Instant People Skills: Coach Yourself & Others

Chief Blogging Officer, Social Networking?

The world is getting more complex, so skills that simplify it are more valuable than ever. Small businesses must go nuts hearing data such as Workforce Management's revelation this week that 11% of large companies now have corporate blogs, some even appointing Chief Blogging Officers (http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/25/50/77.html). Should they try to keep up and what has to give elsewhere if they do? 

This raises tons of questions. How many companies at this point even have Chief HR Officers for instance? What are the priorities - people or some poorly understood marketing or recruiting tool? More to the point, where should they do be to be successful and sustain their people through these turbulent times?

In this start-up period, while we figure out the place for Social Networking in business, we need to remember we can't do everything. There's a growing need to understand blogging and other Web 2.0 and 3.0 options - what can they do, what does it take and what are the best ways to use or not use this vast array. Can we have it in simple terms - and perhaps even more importantly, what do they replace or what do we drop to fit them in?

I just heard a marketing guru who successfully specializes in getting PR at every turn say, "I've got a blog; I have no idea why, but they say you have to have one, so I got one." He was articulate and to the point about what other things you need to do to boost PR, but here he was clearly lost - and not even touching on newer social networking alternatives.

The best advice this past week came from VP, Susan Van Klink, of Select Minds (www.SelectMinds.com) where they specialize Social Networking tools for use within companies to get employees sharing information and networking better. She advises: avoid knee-jerk reactions and watch security.

Don't ban employees from blogging and networking, but help them understand company rules still make sense - pay attention to confidentiality of information, the fact your words will live forever on the Internet (and may reflect badly on both you and the company) and don't get hooked into something you haven't thought through from a security point of view, whether individual identity or leaking company information might be the issue. In general, proceed… but watch and think first, cautiously and with small steps till you have a feel for where things are going. If you don't have time for much, let others make the mistakes while systems and approaches shake out. Look for the simpler, single, proven uses.

Book titles that need more work

Just back from a couple of weeks travel - conference and vacation - where I made a note to comment on this book title. I noticed it in an airport bookstore, but had made up my mind not to get pulled in while taking time away. In this case, it was easy to say this one doesn't need to be read due to it's rather obvious "how to" subtitle.

The book: Make It Glow: How to Build a Company Reputation for Human Goodness, Flawless Execution, and Being Best-In-Class.

Big surprise. Would that be: consistently work at human goodness, flawless execution and being best in class?

Likely there really is more to say. For instance, how would you work at these things and what would your priorities be in relation to the more typical "make the numbers at all costs" approach to managing? Nevertheless the sense of it being so obvious made it easy to ignore.

Beliefs or Just Prejudice?

Workforce Management collects the most intriguing human resource challenges imaginable. A California software company announces it will hire only Vegetarians (the owner is one, so we must assume he imagines there is some moral issue involved unless he means higher cholesterol will cause greater health cost as we're seeing with tobacco). On one hand one can applaud someone with the gumption to put their money at risk to promote what they believe in. He will certainly forego many great employees and others will lie, which will inevitably damage cohesiveness and teamwork. On the other hand do we find it OK to impose one's will because one can?

Of course this goes on nearly everywhere in one form or another. It's just that hiring managers mostly don't mention their pet beliefs in their job ads. When I talk to groups of executives in job search I use my own case of being screened out of some jobs because I never played football or hockey well. I was terrible at basketball. I can't run due to asthma. Scrawny as a kid, I went on to squash and swimming and grew to appreciate the team sports I missed sometimes taught great leadership lessons... though they also sometimes taught a sort of elitism that excludes a wide range of people as in the vegetarian example. No specific experience or lack by itself dictates later job results. It's what people do job-wise that counts.

Today, for the moment, employers generally can't be quite so prejudicial though many still subconsciously apply their beliefs for far less moral reasons. They really should look instead at the work an applicant can deliver and their motivation to do the work. Unless it's for a job playing football or working for a company that makes it's living selling vegetarian, then why are these relevant? In the grand scheme it doesn't matter. Unless the number of vegan owners far exceeds their percentage in the workforce there will always be jobs for meat eaters.

Still, raising this low impact question highlights a raft of related issues managers should ponder when making decisions.

Answers To The Outsourcing Rant

A reader was kind enough to undertake to set me straight as follows: "On the outsourcing point of view the key question for me is what is the return on the asset and people unfortunately are assets in a company. If I'm in banking my assets are money and financial minds tat create retrurns. If my business is commercial real estate then my assets are property, buildings and people who know a good deal from a bad one. If I'm an HR outsourcer then my assets are HR savvy people who others are willing to buy expertise from. If I'm a multinational pharma company or software company then I'm afraid I don't see much return from an HR person.

