Leadership – Page 14 – mardihumphreys.com

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.

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.

Lessons for Losers

Competition is a central theme in American society. The Super Bowl and the Olympics happening at the same time gave us competition overload. Even the men honored for President’s Day won a contest. You’re in contests every day. At work, you’re competing with teammates for the next promotion, on social media you’re competing with “friends” for likes, at home you’re competing with hostile Minecraft mobs for survival. Given the nature of competition, there can only be one winner. That means the majority of contestants are going to lose. How are the losers supposed to recover?

Perspective

Winning a contest often involves luck (preparation meets opportunity). When you have one shot at beating the competition, like the Super Bowl, many variables have to combine in just the right order to win. That’s one of the reasons underdogs are so appealing. After the Bengals lost the Super Bowl, quarterback Joe Burrow’s comments were full of responsibility for his performance, grace for his team, respect for his opponent, and hope for the future. His emotionally intelligent response after the loss is a template for how you can react when your team experiences a setback at work.

Perseverance

When you have to wait four years for a shot at a gold medal, having an off day during your short program can crush your spirit. In 2018 men’s figure skater, Nathan Chen, was favored to win gold in PyeongChang. But a series of failed jumps left him placing fifth in the men’s singles competition. Like a true statistics and data science major, Chen spent the next four years analyzing what went wrong and what it would take to fix it. He had plenty of experience dealing with adversity in regard to figure skating. When he started, his family was impoverished. He used his sister’s skates and all the money his mother could scare up to pay his coach. Chen seemed to learn early in his training that the only failure is giving up. The rest is just gathering data. His perseverance paid off when he won the 2022 gold medal in men’s singles figure skating in Beijing. His tenacity after the loss is a reminder to refine, iterate, and try your process again after your team experiences a setback at work.

Pivot

Everyone has to accept the outcome of a Presidential election otherwise democracy doesn’t work. If those who don’t like the outcome refuse to accept it and actively work to change it, then the nation can’t move forward. You don’t have to like the result in order to accept it. For example, Al Gore did not like the outcome of his 2000 Presidential contest with George W. Bush. But on December 13, 2000, after the Supreme Court decided 5-4 (another contest, btw) that Bush was the President of the United States, Gore said this: “Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. For the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.” He turned his desire to serve the public into raising awareness of the dangers of climate change. Gore wrote and starred in An Inconvenient Truth for which he won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2007. His decision to shift focus after the loss is an inspiration to try new ideas after your team experiences a setback at work.

What lessons did you learn from the losers of the Super Bowl, Olympics, and Presidential elections that inspire you to keep competing? Please share in the comments.

Hidden Treasure

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Continuous improvement is my business, so I’m habitually looking for manual processes to automate. Some of my clients get nervous because automation could eliminate an employee’s job. But that employee has a big advantage over the automating software application: soft skills. Only human beings can combine wisdom, communication, leadership, and self-awareness to get work done. If the employee is valuable, then I suggest the client take this opportunity to advance them into leadership. That decision calls for careful consideration because individual contributors tend to get promoted for their technical skills. However, the promotion often comes with people to manage requiring soft skills the new manager may not have. Here are three characteristics to look for when identifying a potential leader.

Growth Mindset

Leaders are constantly learning, questioning their own assumptions, and seeking feedback. For example, leaders:

Take personal initiative to adopt the company’s mission. They decide to find their role in furthering it even if being an individual contributor is not their dream job
See the big picture and think strategically about how they can help the organization get from where it is to where it wants to be
Not only focus on what they can control during a crisis but also look for new opportunities the crisis may spawn
Realize the next step toward a goal may require two steps back
Develop confidence when they refuse to be victims of setbacks
Favor performing small experiments to get the team comfortable with failure. They frame these failures as necessary to eliminate what doesn’t work
Don’t wallow in regret when they make a mistake. Instead, they find out where they went wrong to prevent it from happening again
Recognize the importance of celebrating every baby step the team takes toward their goal

Inspires Collaboration

Bestselling business author Daniel Pink, says 70% of employees spend at least some of their workday “persuading or convincing others.” People who do this well and for the benefit of both the project and the people working on it, are leaders. They:

