What's Your Word?

Global advertising powerhouse Saatchi and Saatchi has a creative philosophy that permeates everything they do:  “Brutal simplicity of thought.”  It means that simple ideas have a greater impact.  They are understood faster and retained longer.  Saatchi and Saatchi requires all their ad concepts to be distilled to their essence, ideally to one or two words.  Think of President Obama’s latest campaign slogan – Forward – or the classic Volkswagen ads – Think small – and you can see the power of simplicity to help an idea or image communicate something important about a product, a candidate, or an idea. 

You may not be creating ads or campaigns, but all leaders, regardless of their field, have to communicate ideas and persuade others.  Simplifying ideas to their most basic essence is critical to helping your ideas cut through the information clutter and making them “stick” in people’s minds.

This simplicity concept can also be powerful as you think about who you are as a leader and what you want others to associate with you.  What one word do you want others to immediately think of when they think of you? 

Think about it for a minute and post it below.  Don’t over think it.  It’s probably the first or second word that comes to mind when you ask yourself this question. 

Mine is truth.  What’s yours?  

Developing Women Leaders

This week, I want to highlight an insightful piece about how to develop women leaders.  It’s a good guide for those who wish to encourage more women in leadership and for women who aspire to leadership positions. 

The author, Lucy Marcus, recommends five essentials:

1. Developing basic skills, like negotiating and public speaking.
2. International travel, not just because we live in a global world, but because of the impact of experiencing other cultures and new ways of thinking.
3. Mentoring, across all stages of career from student days to the highest levels.
4. Role models, because they foster ideas about what we want to be and how we want to get there.
5. Starting early, by helping girls to think of themselves as leaders and encouraging them to aspire to whatever they want to do.  It is just as important for boys to believe this about women as it is for girls.

I highly recommend reading the entire piece, which provides more detail and can be found here.

The Suicidal Leadership Coping Toolbox

Normally, we address positive aspects of leadership in this blog.  Leadership, however, is sometimes toxic and last week we learned about the suicidal version.  This week’s blog builds on last week’s post, describing what to do if you work with a toxic supervisor. 

Many of these suggestions will work with a toxic leader but the first thing to do is know your leader.  Some of the suggestions below would work well with a toxic person and some would only cause the behaviors to intensify.  Watch how the person reacts in various situations in which he is challenged and gauge how to respond.

The suggestions below are taken from two articles, which can be found here and here.  One of the authors, Robert Sutton, has written a lot on this topic, if you have a deeper interest.

•  Identify exactly what the problem behaviors are.  It’s important that you be able to articulate this.  Does the person belittle you?  Humiliate you?  Undermine and sabotage?  Identifying the specific behaviors with examples is important.
• Document the behaviors.  Write down the dates, times, and details of the behaviors.  If there were witnesses, write that down, too.  You may believe you will never take legal action or think that you’ll remember everything vividly but it’s important to have a log.
• If safe to do so, enlist others.  If you are not the only target, quietly compare notes with others and encourage them to document the behaviors.  Any action, either internal to your organization or external, will be strengthened if there are multiple accounts of the same behavior.  Do not use the time to simply bash the toxic person or start your own passive-aggressive campaign against him.  Don’t let the toxic person pull you down to her level.
• If safe to do so, politely confront the behavior.  Talk directly with the person about what you are experiencing, how you’d like it to be different, and directly ask for it to stop.  It’s vital that you stay 100% professional during this conversation, and document it, too.
• Limit your contact with the person.  Keep meetings, if you must have them, short and don’t give the person any ammunition in the form of information about you personally.  Be polite but avoid the person as much as possible.
• Develop coping mechanisms.  Develop the ability (and it takes practice) to be indifferent and emotionally detached until the problem can be solved.   If you feel powerless or trapped, write down what you like about your job and put the toxic behavior in that context.  Toxic behavior is contagious, so don’t internalize what’s being done to you and let it change who you are.  Try to laugh at the situation.  If you are receiving, for example, belittling comments or looks, try to see them as pathetic or not to be taken seriously.  Even if you can’t say it out loud, adapt a “Really? Dirty looks?  What are we, five?” attitude. 
• Ask for help.  After you’ve created a log of the behaviors, talk to your HR department or other advocate who may be able to stop the behavior.  If others have also documented the behavior, go together.
• Develop an exit strategy.  It’s the most basic of advice, but leaving for another job solves the problem with 100% certainty.  Just the act of planning your departure is empowering.  Make sure you develop a professional, short explanation for why you are leaving, because others will ask.  “It wasn’t a good fit” is a great fig leaf that covers a lot of things. 
• Take legal action if needed, but only as a last resort and with an understanding of the risks.  Being a toxic boss often isn’t illegal or even against your workplace’s policies, depending on what form it takes, and legal action takes a long time to resolve.  In the meantime, you may begin having physical or emotional symptoms from the stress, so escape is usually best if other strategies don’t work.
• Ask for help, part two.  If you find yourself changing – becoming angry or depressed – or if others note this behavior in you, take care of yourself by eating right, exercising, and getting professional help.  Never let yourself feel so trapped that you consider actions that are outside your character.  No job is worth your health or your future.