It's all about following the money."

I started to write a return comment and realized it needed to be longer and more people might want to see it…. Thanks for the comment Darren. I think you've succinctly captured one point of view. Where can I start to explain more clearly. You can always outsource "hard" HR basics - the transactional systems, record-keeping and benefits. But people absolutely are assets in every company - like the financial minds you mention. Those minds can get balled up in worrying about minor stuff on benefits or they can worry about when their next promotion is coming. While they're worrying, they aren't creating as good returns as they could. Often those worries don't fit in boxes like, "what does the dental plan pay for this?" The real key is continual coaching approach from their direct leader, but who helps the leaders who aren't naturally good at this?

People are unique in being assets you don't own or control. Leaders can use them up by hiring for great potential, using them for a while till they feel they're being used and toss them out as some bosses regularly do or you can have someone who helps develop and coaches bosses who in turn listen and respond to concerns. In a small business (as most are) if you hand pick business leaders and they have good listening skills, see the need and the CEO listen as well, you can get by without a designated HR person for a long time. But as you grow, merge, acquire others and have to expand your ranks, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure enough people who give the continual time to listening that is needed as part of their job, as part of getting the work flowing smoothly and to give the thinking time to make good decisions about every person. And coordinating all this takes time.

In every company someone tends to fall into the role of listener and thinker for resolving HR "soft" issues. That person becomes the de facto HR person, the go to individual when someone has a problem or a manager has a problem with an employee. They may do other things, too, as I did even in a very large corporation, but they need some latitude to help set the tone for how people are treated and to counsel those who behave outside the program, to be a second set of ears and eyes for the CEO to marshal people on track continually to get the best return on those assets. As Colin Powell says in his first book, "every division needs it's 'chaplain' [his description for someone who listens and helps resolve]." You can leave the role informal, but that tends to hide a very important lever in getting things moving and keeping them moving smoothly.

Quite often this person doesn't carry the title HR and isn't hired for that alone, but they are in a real sense running the HR program of the organization and it takes a real and usually substantial portion of their time. If you lose that person, your return on human assets tanks fairly quickly. Research shows great HR multiplies financial results by four or more times over the average company. I probably don't need to say that anything that runs "great" like "great HR" is great because it is run by an effective leader. Who is leading HR in any company is a key question. It's a daily culture-building influence that you cannot thrive without. Someone organizes that and it almost never can be the entrepreneurial leader who drives the business attack - the roles and the things you have to do and dedicate the majority of your time to are simply incompatible. So do you give the HR role to someone formally (full or part time) or just let it happen by itself, haphazardly? Contractors can't do this for you unless they're on site virtually full time and have the ear of the senior leadership continually.

Rant: Outsourcing Core Business Factors Is Dubious

Sure you can outsource human resources… some would argue completely. But why? Line managers, no matter how well we train, will never have time to gain experience with the vast range of complex situations needed to get an overall handle on things that may, and inevitably do, pop up unexpectedly.

Some will face human rights, some unions, some leave and temporary replacement and many, many more highly specific issues. We want line managers concentrating on business and day-to-day management of people, with some sensitivity to complicated HR items, but not to try to be expert in all of them. We don't even want them tied up for long worrying about where to find the right sort of expert for the challenge they're suddenly facing. For them to be able to turn to someone with more overall knowledge about what's possible and who knows the internal culture seems totally logical.

The more we can automate and outsource details and "transactional" stuff (HR systems, payroll, benefits, even parts of recruiting and substantial parts of training) the better, but to suggest we outsource all of HR is just plain dopey in virtually every case.

In fact, a big beef with in-house HR professionals is that even they don't have complete experience and expertise with the vast range of challenges that can arise. But at least they know where to look fo what's available, what pitfalls to avoid until expertise is engaged and, if they're any good, how that expertise needs to adapt to fit the in-house culture.

Hardly a week goes by without another "expert" threatening the possibility that Human Resources in organizations will become totally irrelevant and be totally outsourced. Stop already! The latest article is by a former Toronto senior human resource executive (who shall remain nameless) who helped outsource a major chunk of his company's HR operations and is now himself providing outsourced services to others. Frequently it is outsourcers who write this stuff.

Here's a question - how do these outsourcing companies (some of which are now huge) do their own HR for their own people? Do they outsource it? If their in-house people can do it effectively (is it by calling on subject experts in-house on each piece of HR?) what makes other companies' in-house HR people so unable to achieve the same skill?

