Archive | April, 2005

Just Wondering

by on April 27, 2005 in Creative, Work

[Note: I've had this in draft form for a couple of days...I figure it's time to just go ahead and share it.]

Is there a more powerful word in the English dictionary than WONDER? I just returned from a long hike through the trails that surround my neighborhood and I found myself walking with a sense of wonder. Wonder is like super-charged curiosity. It’s deeper and more poetic in what it unleashes. 

Just start a sentence with "I wonder about…" and see where it takes you. I started looking at the clouds and finding all different types of formations. Interestingly enough, many of the clouds were looking like insects: a praying mantis, a couple of bees, maybe a large beetle with pointy jaws. Rather than thinking, "That’s weird," I had far more fun asking, "I wonder why?"

The act of wondering isn’t just something you can do while meandering through a forest path or sitting on a beach; it has a beneficial purpose in our workplaces. However, there needs to be a conducive climate for wondering to fully occur. If your workplace is buzzing with speed and franticness, then there’s little fertile ground to start. Wondering is an organizational skill that can be developed when we’re given the chance to slow down and see the bigger patterns. If you’re saying, "But Chris, I can’t slow down, there’s just too much to do and too little time," begin to wonder about the quality of your output. Are you just going from task-to-task? Are you accomplishing what’s really important to you and your work?

If you are in a go-go-go workplace that prides itself on high levels of action, it may take some courage to introduce reflective wondering. To an untrained eye, you might look lazy, uncommitted, and unproductive (three killer words that can be leveled at employees). On the contrary, you might notice that after allowing reflection and wondering into your daily routine, your productivity will actually rise. Have fun!

You Can’t Always Get What You Want…

by on April 26, 2005 in Creative, Life

Ah, Mick, Keith, and the Stones may not have been spiritual gurus, but they sure got it right on this one. At the risk of not saying anything new or unique today, sometimes getting what we want from life can be to our own detriment. Maybe we want a new job, or a renewed relationship with a loved one, or just for things to stay exactly the same.

However, what happens when we don’t get what we want? How do we respond? Sadly, I’ve been known to shake my fist at the heavens and complain about the unfairness of it all. I’ve also been told that I can be a bit melodramatic at times, as well.

Just maybe there’s greater learning in not having our desires completely met. Okay, obviously. But, often getting to the core of that learning takes patience and an openness to considering other possibilities. Take time to slow down, get curious, and reflect on what’s there. Because you may not get what you want, but you do get what you need.

Managing A Younger Generation

by on April 25, 2005 in Work

For the past few years, my wife Carrie has been a stay-at-home mom to our two girls. It’s been a good phase in her life as it’s given her time to consider what she really wants to do professionally. So with me in the middle of a career shift, she decided to give the restaurant scene a try and is now a server for a very nice, upscale seafood joint just a couple of minutes from the house. What’s interesting is that the roles have now flipped; she is now the one who gets to share work stories and observations on management. One  such story about generational differences took me back to an experience that I had as a manager.

The restaurant she works in is typical in that it employs plenty of young people. Most are in their early 20s and a couple are 18 and 19 years old. It’s also typical of upscale restaurants where the managers are older professionals. Carrie told me about a heated conversation she witnessed in the kitchen between one manager who is in his mid 40s (and just promoted from kitchen manager to front manager – a more prominent and visible position) and a server who is 18. Without getting too deep into the content of the discussion, the young server was upset with some logistical problems with how tables were assigned. The manager took this as her being insolent and told her that if she made one more snide comment, she might as well just go home. I asked Carrie if she thought the server was being snide and she replied that she didn’t get that impression; the server was simply standing up for herself.

Probing a little deeper, it became clear that there was an interesting dynamic going on here that can be a factor when older professionals supervise much younger employees: manager as parent. Carrie told me that the restaurant manager had children about the same age as the server. I discovered this same dynamic in one of the supervisors I managed in my previous job. She, too, had children about the same age as a few of her employees. In our weekly meetings, she would occasionally refer them as her kids and noted that they had some of the same characteristics (though they were rarely the positive characteristics). As I observed these employees and their interactions with the supervisor, it was obvious that some unhealthy attitudes and behaviors were being developed on both sides. By viewing her younger staff members in the same light as her kids, she
was unwittingly disrespecting them and stifling their potential. And
her staff felt like they had another maternal authority figure.

Over a period of meetings, I coached her to see them not as her children, but as colleagues and fellow professionals. We talked through some questions like:

  • What does thinking about them as your kids get you?
  • What kind of performance do you expect from all of your staff, even those closer to your own age?
  • What positive traits do you see in your younger employees?