What are your tips for coping in a toxic work situation?

Suicidal Leadership

If you’ve been in the work world long enough, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a leader who was destructive or toxic.  In a presentation called “Suicidal Leadership,” Dr. Patricia Daugherty describes how leaders in business, education and government sometimes turn their initial successes into ultimate failure, leading to termination.  Dr. Daugherty presents research about suicidal leadership, teaching listeners about the definition and phases of the suicidal leader in a real world, case study format.   You can find the presentation here (with video) and here (without video).

Dr. Daugherty is Assistant Director for Training and Development at the University of Georgia Health Center.  She has worked at Mercer University and the University of Alabama before coming to UGA in 1997.  She earned a BA in English from Clemson University, an MA in Student Personnel Work in Higher Education from The Ohio State University, and a doctorate in Higher Education Administration from the University of Alabama.  

Eat a Live Frog First Thing in the Morning, or How to Manage End of Semester Stress

It’s the time of the semester when everyone in higher education feels additional stress, but especially graduate students who are also full-time employees, and often parents and partners.  Everything is due, seemingly on the same day, and if any procrastination has crept into your semester, it’s starting to come back to haunt you.  Since stress management is such an important leadership skill, here are some high impact tips to use now and in the future.

 

 

Change your perspective. Mark Twain said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.  Unless you enjoy frog sushi, you may not want to take Mr. Twain literally, but he clearly understood the role of perspective. Most people think of stress as being an inevitable reaction to the number of stressors in your life.  That’s not totally true.  Your stress level is largely dependent on you mindset, your perceptions and beliefs about your circumstances, so, for example, if you believe you must always be perfect, you will be constantly stressed because you will almost never hit that mark.  The good news is that you can change that by changing those perceptions.  One tool is reframing, so practice noticing your stress-inducing thoughts and changing them in a positive direction.

 

Exercise.  I know, I know.  You don’t have time to breathe, let alone break a sweat.  The fact is, exercise is such a powerful stress reliever that it should be one of your top priorities on a regular basis.  It should be scheduled in like any other appointment.  So make time to get some exercise and you will feel better and most likely be more productive.

 

Take breaks, preferably to laugh. In addition to exercise, laughter is one of the best stress relievers around.  Also, we know from research that working for too long without breaks reduces our productivity.  So take a few minutes to find something funny and see if you are not refreshed and more productive.  Humor is highly individual, but you can try these sites for a few chuckles:

http://www.funnyordie.com/

http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

 

Prioritize.  Oprah once said, “You can have it all, just not all at once.”  Given your likely overloaded schedule, you must make choices.  That’s what prioritizing is about.  Take a moment to think about the values and goals that are most important to you, and make sure to limit yourself to three or four. Write them down, post them where you can see them, and use them as a decision filter.  Spend your time on those things that are most important to you and put the other things that don’t directly serve those goals in a “later” file.  So, if you have two papers and a presentation due this week, a full-time job, and other family duties, focus on the things you must do to maintain your health, well-being, and progress…and let go of the others.  You can make homemade cookies for the bake sale next time. 

