believe I’m on this team.” The first feeling reinforces your decision to change as a positive move. The second feeling should prompt you to take a five-minute break and, while drinking a bottle of water, ask yourself the five whys. For example:

Why does being assigned to this team make me feel nervous? Because everyone else on this team is a rockstar.
Why are they considered rockstars? Because they get highly visible projects.
Why do they get highly visible projects? Because they all crush their KPIs every month.
Why do you think that is? Because they do more outreach than anyone else.
Why don’t you ask one of them for advice on effective methods of outreach?

Build Bridges

Walt Disney was right. It really is a small world. It’s likely that you’ll encounter former coworkers in the future, especially if you still work in the same industry and/or the same small city, so it’s wise to only speak positively about them. You may have health coverage and/or a retirement plan with your former company that requires Human Resources’ help to tie up those loose ends, so be polite and responsive when they ask for your input. Write a thank-you note for all of the opportunities your former employer gave you and publish it on your social media. Your LinkedIn newsfeed usually has plenty of examples you can follow.

Remember that your participation in the Great Reshuffle affects others. Whether you have a partner, a parent, or a pet, everyone in your circle of influence is impacted by your change. If you will intentionally be kind, repeat how new processes will work, and get some rest, then both you and your loved ones will adjust faster.

Have you participated in the Great Reshuffle? What changes have you made? Please share in the comments.

Child-free by Choice

WARNINGS: In honor of Mother’s Day, this is a woman-centric conversation. Also, I have a lot of questions.

Why do people assume that women have a responsibility to reproduce? Men get questioned, but do they get shamed for not having children? Parenthood is a social convention not a natural condition. Raising children in America is arduous and, if you participate in the workforce, it’s difficult to be both a mother and an employee.

The Way It Is

From birth, society bombards females with the message that job, marriage, and kids are what make you successful and therefore, happy. Women who intentionally choose a child-free lifestyle inevitably deal with periods of powerful anxiety and self-doubt regarding their decision because culture warns women that they will eventually regret not becoming a mother. Those who choose not to have children get labeled selfish, self-absorbed, and shallow. They are accused of hating children, but child-free represents a lifestyle choice not animosity. For example, Betty White supported St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dolly Parton founded Dolly’s Imagination Library, and Oprah Winfrey built The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

Let’s Be Honest

Parenting is really hard – The United States does not have a national paid parental-leave program, childcare is expensive and hard to find, and mothers are expected to assume the bulk of the responsibility for raising children. The pandemic threw a spotlight on these barriers to mothers’ participation in the workforce challenging women to seriously reconsider what responsibilities they can realistically manage.

Motherhood does not make you content – Women are increasingly defying societal conventions en masse and thinking about their “why” in terms of motherhood. Research shows that in the 1970s one out of 10 women reached menopause without giving birth. In 2010, the rate was one out of five.

The biological clock is a myth – Not every woman has an innate desire to reproduce, but if your friends are having babies, you may feel left out. Ask yourself, “Do I really want to be a mother? Or do I just want to want to be a mother?”

The Decision

There are plenty of reasons for remaining child-free:

You are a complete human without the experience of motherhood
You do not have adequate support and/or resources
You have trouble taking care of yourself
You’re considering motherhood because others expect it from you
270 more

If you like your life the way it is (you travel, value freedom and spontaneity, need lots of alone time), then it is better to not have kids and regret it later than to have kids and regret it later.

If you are a woman living in America and considering motherhood, take a listen to the We Can Do Hard Things Podcast Episode 6 OVERWHELM especially the beginning of the Hard Questions segment starting at 31:03. This is an honest conversation around what is considered normal regarding “the gig” of motherhood as it currently exists in American society.

What do you think of the state of motherhood in America? Please share in the comments.

Battery Low

I have a wireless headset that audibly notifies me of certain conditions. When it connects she says, “Your headset is connected.” When it’s about to turn itself off because it needs charged she sternly announces, “Battery low.” I wish my brain would issue the same warning when I spend too long on a project without a break.

One of the factors in the Great Resignation is employee burnout. Are you fanning those flames? While growing up, maybe your parents and teachers trained you to finish your chores and homework before you were allowed to play. Now you’re internally compelled to finish a project before you can rest. The problem with that mindset is there’s always another project waiting.