For her, the consequences of taking a more maternal frame of mind wasn’t readily apparent. When she became conscious of how much harder it actually was to be "Mom" rather than "Boss," she began the process of change. And the results were dramatic. The younger employees reported that they felt more free to take action, more open to engage in debate with their supervisor, and more adult. Who wants to go to work to feel like a kid, anyway?

In the end, employees will act in the way they are treated. Treat them like kids and they’ll behave that way. However, give them the space to be professionals (including screwing up like all of us have done when we started out) and they’ll likely respond in ways that exceed our expectations.

 

The Resume (Or, What Exactly Have I Done?)

by on April 22, 2005 in Career

Blogging has taken a back seat this week to a much more important task: redeveloping my resume. My wish is that the resume wasn’t so important in order to open career doors, but in today’s game it is a key that’s worth shining up. You’ll find my online resume and downloadable Word document over in the right column (the place where it inconspicuously says: HIRE ME).

You might be asking this question: Why in the world are you doing this? My response: Why not? This blog is chock full of my philosophy toward work, organizations, leadership, and other assorted items. What you might not know is what I’ve actually accomplished. Heck, before I started to redraft my resume, I don’t think I truly knew how to articulate it (at least in terms of organizational development work). That’s the hard part of making a career transition: describing experience and skills in one profession in a way that successfully relates it to another. It’s a process I call connecting the dots.

I would like to thank a couple of people who didn’t exactly know they were being helpful in my resume redrafting:

  • Louise Fletcher at Blue Sky Resumes who has an excellent downloadable Resume Writing Guide that offers step-by-step tips and format templates.
  • Lisa Haneberg, who recently asked me to take a look at a chapter she’s writing on OD, gave me terrific ideas for how to frame my experiences and skills for an Organizational Development position.

The big shift for me in the process is that I am not an association management professional transitioning to be an OD specialist. Instead, I am an OD specialist. Honestly, I was an OD specialist in my last job, I just didn’t have that title.

So, if you are looking for someone who is passionate about helping your organization to thrive in these chaotic times and helping your people to connect more soulfully with their work, please contact me. I am uniquely tuned to this type of career. How many folks can say that?

Those (Not-So) Sweet Lies We Tell Ourselves

by on April 18, 2005 in Career

The blogging crew at Worthwhile Mag have some excellent posts on careers that popped up on Sunday. Curt Rosengren’s post on Passion Myths is just the type of writing that reinvigorates my faith in going after my own soul work and encouraging others to do the same. He talks about certain myths being put out there by other folks, but sadly, I’ve heard these same lies inside my own head.

Here are some of my thoughts on these myths…
PURSUING YOUR PASSION IS SELFISH AND SELF-INDULGENT: I would say that it’s selfish in as far as practicing self-love is selfish. As a parent, what greater gift can we give to our children than modeling love for work and life? As a spouse or partner, what greater joy can we give our significant other than coming home from work energized and ready to play? As Curt points out, there’s even positive spillover into the lives of the strangers we meet.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND THE MONEY WILL FOLLOW: I absolutely, positively love Curt’s unabridged version of this myth: "Do what you love, work really, really hard, be patient, be persistent,
be open, work really, really hard some more, and the money will follow." It’s easy to get caught up in the fast-food mentality of life. I will admit that not too long ago, I thought that passion was the big key to success. I thought to myself and figured that if I just go at it with heart that will be enough. Nope. Passion and committed vision are parts of it, but so is working hard. The true key is to work hard with soul and a love for what you are doing.

YOU HAVE TO BE "REALISTIC": Oh yes, we need to be careful of those well-meaning people who don’t want us to lose our head and get our heart broken or head toward the poorhouse by following a "crazy" dream. The internalization of this myth starts out, "Well, maybe they’re right…" I struggle with possible and realistic all the time and this may be the hardest myth to personally dispel. But I think Curt offers a fantastic way of thinking that cuts to the heart of the issue. It’s tough-minded optimism that says, "Okay, there are some challenges to doing what I love. What are some possible ways around them?"

THAT’S NOT THE WAY IT’S DONE: Doesn’t it suck when someone tells us this? And yet, it’s so easy to get caught up in this one, too. My internal dialogue usually hits me with the idea that it’s someone else’s game and I should play by their rules. They want a resume that looks like this and an interview candidate who acts like that. Who made them gamemaster? Right. Taking a page from my friend Donna’s playbook, we can change how we approach another person and dramatically shift the shared interconnection. Maybe they don’t like the game either and don’t realize there’s another way to play. It’s an act of loving leadership to show them another way.

Time for us to dispel some myths. What do you think?