No one would argue that every in-house HR person is fully knowledgeable or even knowledgeable enough on all that is available today. But that's the nature of virtually every profession - constant learning. My beef is with HR people who think they know it all, not with the concept that HR contributes value when done well and when decisions about what resources are needed, internal or external, are made with good, logical judgment. Today, many of the know-it-all HR types are not those inside organizations.

Handling people effectively is at least as core a business function as handling money effectively. Regardless of what portion is farmed out, doesn't it make sense to have an expert or two in-house to coordinate issues that arise every single day in virtually every organization? Is that best done by line managers who already have busy workloads and over-worked brains?

It's Not Really Multitasking, Is It?

Often when you've had a chance to sleep on it, some remark you've made the day before seems incorrect (that's the polite word) or maybe just dumb.

Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you're working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That's not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it's better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done - through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It's a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn't a "multitask" because you're not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can't avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we're on the right track. If we can't see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

We Need To Change The Way We Multitask

By now you've read that multitasking isn't what people imagine and largely distracts us from effective work (Slashdot link, for instance). It's really switching quickly back and forth between two or more tasks and each switch wastes time as we struggle to re-orient to the next item. That's been well researched.

The problem is we all do it. And actually, if you think about it, a certain type of multitasking is necessary and worthwhile, though much isn't. We need to understand the difference.

What helps is if we pay attention to the one key multitasking that helps us to be most effective, a facet we often overlook. While doing anything, the key question is what its effect will be on other people - will they be more motivated and more capable of helping get things done as a result of what we do?

Everything we do connects with others - customers, co-workers, family members, even other drivers on the road. If we plough through task after task to get "things" done as quickly as we can, it's inevitable that we start ignoring people - the loud cell conversations in crowded places, the calls taken during meetings and dinners, the brush-offs of co-workers when we "absolutely" have to make something else a priority. No one learns from us, except that in future they'd rather have less to do with us.

The real multitasking requirement we all face is how our work can get done and at the same time people can be helped along the way so they, too, can be optimally productive, learn new skills, improve, grow and thrive. What else are we in business and in life for? And, by the way, some of that greater productivity and improvement will come back to help us get more things done faster ourselves. If we model helping, we will be helped in return. Reciprocity is our human link.

Some Great Blog Sites

Every once in a while you stumble onto a gold mine and wonder why you missed it for so long. Trevor Gay is a long-term British Health System executive who retired into his own consulting practice and has created a blog actually worth looking through.

His own blog, Simplicity, I'd describe as a rather quirky, opinionated version of the concept, but that's a plus. It takes your thinking in new directions and collects links to some other very interesting, somewhat quirky stuff as well.

I started with his video and then some background, but was very interested to skim some of the blogs he links to, like these: Promanager , Hillbilly PhD, Phil Gerbyshak's Make It Great which in turn refers to this list: Top Productivity and Lifehack Blogs (a Lifehack, by the way is blog-speak for cute tips and shortcuts you can use to improve your life - or "hack" your life, in other words).

The only trouble I have with blogs, including my own is too many and too much to read. They work if you keep focused, but it's easy to get sidetracked in a thousand directions.

What bloggers link to is often misleading because they mix personal and business interests and some bloggers waver back and forth between the two far too much to make either aspect useful. If you believe in Serendipity (lucky coincidence) great, but finding what you're actually looking for can be a long haul.

Henry Mintzberg's New Idea for Leadership Development

The volunteer leadership think tank I work a lot for, Strategic Capability Network, had the pleasure and good luck to host Dr. Mintzberg in January on the subject of a new project he's developing. It's goal:  simplifying leadership development to a program companies can do themselves in-house that will compete with the International and Advanced Management programs he's run for years - the new one at a cost of a few hundred dollars versus the $45,000 to $100,000 tuition per person for the International and Advanced programs.

The long-time management guru (not at all too strong a word for a professor, author of 140 articles and13 books like Managers Not MBAs) has always worked toward taking the mystery and myths out of effective leadership… and now out of leadership development.

The new venture, CoachingOurselves, is fascinating if not entirely unheard of previously, but its great to see an acknowledged master show how simply we can develop leadership skills.

In this approach groups of managers, usually four to seven, meet together with the role of chair rotating among them, on topics of their choosing. They follow a guide in the form of an agenda and a few PowerPoint slides, created by Henry or his co-authors and learn on their own from their own discussions about their own experience.

He suggests the primary model is that the group meet once a month for about an hour and a quarter for as long as they feel they're benefiting. So far there are intended to be a couple of hundred topics to choose from with about 20 or so currently available and more in development that can be tailored, costing in the range of under $200 each - that's $200 for all five or six people, not per person… and no travel cost or time.

