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Click here to order a copy of Reframing Change: How to Deal with Workplace Dynamics, Influence Others, and Bring People Together to Initiate Positive Change.In the last few months, I have gotten into friendly debates with others about whether it is appropriate for local school boards to ban candy and soda from their public schools in light of the alarming increase in childhood obesity.
A recent Rasmussen Reports public poll shows how controversial an issue this is. Results indicated that 52% of the public favors the ban and 40% oppose it. This is a case in leading consciously.
Jennifer Joyce, co-founder of LeadershipSmarts, is this week’s guest blogger.
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Coaching is often a pivotal step in a person’s career. It represents a large investment of time, money, and personal work. So how does one get the most out of such an important venture?
During my 15 years as a coach, I have found three keys to creating a successful engagement:
What happens when we are really upset about something? Our minds become a swirling tempest and it’s hard to focus on what we are intending to do. We might also get into trouble — saying things that shouldn’t come out of our mouths or taking rash actions that could crash our careers. Because being able to handle our negative emotions is so important, Jean Ramsey and I devoted most of Chapter 3 to it in Reframing Change.
Sunday, May 1, 2011 was National Lemonade Day, an event designed to teach entrepreneurial skills to children. A few weeks before, Morgan, age 6, wrote us as her grandparents to ask us to invest $12.00 in her lemonade business. With the aid of her father, she was going to set up a lemonade stand and sell lemonade on that date.
Her grandfather sent the check immediately.
A couple of weeks before the big day, we drove to her home and Morgan showed us the colored step-by-step workbook that the local entrepreneurial association had put together to guide participants through the business of selling lemonade. It was impressive: it included a week by week plan, a resource list, and a budget outline with places for the kids to fill in their own information — and, of course, color the illustrations.
In the previous post, we met Tracy who is having a hard time getting along with Sasha.As Tracy complained to her partner, “how am I supposed to work on a charity event with someone who has nothing to say and has such a superior attitude?”
The response today is by Sandra Lopez, a licensed clinical social worker and consultant.
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Tracy’s scenario is just so typical of what any one of us might encounter. Clearly as she shares her feelings with her partner, we can see that Tracy has become frustrated, stressed, and is even experiencing some sense of helplessness in knowing how to make the situation better. Like many of us in these kinds of predicaments, she has formed negative assumptions about her co-worker. Given the current status of her relationship with Sasha, she raises a good question in wondering how she will survive the stress of working on this charity event.
How do we work through these challenging interpersonal conflicts when they happen? Tracy can relieve a great deal of her stress in this working relationship by consciously using herself to more effectively manage the situation.
Preface: Workplace Undercover will be a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant. The scenario below was written by Eillen Bui, our research associate. In the next post, Sandra Lopez, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, will respond.
Tracy walked through the front door of her workplace and passed the desk of her VP’s top assistant. Sasha looked up from her computer but did not even acknowledge Tracy. She just went back to what she was doing earlier.
When Tracy first started working at XYZ Corp., she would always smile and greet Sasha but stopped after a few weeks. Sasha would only acknowledge her with a slight nod of her head and continue working. Tracy didn’t feel as though she should make an effort to keep being friendly to Sasha if Sasha wasn’t even trying to be cordial.
In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the chronic stress experienced by many people in today’s organizations. Much of that stress may be accounted for by tremendous workloads and pressures to produce in today’s organizations.
In Part 2, we talked about one organization, Zappos, an online shoe store, whose CEO seeks to reverse that trend by focusing on employee happiness. In his business model, happy employees provide better service and better service brings and keeps customers.
While our personal troubles may feel very private to us, they may indeed reflect public issues for society as a whole.
In the previous blog entry, I listed advantages of reaching out to others about our private troubles, despite our fears of exposure and shame. Suppose you know intellectually that reaching out is best for you, but you just can’t muster the willpower to do so. You feel scared of being negative judged or humiliated. As a matter of fact, you feel humiliated just having the problem or thinking you can’t handle it alone.
[Notice -- this was originally published two weeks ago, but it somehow got deleted in the move to this URL. I'm reposting it now for those of you who missed it.]
Most people I know–with one or two exceptions–think that multitasking does work for them. In fact, a friend of mine once proudly declared that she was excellent at it, having changed a diaper, baked a cake, and handled a business crisis over the phone, all within the same hour.
What the research says
Now there’s research to say that we are fooling ourselves.
Throughout Reframing Change, Jean Ramsey and I emphasize the importance of maintaining integrity. One of the ways many people, myself included, will go out of integrity is by how we manage time
— or more precisely, mismanage it. We promise others or ourselves that we surely will do this or that and then we end up not doing it. We then rationalize our lapse by saying that “time slipped away”, as though time was the culprit and not ourselves. In so doing, we fail to recognize our power or use it responsibly (Reframing Change, Chapter 6).
Managing time has been one of my major challenges most of my life. I’m much better than I used to be, as my friends and colleagues will happily attest, but nowhere near where I want to be. For that reason, I periodically seek out new sources of information about managing time and space.
I feel fortunate to have come across an excellent video about time management on YouTube by an credible source: Randy Pausch, then a professor at Carnegie Mellon who at the time he gave the speech knew he had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and had only a few months to live. He passed on less than a year after giving this lecture.
How to achieve your goals despite yourself
What keeps us from being the positive change we want to see? If you’re like me, here’s what happens. I start out full of resolve and commitment to actually accomplish things that I really want to do, but just can’t get up the gumption to do them: go to the health club, eat more vegetables, work on a proposal, or make that dreaded phone call.
Or, I might do things that I know aren’t good for me: eating high fat foods or too many sweets, procrastinating on things that would take me only a few minutes if I would just do them, or saying things that I know are inappropriate.
Either way, I find myself doing what I’ve decided not to do or I stop myself from doing what I really want to do. What causes these internal conflicts?
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