I heard a word recently that’s stuck in my head: fallow. It’s an agricultural term referring to a field that annually grows crops and is intentionally set aside for at least one growing cycle. Going fallow allows the soil to recover. It gets rid of germs, stores nutrients, and retains water. I keep coming back to this concept in relation to my brain. When I think about letting my mind go fallow, I think of taking a vacation, a weekend off, or at least a lunch period. To me, getting rid of germs, storing nutrients, and retaining water sounds like washing my hands then eating a salad and chasing it with a bottle of water. But I’m beginning to think we all should let our minds go fallow multiple times during the workday. Research shows that breaks make us more effective, but are we taking them? If so, then are we doing them right?

What a break is not:

Switching from one task to another
Reading and replying to email
Returning calls
Running office errands
Cleaning

What a break is:

Standing up and stretching
Walking away from your workspace and equipment; around the block, if possible. Do something to temporarily get your blood flowing a little faster
Read a chapter in a novel
Text a friend
Play Wordle

Benefits

Some benefits of taking breaks are intuitive. For example, they recharge your energy, refocus your attention, and battle job burnout. There are also some not-so-intuitive benefits like increased productivity, physical and mental restoration, and increased employee engagement.

Methods

It’s counterproductive to only take a break when you’ve reached exhaustion. If brief rest periods make you feel guilty, then think of them as productivity breaks. Train yourself to perceive a pause as an efficient element of your energy management routine. Here are a few verified methods to help you develop a good habit.

Pomodoro Technique – 25 minutes of work, then a five-minute break, with a 15-minute break at least once every two hours.

Microbreaks – Five-minute breaks randomly taken at your discretion.

The Draugiem Group Way – in 2014 this company ran an experiment with their employees regarding the optimum time for breaks. Their findings indicate that working for 52 minutes then taking a 17-minute break is what the most productive members of their staff did.

How do you incorporate breaks into your workday? Please share your strategy in the comments.

Too Young to be Done

Given that the Great Resignation is slowing down a bit and we are squarely in the Great Reshuffle, the Great Reckoning, and the Great Renegotiation, now may be a good time for those who participated in the Great Retirement to re-enter the workforce. The longer employees hold out for working conditions that better accommodate their lives, the sooner employers will have to consider both retaining and hiring non-traditional employees.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is, we’re living longer. The bad news is, we’re living longer. Current life expectancy in the United States is 78.99 years, but a 40-year-old employee is considered old according to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Even the federal government recognizes that the older we get, the fewer opportunities we have. Ageism is real, a waste of talent, and hard to prove. For example, you’ve probably heard myths about older workers such as: they lack energy, they are technologically incapable, and they aren’t willing to learn new ways of doing things. But don’t you know 28 year olds that fit that description too? Take a look around your company. Who is getting hired? Who is getting offered early retirement packages? Is anyone talking about how mature employees are typically:

more loyal
not interested in climbing much higher on the corporate ladder
good decision makers
effective communicators and managers
time flexible because their kids are grown and flown
less concerned about feeding their egos
energized by working with diverse teams

You haven’t heard those talking points? I suspected as much. But wise companies will figure out how to retain older workers. It costs more to hire employees than to hold on to them. Gone are the days when an organization could replace a long-term individual contributor with an unpaid intern.

Go For It

Everyone in the workforce over 40 years old has faced a job hunt, so don’t let pride sabotage your search. If you decide to come out of retirement, but don’t know where to start, reach out to former colleagues for coffee and catchup. When the opportunity presents itself, be ready to briefly tell your story and be clear about what you’re looking for. Not sure what you want to do?

Get involved with an organization like Silver is Gold
Consider part-time, seasonal, and short-term contract positions
Contact a nonprofit and volunteer. Do they need board members? Do they have working committees?
If you want to go back to work in a different industry than you left, can you job shadow someone in your area of interest?
Do you know any start ups that need help?
Does anyone in your network know any entrepreneurs who will trade experience for work?

The way work gets done is rapidly evolving. If there is work you’ve always wanted to do, there is no better time to go for it than right now.

Have you joined the Great Reshuffle? Please share your experience 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.

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.