Obviously the major advanced and travel programs can expose managers to experiences, people and diversity that no in-house program could duplicate. Nevertheless Mintzberg insists the core feature of the expensive programs carries over - managers sharing their own experiences and learning from open discussion with each other. So it's "go big or go home" literally, with the option to learn at home now being a valid one.

It isn't a program that creates learning, it's individuals' willingness to learn and to share their thoughts, knowledge and experience with each other that makes for more effective leadership. And we know from personal experience that doing it consistently beats a one-time shot in the arm every time.

Best "Better Management" Blog

John Hollon, Editor-in-Chief, of Workforce Management writes one of the best blogs you can find on management. (Free registration is required, but it's not intrusive at all.) He comments with insight and dedication, identifying and suggesting alternatives for problem management styles. His job is watching employment news so he can always find items that make your hair stand on end.

John's logic and common sense make you wonder how these managers get to where they are. Recent comments about Bob Nardelli, echoing others a year before his outrageous severance package, make it obvious why that outcome was inevitable - and make you wonder why Chrysler thinks he might work out there. It's only a matter of time for guys like this. The bigger question is whether they will take down the entire company - a real possibility in this case. But, still, how do they get there to begin with? This one has to make you question the legacy of Jack Welch, Nardelli's former CEO and a GE Board that would even let him get to the level of consideration.

One problem is the immense power we accord the role of "boss" in any organization. Thousands of bosses at every level lament they can't fire anyone because of union rules, legal protection and other impediments to free-wheeling lashing out. They go through life frustrated, yet it's often with these bosses specifically that somehow everyone feels punished... and not just the weak or bad ones, but almost everyone working for them.

Bad bosses create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of their best employees leave because they can and they hate where they are. The boss may not be able to fire the bad ones, but finds plenty of ways to force the good to leave. The remainder tend to be exactly those the boss deserves, complains about and feels justified in persecuting and ordering about. It becomes a reinforcing downward spiral into misery, minimal effort and poor results.

Only when a company builds a culture that develops good and refuses to tolerate bad behavior will we see this change. Developing positive habits in how people are treated isn't difficult, but everyone has to make it a priority. Then the bad employees, including the bad managers, leave because they are passed over, can't get a foothold and don't want to be faced daily with the fact they don't fit.

Blackberry Blackout?

News of a CEO who flags and fines people for checking their blackberries during meetings hit the papers last month raising interesting questions. Sure, it’s almost certainly impolite to others.

But why does it happen and what right does a CEO have to enforce his brand of courtesy? Perhaps even more importantly, what is the likely outcome? One is suggested on another ad agency CEO’s blog. He’ll steal your angry staff in a heart beat (while doing shameless promotion at the same time).

Did I fail to mention this was a unit of an ad agency… where CEOs like to live up to the reputation of flaring tempers and imperial command? We’re dealing here with evolving generational etiquette as well as everyone under pressure to keep up. Why risk driving valuable staff into the arms of hungry competitors?

Well, when you brag you’re the best I suppose you imagine you can do whatever you want? But isn’t there a better way? As a victim who had to sit through monthly and often weekly three hour meetings with 25 people for many years, the first questions ought to be what use the meetings are, why so many silent people have to endure them and what sort of boss demands that.

If you set up meetings so attendees aren’t engaged, chances are you’ve set that pattern for your entire company. Better to spend a few minutes at the beginning or end questioning whether the meeting was useful and how it could be more so. Are there are reasons for them being there other than hearing updates they could probably read faster – maybe on their blackberries at other boring meetings?

Most meetings could be focused on decisions and over in less than half an hour, but, heck, since we have everyone there… finally, since it’s so hard to get them when they have so many other meetings… why not deluge them with “other stuff.” Build up that agenda with routine reports and pages of numbers on slides that most can hardly see instead of supplying the information ahead so they can bring thought-out comments.

Bosses who actually ask for regular input on how useful meetings are and how they might become more so are rare. It really isn’t so hard to do.

Lessons In Simplicity From Big Companies?

My friends at Verity International produced a panel of senior human resource people from four major corporations Tuesday morning, with remarkable results - and more importantly - remarkable consistency. Whenever big companies present, everyone asks if the lessons are applicable to smaller organizations. The answer is emphatically yes - every organization can do the central things they outlined!

Verity has grown and evolved from pure outplacement or "career management" as we now say, to advising senior executives and talent/organizational consulting. Assembling today's panel showed the insight that has helped them grow. Targeting what it takes to sustain competitive advantage in organizations, all four described how they develop leaders who, everyone agreed, are what makes the difference.

But can small organizations achieve similar results when these giants, GE, IBM, Hudson's Bay Company and Scotiabank have millions to spend on programs covering every imaginable area? All it takes is a bit of imagination and attention to the basics that underlie their successes. The panel distilled it nicely.