Take a few moments to manage your stress and you will reap the return on your investment immediately.  

Lessons in Social Media from Best Buy’s Brian Dunn

Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn is well known as an effective social media user and I recently read a piece he wrote called “Best Buy’s CEO on Learning to Love Social Media.” He mainly outlines his social media evolution and the point of the article is not to give advice, but a close reading reveals some helpful tips:

                                                                                                                                                                                                

If you think social media is a fad or only social, think again.  Dunn tells several stories of how he was able to connect with customers and employees to really get a sense of what they needed or wanted.  He also was able to address an issue or two quickly because of his presence on Facebook and Twitter.  Social media is here.  Get used to it.

Make it meaningful.  Dunn says that he was initially frustrated with the mundane things he read on Twitter, and who hasn’t read one too many “I’m in line at Starbucks” tweets?  So think about what you’re posting and make it meaningful to people. A few mundane posts are OK here and there, but think about what value you’re adding before posting.

Accept that there are risks….because everything has risks.  A Best Buy employee posted several videos where he made fun of the customers he was supposed to serve and on another occasion Dunn’s Twitter account was hacked.  Everything worth doing in life has risks.  Manage your risk well – create passwords that make hacking difficult, for example – and understand that the benefits of well-used social media outweigh the risks. 

Help people make good decisions. One of the ways you can manage risk is to provide guidelines and training for your team members who use social media so that they don’t use it in a way – either personally or professionally – that creates problems.  Best Buy’s summary is “Be smart. Be respectful. Be human.” and Dunn adds that he doesn’t post anything that he wouldn’t want to see published in a newspaper. (This is excellent advice for email use, as well).

Stay in touch with the grassroots.  The further you go up the managerial chain, the more disconnected you become from the front lines of your operation, whether that is students, customers, or constituencies.  Social media can provide an invaluable tool for people at the grassroots level to contact you directly with issues, compliments, suggestions, and many other things you should know about.  Put another way, insulation is good for buildings but not for leaders, and smartly-used social media helps you combat it.

Ask the right questions about social media use.  Dunn says he’s frequently asked how he’s going to monetize his social media activity.  While that may not be an issue in non-profits, it is still a question that could be asked: How is your investment of time in this benefiting the organization?  Dunn says this is the wrong question.  He says the question really should be: “How am I going to deepen my relationship with customers and employees and deepen the conversation that goes on where they are?”.

Kenny Rogers Was on to Something: How to Decide when Persistence is Worth the Effort

Kenny Rogers sang a song in the 1970s that gave some great advice: “You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” The song was about a gambler but you can apply this to leadership as well. Major projects usually produce change and change can bring resistance that makes you question your efforts. Some projects just take a long time to see results. How do you know when a project isn’t working out and should be scrapped or when it just needs some persistence to get through to the payoff? Rosabeth Moss Kanter provides us with 12 ways to know when to persist and when to give up on a hopeless project. The entire article is worth reading but here are her 12:

1. Are the initial reasons for the effort still valid? 
2. Do the needs for which this is a solution remain unmet, or are competing solutions still unproven or inadequate? 
3. Would the situation get worse if this effort stopped? 
4. Is it more cost-effective to continue than to pay the costs of restarting? 
5. Is the vision attracting more adherents?
6. Are leaders still enthusiastic, committed, and focused on the effort? 
7. Are resources available for continuing investment and adjustments? 
8. Is skepticism and resistance declining? 
9. Is the working team motivated to keep going? 
10. Have critical deadlines and key milestones been met? 
11. Are there signs of progress, in that some problems have been solved, new activities are underway, and trends are positive?
12. Is there a concrete achievement – a successful demonstration, prototype, or proof of concept? 

After thinking through these points, as well as anything else relevant for your particular setting, you will likely be clearer on whether to “hold ‘em or fold ‘em.”