Positively build, cultivate, and engage a disparate team to promote a workplace culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
Give relentless respect to earn trust and strive for mutual understanding
Rally the team to buy in to the plan that will complete the mission
Manage conflict to foster debate instead of defense
Encourage everyone on the team to maintain an attitude of, “It’s us against the problem, not us against each other.” This bonds the team and makes everyone stronger for the next challenge

Chronic Curiosity

In his book, Play Nice But Win, Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies says, “Change, true transformation, is a race with no finish line.” Thanks to technology the rate of change is increasing and it’s not going to slow down. Leaders:

Champion transformation and look for what is coming next
Are more interested in relevant results than in looking the smartest person in the room
Apply the scientific method to business challenges. For example, COVID is forcing leaders to think critically about how work gets done because business “as usual” no longer exists. Solving that challenge begins with curiosity

What qualities do you look for in a potential leader? Please share in the comments.

Time for a Brand Refresh

Soft skills are hard. It takes years of practice to hone interpersonal skills, build character, and cultivate a professional attitude. They can take longer to learn than advanced JavaScript and are more critical to job performance. Soft skills are based on making wise choices. They are so important that four years ago I started writing about them weekly. In a world that daily iterates thanks largely to technology and COVID, soft skills are game-changers for the future of work. Employees who can successfully navigate fluid situations are extremely valuable. Over the next month we’ll explore four broad categories of soft skills: wisdom, communication, leadership, and self-awareness. First, let’s clarify terms:

Hard Skills: These are technical skills you learn through education, practice, and repetition. You can prove these skills with a degree or certificate; for example, mastering a second language, getting your PhD in physical therapy, or earning your Project Management Professional certification. These skills are temporary and change as technology evolves.

Soft Skills: These skills aren’t dependent on acquiring education. They are personal attributes you accumulate through life experience. They help you interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. They are broad and difficult to quantify. They are permanent and required for every job.

Wisdom is a Soft Skill

Wisdom is knowledge gained through experience over time. Organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant says, “Wisdom is being fast to learn from others’ errors to slow the rate of yours.” You attain wisdom by collecting as many facts and as much truth as you can to make the best decision you can in the time that you have to make it. Here are three ways you use wisdom at work:

Emotional Intelligence – You have learned how to competently manage your emotions when you are under stress. You recognize when emotions are governing someone’s behavior and can empathize with them. You are able to identify someone’s motivation and use it to influence them both verbally and non-verbally. For example, you have a personal rule to wait 24 hours before replying to an email that makes you angry.

Time Management – You can plan strategically (you have to-do lists for today, tomorrow, next week, etc.). You can remain focused long enough to get into flow. You have boundaries around work-life integration. You put in the time necessary to grow trusted relationships. For example, you booked a recurring calendar appointment for the last hour of your workday on Fridays to update your monthly expense report.

Performance Under Pressure – You developed the patience to prioritize instead of criticize. You recognize that a looming deadline tempts you to cut corners, but you also remember garbage in, garbage out. Experience has taught you that ideas and solutions come faster after you’ve taken a break. For example, your biggest client threatens to leave. Instead of looking for a team member to blame, you personally call the client for feedback.

The fast pace of business makes managing our impulses, waiting for processes to run their courses, and looking at the big picture and where our selfie fits in it hard. So may we please re-label soft skills with an adjective that better describes them? What do you think of human skills or professional skills? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Be Like Betty

Betty White and I are birthday buddies. This January 17 is a more somber celebration as I both fondly and gratefully contemplate her example of a life well lived. To be (basically) a centenarian is an amazing accomplishment, but her longevity isn’t the most impressive thing about Betty White. When People magazine asked her about it recently, Betty attributed her long life to being a cock-eyed optimist. She said, “I got it from my mom, and that never changed. I always find the positive.” That mindset guided Betty to make wise choices regarding her T.E.A.M.; especially when it came to her work. Here are a few examples.