First and foremost, there has to be a commitment throughout the organization at every level, from every leader, to develop people to the fullest extent of their ability. Leaders have to be prepared to tell the truth about performance, to be clear about what's expected of staff and especially of other leaders themselves, and provide support. Every leader's role in developing, coaching, mentoring, guiding, assessing and being honest with people has to be reviewed at least annually, with compensation and promotions dependent on those factors as much as on ability to achieve "the numbers." This has to be embedded throughout the organization via a culture built of habits for developing and growing people.

People who seem to have high potential need to be singled out for attention, conversation and development more than others. These fall in three groups - a) what everyone called "emerging leaders" (ie: newer employees), b) executives - those moving significantly up or newly hired into the organization who need heavy emphasis on fitting themselves into the culture, especially this necessary culture of cooperation and development (or new entrants will almost certainly fail as everyone noted) and c) leaders in the top team, who must drive the programs, ensure at least annual (or usually more frequent) reviews of who's being developed by whom and must model commitment to coaching and development skills themselves.

The primary method of developing leaders is to rotate them through stretch assignments, not courses - challenging opportunities in real jobs in which they are supported by coaching, mentoring and honest evaluation that helps them improve. GE especially noted they're moving toward keeping their high potentials longer than the old "12 to 36 months in a job" model everyone used to expect and this new cultural evolution is hard for some aggressive upward movers to get used to. People need time, support and conversation to learn. As long as the challenge is maintained (and pointed out) in the job, longer assignments provide people a chance to see themselves improve year over year.

Listeners could have chosen to focus on the myriad programs these companies can afford - elearning systems, outside consultants and trainers who customize coaching, management training and team-building programs. You'd be missing the points they emphasized. The greatest learning occurs right on the stretch job with on-the-job coaching by line executives. The rest you fit in when and if you can. For these big companies operating in today's global environment this includes expensive global projects, staffed by highly diverse global teams including wide age and culture diversity for maximum learning about relationships and people, plus being exposed to a wide range of learning tools and courses. But all of that isn't mandatory.

What every one of these four senior professionals emphasized was: every leader must coach and develop, and companies must get rid of the ones who won't or can't… and sooner rather than later… because later is too late! Hence the strong need today for those who can provide training and guidance in how coaching works for executives who don't always naturally have those skills.

Nothing the panelists listed prevents every company of every size applying the same core principles with the same simple goals. Developing people needs to become a daily part of everyone's job, with as much honesty, clarity and commitment to a growth culture as each can muster. What could be simpler or more cost efficient?

How To Get Past Frustration

People at every level of work often ask how to cope with frustrations they feel sometimes to the point of despair. Some days it seems there isn't a sane boss or co-worker anywhere. If it helps to know you aren't alone, I can certainly reassure you. Not only do I have my own moments of despair (and I'm the only boss I have to blame for that), but being in the leadership coaching business, I hear this constantly from every direction. Unfortunately it's part of humans working together.

People need to vent. It helps to have someone just listen. Often this can't be a spouse because it causes them too much worry and they usually just want to convince you things aren't so bad. Co-workers may cause problems, too, by gossiping about your venting. With splintered families and social relationships there are fewer listeners. A non-work friend or coach is definitely a better choice, but they in turn need to learn coping skills to handle the deluge that usually arrives.

Venting is healthy - to a point. When it goes over the same ground too many times and becomes circular, it's just more worry. You need to break off the conversation and come back later. Once the person is stuck in the rut, they can't and won't let go. They just want your commiseration at that stage.

When you pick things up later, a technique called reframing helps. First, see the challenge differently - it's a learning opportunity. You're going to encounter many others like the person now causing grief. If you can learn to handle this one, you'll be far less likely to reach this awful level of despair next time… so can we move from that to get focused on strategies for coping and improving the situation?

Examples might help.

Recently a friend told me how he'd actually jeopardized his career because he was so frustrated with his boss. He's in charge of quality improvement and needed the boss' support to insist other managers follow the process he'd designed. The boss kept advising to cool things off, but my friend is evaluated on results and there weren't going to be any unless people cooperate. In a risky outburst he basically told the boss she wasn't doing her job and should get off the pot and do it. This resulted in a counter-speech about "catching more flies with honey than vinegar."

Ouch! Listen when you get that comment. The boss is telling you to cool it and they mean it. Further outbursts are definitely likely to be career limiting. A far better solution is to draw the boss in by asking for coaching. Ask how you should approach people, how important it is to get results, what should you do if there aren't any by year end? This way the boss can solve problems with and for you and can see what you see… that results, which she, too, is ultimately responsible for won't be easy to get without a better strategy.

Another recent case: a co-worker of a friend was asked to present to a team meeting on my friend's project (and take credit for work my friend has laboriously achieved in improving relations and results with a difficult client). This capped some obvious prior efforts by the co-worker to get my friend to give her all the information about the project. Was the boss suddenly favoring the co-worker and ignoring my friend and her effort? Well, it didn't sound like it to me. My friend had opened our conversation by telling me she'd just been given a terrific performance appraisal rating her in the top 10% of all employees… by the same boss.

Once the venting was over (or at least waning), I suggested the boss might see my friend as so superior she was becoming a "fixer" - opening new client relationships, getting them up to speed and then being able to turn them over to a weaker co-worker and take on yet another challenging situation. If that's true, that's not only a great compliment, but a major step toward ensuring promotion to more money and responsibility.

Before venting to the boss or complaining, it's important to seek feedback that could help determine if the better interpretation is or could be in play. Perhaps the boss hasn't been fully aware that's what they were doing and how my friend might react. If asked, "is this what you want me to do, train my co-worker," he might leap at saying yes… or at least begin thinking, "that's not a bad idea," to my friend's great benefit. Venting could hurt.

Often these useful twists only come to mind after the initial conversation. Both parties have to get out of the rut they set for themselves when they approach the situation with highly emotion. Emotions don't let go within that first conversation. You need time out. The next day or so is usually soon enough to step back and ask more strategic questions, look at other possible interpretations and where they could take you. You can even go get several opinions (again, ideally from non-work, non-spouse parties). If you ask, "why else might someone have done [whatever it was]," you may be surprised.

Next - what if there isn't a really good alternative interpretation? Settle on the most positive one you can even it seems far-fetched… and then check it out… doing so may actually help it come about. No single guess may be the best view. It often takes trial and error to work toward something positive, but just the step of coming up with one new idea to try takes a lot of the sting out of the situation and gets you back to driving toward a solution instead of just sympathy.

Is Research The New Universal Pill?

Just back from vacation, thinking about how much we depend on, but perhaps over-emphasize the value of research. After all, much of it is either too narrowly focused to be helpful except as idea-starters or is questionably based. Yet it is a concept we're seeing applied in wide-ranging situations and everyone pays attention.

Here are two links related to the value of research very broadly. Both by Kris Dunn, a 10-year HR exec, who may represent the "youth" element in HR executives and what they're thinking on the topic of "research" - some useful, some not so much:

http://www.hrcapitalist.com/2008/02/social-networki.html - a post from his blog on how he's courageously going to research the use of Social Networking software inside his company, a 250-employee medical software company. He rails at HR being too "liability conscious" and then discovers there's logic to it after all… all in the same post. Interesting take on research.

http://www.workforce.com/section/01/feature/25/36/49/index.html - his article in this week's Workforce Management… entitled Avoid Hiring an HR Dud. Great idea. But I'm struck (dumb-struck?) by the questions he wants to ask new HR hires. Again, very specific, not applicable to everyone by any means. Research figures in the question entitled "Performance Consultant" in an indirect way. (This one takes a free registration if you aren't a site-member.)

This is clearly a real up-and-coming HR exec who's developed buckets of confidence… and thinks things should fit his way. It's a blog I'll certainly follow for a while at least.

Did I Hear That Right? No Kidding?

Googling "people skills" dredges up some mighty strange stuff. Their sixth highest listing is a blog or column in a publication called AskMen.com, Canadian Edition. I haven't looked at the American version because this one is so… well… astounding. However, I'm easily won over. If it's true that 5 million read this stuff, it has to have some value and impact.

If this is what it takes to get men, presumably mostly young men trying to find their way up in organizations, to read some of the 40,000 articles claimed on the site, it can't be all bad. But you have to read to believe. The article in question on "people skills" is a said to be a re-post. Apparently this is a popular topic. It supposedly responds to a guy who asks how he can stop swearing so much at work. Would anyone really ask that? No matter, it supports developing effective social skills - much to be applauded.

The author suggests in the first couple of paragraphs under the tip "Speak Clearly" that men should wake up and become "eloquent" as a way of getting ahead. Sounds like a fairly big jump. To quote: "He can beautify, amplify and impress his colleagues with his million dollar words and witty comments." Say what, "beautify… his colleagues?" Even allowing for cultural differences in approach and language, that's an unusual suggestion.

I was also mightily intrigued by the words linked to other articles. "Listen" shows up as a blue link to an article about the need to listen to your significant other - excellent advice, but some of the examples might be called questionable. The same with the article linked for "Emotions." Again, a laudable topic with undoubtedly good intent, but definitely backed up by what you'd say at the very least are 'unusual' examples. I'll leave it to readers to check these out since reporting the contents would not really fit here.