Betty Spent Her TIME Honing Her Craft

After co-hosting a daily variety show, Hollywood on Television, in 1952 she began hosting solo. For the next four years she improvised five and a half hours of live television six days a week by herself. At the same time, she produced and starred in another television show called Life with Elizabeth, for which she won her first Emmy. Over the following 70 years, Betty won seven more Emmys plus a Grammy, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and many other accolades. She wasn’t in the entertainment industry to win awards, but they are evidence of her job performance.

Betty Spent Her ENERGY Seeking New Projects

Her big break into celebrity came when she did a guest spot on the Mary Tyler Moore show. She did the job so well, she was made a permanent cast member. Betty’s role on Hot in Cleveland happened the same way. The Snickers commercial she did for the 2010 Super Bowl led to a guest hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. Betty knew what she could do, identified the need, and provided value where she could. Those soft skills are crucial to every industry.

Betty Spent Her ATTENTION on Leadership

The Golden Girls was groundbreaking television at the time the show began airing. It spotlighted the needs of an often overlooked segment of the American population. The premise of Betty’s final sitcom, Hot in Cleveland, challenged society’s standards and perceptions of women’s beauty.

Betty Spent Her MONEY on Under-resourced Organizations

She was as famous for being a life-long animal lover as she was for being an actress and her work funded her passion. Betty’s fame generated a fan club: Bet’s Pets. The membership dues all went to various animal rescue charities that Betty participated in.

In choosing to spend her T.E.A.M. in these ways, Betty created an enviable legacy. I’m grateful that she not only left us with an abundance of her work roles to enjoy, but also with life roles to model.

Betty White’s life story is much larger than I can tell within my usual 500 words. You don’t have to Google very hard to find articles describing why she is regarded as a pioneer, cultural icon, and national treasure. How has her passing prompted you to examine your purpose for work and life? Please share in the comments.

Off-balance

COVID-19 and its variants have allowed us to blur our boundaries between work and not work for the last 21 months. For whole industries The Great Resignation is fueled by the results. As 2022 approaches, society contemplates the future of work and how to make it sustainable for both employers and workforce. In the meantime, what if you tried integrating your job with your life instead of striving for work-life balance?

Isn’t Work a Part of Your Life?

Why are the two entities compartmentalized and put on a scale? When you assimilate what you do for a living into the rest of your life, it’s easier to bring your whole self to both. For example, if you work for a small business, maybe you have to handle accounting as well as on-boarding new hires. When you apply those pivoting skills to work and not-work responsibilities, you create flexible solutions for both. You may have to pioneer these types of innovations at your company. People are creatures of habit. How likely is it that your manager will offer to meet with you to brainstorm ways you can do your job outside of the office? Since you know how best to accomplish your projects, you have to demonstrate how your plan works best. For example, make sure your manager knows you are creating win-win situations for all the parties involved. Wasn’t the client impressed with your dedication to their account when you joined the videoconference from your car during your child’s basketball practice? You also have to monitor your boundaries. Remember that a task you do for your employer is work whether you are doing it in the office at 9:00AM or at your kitchen counter at 9:00PM. Communication (with management, teammates, clients), prioritizing (urgent vs. important), and organization (empowering others to help both at home and work) are key elements for successful work-life integration.

Declare Your Boundaries

To gain some control, try block scheduling. It may help you with the logistics of integration. These blocks can be however long you want. Maybe start with thirty minute blocks and increase up to an hour if you can manage it before taking a break and moving on to the next one. Obvious blocks can be your current work projects broken down into tasks and family medical appointments, but remember to schedule not-so-obvious blocks for exercise, self-care, and leisure. This also helps you see what activities you value and how much time you really need for them.

Change is Hard

Our relationship to work is changing. Employees have more leverage than ever right now. Workforce is waiting to see how governments will respond to the call for reformation of childcare, living wages, and paid time off policies. Employees are shaking up the business community with their insistence on flexibility like shorter work days/weeks, and hybrid work models. While we navigate this transition, do what you need to do to take care of yourself, especially your mental health. You can both do your best for your employer and yourself.

How did you integrate what you do for a living into your life in 2021? Please share in the comments.