The bottom line? Everyone is and should be concerned about their people skills at some point. If it takes rather odd examples to get through to a certain segment of potential leaders, so be it. It won't be my market, but I'm glad someone's making the effort. I just hope they graduate to something a little more focused at some stage.

New Year's Alone Doesn't Produce Effective Resolutions

Networking expert Michael Hughes wrote a comment in a newsletter that captured a key insight. It isn't only New Year's Day that produces resolutions. I always resisted that idea. After all what's different about one day, just because it's designated as the start of something.

Rather it's the combination of a designated new start following a substantial mental break with the preceding grind and what you do after that. The elements work best when the work together.

Mentally we think "the old can be left behind at least partly" and "we have an accepted point at which to start something new," where, for instance, sales people begin with a fresh set of goals, a blank page. There's nothing they can change about the past, but mentally a "do over" opportunity appears.

Whatever different stresses the holiday season presents - last minute shopping, more family than you see all year, special efforts for parties, celebrations, dinners and possibly travel - the new stresses ensure time for the old routines to fall into a bit of perspective.

You can think in terms of a "do over" each day, too, as Mark LeBlanc, outgoing President of the US National Speakers Association captures in his book, Growing Your Business (reviews at bottom of the linked page).

It's a great idea for tasks with targets like selling or losing weight - do just one thing each day. Get into a habit. Don't beat yourself up if you didn't do it one day, but make sure you do that one thing TODAY. Don't feel you have to "catch up" and do two today. The goal is simply to get into the pattern of one per day until it feels comfortable, you know where in your typical days to fit it in and it starts to get done regularly.

One sales call a day, or one task on some project you need to get done (sending out those resumes?) or one step in building a strategy (signing up for or scheduling training?) or implementing an idea. One-a-day. 

Even Jerry Seinfeld says, "Mark each day on the calendar when you do that one thing. Don't break the chain whatever you do." If you keep shooting to lengthen that unbroken chain the habit becomes more and more automatic and you get better and more comfortable. Doing whatever it is just once in a day generally seems easy enough to keep you going. Once you've mastered the flow, you can move on to a new "one thing."

Not a bad reminder for two weeks into the new year. That's when I start to see people at the gym who made an early new year's effort start to drop away. Are they doing just one thing to stay fit somewhere else? We can hope. It's fine for the way you do it to evolve. Just don't stop. But don't beat yourself up for one miss. Make sure you do it next time… today, tomorrow, the day after, somewhere, sometime, somehow. Get into the groove.

By the way. If you find you just can't, that you rarely or never get it into your day and that continues week after week, it's time to think up a new strategy to try out, a new variation that you CAN do once each day. You only get better at what you can tolerate doing regularly. Don't wait for another New Year's to modify your plan. The real commitment is to progress, whatever it might be or however it comes about.

Dangerous Questions?

Do you get much out of webinars?  I hear people say if they got one thing it was worthwhile.  Is it any wonder Gen Xers prefer faster media like texting and short You Tube videos?  Often the best ideas come from very short comments. But you may not even notice them without context.

A webinar today on the subject of effective coaching from Bluepoint by the authors of their new book, Unleashed, suggested we can often benefit from the following question in lots of situations and expect many people to jump to answer this: "who knows a dangerous conversation we need to have?"

In context this is a brilliant observation.  If you're coaching someone it could be the dangerous conversation they need to have is with themselves or with some significant other - as spouse, a boss, a coworker or any of a dozen other possibilities.

Perhaps even more importantly, this would almost always seem helpful in team meetings.  Maybe change the wording slightly to "dangerous questions we need to ask?"  How many times have you been at a meeting, knowing people are sitting with concerns, but feeling unable to ask for speak up?

Another option: "Who knows a challenging question we should ask?"  The possibilities and the opportunities are endless.  Are there situations where you can apply this today?  Is there a dangerous question you can ask yourself?

Boosting Creativity

A group of financial executives recently asked me to help them develop more creativity.  They feel their profession requires so much attention to detail that being creative is an under-used area for them and they know little about it.

It's great to have a group identify an area they want to know more about and recognize they might have limitations.  It's often said you can't learn anything you think you already know.

The good news is most of this group already have a great deal of creative skill.  They just don't know what it feels like and how to find it.  That's a key purpose of understanding the five basic leadership skills.  When you know how they work, you know where to find your creativity.

Creativity arises together with use of the other four skills as a package.  Each of us tends to be more creative in areas where we do the most work.  Since accounting frowns on "creative bookkeeping," it's a concept accountants don't think they know much about, but as a group they're about as creative as anyone else.

The first key to creativity is to develop a goal for something new you'd like to achieve.  That takes practice.  Goals aren't as easy to come by as people make out.  In fact developing a goal happens while using the other skills, through repetition. 

Great goal setting is a habit like any other.  Take your best shot at setting a new goal for yourself, then working toward it will clarify the process. As you start toward this tentative goal, you need to believe you can achieve it or, more accurately, get beyond it.  Don't let it be too small.  This also takes practice.  Just do your best. 

Start to research how others achieve this sort of goal.  As you do, you'll struggle with doubts and flashes of inspiration and positive thinking.  Keep balancing pros and cons as you test out each new idea for achieving your goal.  Keep trying. 

Keep looking for new ideas as you encounter hurdles.  Don't give up the goal… but you can modify it, expand it and refine it.  Persist.  Think of this process as developing habits that will help you piece by piece to move forward. Here's where creativity really begins. As you persist you'll find yourself coming up with more and more creative, new ideas that didn't occur to you at first.  Eventually they will begin to be substantially different and new, beyond things you've been reading or have heard about.  That's creativity pure and simple.  Remember the famous quote from the most prolific inventor of all time, Thomas Edison, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."  This is the way to perspire effectively.

In short, creativity is a habit that takes time to build.  No matter how creative we think someone is they got there trying one idea at a time with a stretch objective in mind.

Don't Believe Everything You Think

Okay, I've finally been sucked in.  Visiting a bookstore to use a gift certificate, a new book (with an Amazon release date of January 1) by Marci Shimoff caught my eye.  On her web site she is billed as a key teacher of The Secret, a book I have consistently avoided.

Her new book, Happy for No Reason, summarizes seven ingredients for happiness in easy chapters, a more useful topic. With the Secret I certainly believe the thoughts you hold are critical to the results you achieve.  Since there isn't a lot more in the book judging from what others tell me, I haven't taken time to read it.

In Happy for No Reason the standard basics about achieving happiness appear: the concept of a happiness set point, physical health, meaningful work, friends, a close love relationship and several others, some of which she reveals in her You Tube video, linked from the book's site.  Very slick. You can pretty much get the ideas in the first few listings if you search "Happy for No Reason" in Google. She calls them seven "steps," but they're really not steps as much as habits that must work together.  Not a heavy-duty book, but with generally solid, comprehensive ideas.

The idea that stood out most as new and different is summarized in a chapter about a step called "Don't Believe Everything Think." I notice she describes the same concept in a video on her site about The Secret, arguing that many of the 60,000 thoughts we are said to process daily are misleading and that feelings are a better indicator of whether we are moving forward positively or feeling so negative that we will mess things up.  This sounds like an interesting idea that bears some further thought.

More than anything I was impressed by the packaging.  I see she is even a cofounder a group of 100 motivational speakers who have created a site called the Transformational Leadership Council. It's a quick list of many big as well as smaller names in the motivation business. 

Slick packaging doesn't mean the information is any less helpful.  If anything we can hope that it will encourage more people to take key ideas seriously and use them.  We're all in the process of trying to lay out the most useful, simplest and most appealing ways of getting the same principles in front of people. A good effort.  Both her MBA and media training certainly lend power to the message whether or not they make her an expert in these areas.

Testimonial: Success Is Not Complicated

"Success is not complicated. Clear objectives, workable implementation plans, and the discipline to stay the course..." reads a testimonial on the website of a change consultant from an organization he helped. 

Exactly.  The "clear objectives" noted in the quotation are the Strategies (as I call them in my model) that you choose to arrive at your goals.  "Workable implementation" means building Habits.  And "the discipline to stay the course" is all about finding Balance in the midst of constant up and down emotions ranging from highly Positive to Honest recognition of the hurdles.

Why emphasize the same five key words in every single situation instead of finding a specialist and learning specialized words for each new challenge?  The reason is simple.  Doing so connects what we do successfully in one situation to all others. When we generalize our skill we give ourselves a far greater chance of succeeding immediately in every new situation without much additional training.

Every time we read a success story, we are likely to find the author using different words from earlier ones.  The result is people imagine the principles may be different in each situation when they are not.  By seeing the pattern in the skills you develop for one situation, you can apply the same principles immediately to the next.

The ultimate objective is to give people themselves the tools they need in the simplest possible form to achieve whatever results they want.

Showing how to apply these five basic concepts consistently in every situation means people become expert at all of them and at balancing them together.

One way to reinforce this for yourself is to translate what you read about success in any situation into these five ideas.  You'll begin to see the pattern instantly wherever you look.  That will add to the ease with which you use the skills in an unfamiliar situations.