Tag Archives: learning

Feedback: Karaoke With Tube Socks?

by on April 29, 2008 in Creative

Steve Roesler published a great post (then again, has he ever written a bad post?) titled Talent: Accurate Self-Awareness or Karaoke Feedback?. The main focus is feedback and he offers suggestions on how to give it as well as how to receive it.

For me, I find the hardest thing to remember about feedback is that it is a gift. Yes, sometimes that gift is like receiving tube socks for Christmas but every so often I get the kind of feedback that is right up there with receiving a first edition signed copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Feedback is learning and I have to remind my ego that learning is good if I want to grow (it helps to talk to my ego like it’s a five year old).

It also helps to frame the experience of receiving feedback in this way. Steve notes:

And remember: Feedback is more indicative of the person giving it to you than of you yourself. It tells you what’s important to them, reflects underlying values and expectations, and reveals ‘how you measure up’ in their eyes.

It’s a terrific post and made even more so by the addition of Wally Bock’s comment where he tells the story of how his father, a Lutheran pastor, asked for and received feedback from his family after each service and sermon. His experience offers additional elements that are vital in making feedback the powerful learning tool that it can be.

How are you practicing good feedback to those around you?
Are you asking for candid feedback and taking notes?

No Tuition Reimbursement Where You Work? There Are Other Options

by on April 24, 2008 in Career

As I vaguely mentioned in my last post, after a few months of hustling to get all of my application items together, I’ve finally been accepted to the business anthropology master’s degree program at the University of North Texas. Along with my background in workplace coaching, organizational management, and leadership development, I’m excited at the prospect of adding an applied anthropology discipline to my portfolio (shoot me an email if you’re curious about what business anthropology is). My program is almost entirely online so it will be interesting to experience this type of learning and how different it might be from the traditional classroom experience.

But now comes the dawning realization that this program actually costs money (who knew?). Once upon a time I worked for a non-profit that offered a pretty sweet tuition reimbursement package in their benefits. The only condition was that you had to have a B grade or better in each class to be eligible for the reimbursement. Interestingly, the program didn’t necessarily have to be aligned with your job role (which is also rather rare). So, for instance, if you were in customer service and wanted to earn a degree in accounting, you were free to pursue that path.

I’m beginning to realize just how uncommon tuition reimbursement is in today’s organizations. Perhaps it’s always been this way or just a reflection of the current economy. Maybe you’re facing the same situation: you’re an employee planning on going back to school or a manager with staff who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree of some type…but your organization doesn’t have a tuition reimbursement or assistance program. While the financial aid is a nice benefit, there are some other ways to support academic learning in your organization:

Executive sponsorship
Think of this as an academic adviser within your organization. Each program typically assigns a faculty member to help students align their courses and learning with their professional direction. Well, apply that same type of role within your organization. Ask a senior manager or seasoned professional within your organization to be a mentor. This sponsor would ideally be someone who has the background, experience, and network related to the student’s field of study. Their purpose would be to offer insight and help connect the classroom study to the day-to-day world of work.

Workplace Learning Cohort
If you work in a big enough organization, there will likely be others pursuing a degree along with you. Why not develop a learning cohort and pull all the students together? The cohort doesn’t have to be grouped according to field of study – unless it makes particular sense to gather all the MBAs together. But, there is a strong possibility for additional learning if the group is a collective from multiple disciplines. If for no other reason to form, the cohort can be a support group for balancing the demands of work, school, and home lives.

Mini-Internships and Work Integration Options
Unless your ultimate goal is to be the prince of an ivory tower, you’re probably going back to school in order to advance your professional goals. And there’s nothing more frustrating to get all of this academic learning with no application to the real world of work. There needs to be a balance between theory and application. If your degree is directly aligned with your current work, then talk with your executive sponsor or immediate manager about how you can best integrate your academic work with your daily professional work. If your degree is not aligned with what you do daily, make a case for a mini-internship in another department (or at another organization if you can make a convincing argument). Just be prepared to show how your current work assignments won’t suffer and that the mini-internship will make you more valuable to your manager, team, and company.

The big idea is to be creative in how you integrate your professional development and your work even if there are no established programs in your organization. Anyone have other ideas or programs they’ve run across for how companies can support the learners in their workplace?

Tag Game For Tasty Reads

by on April 19, 2008 in Media

Steve Roesler applied the tag to me last week for a book reading meme. I’m kind of a sucker for anything book related so here she goes… 

The object of this meme’s game is to share what I’m currently reading and sentences 6-8 of page 123 of that book. I’m actually reading three books right now, two of them contributing to my professional learning: Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting and Pamela Skilling’s soon-to-be-released Escape from Corporate America. Here’s the page 123 snippet from Pamela’s work:

However, it is the immediate manager you work with every day who makes the biggest impact on your job satisfaction. Great companies cultivate great managers. They also give them the tools and the autonomy to lead their teams effectively.

What else is currently in the queue? Here’s my bookpile in the order I plan to read:

The Halo Effect – Phil Rosenzweig
Weird Ideas That Work – Robert Sutton
Get Back in the Box – Douglas Rushkoff
Excellence by Design – Turid H Horgan, Michael L Joroff, William L Porter, & Donald A Schon
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith

Dang…that’s a bit of a load and I’m not at all sure that I’ll get through all of these books by the end of the summer. The problem for me is that I’m the king tortoise of reading…I read reeeeaaaal slllllooooow. And I’m also starting my Master’s degree in Business Anthropology in July so there are no guarantees. Honestly, I imagine there will be course prescribed reading that will trump my bookshelf selections. 

So, who’s next? I’m curious to see what kind of book reading projects on are on the minds of…

Jenny Ward
Pamela Skillings
Judi Sohn
Jason Alba
Frank Martin

Don’t Jump Ship Too Quickly

by on March 6, 2008 in Career

Admit it. Unless you’ve found your soulful work, there are days when you come home from the job and toy with the idea of ditching it to move on to something better. But is ditching your job the best answer? It all depends on your circumstances.

A few days ago, CNN published a (somewhat surprisingly) insightful article called Look on the bright side of a bad job. Based on this title, I didn’t have high expectations. I rather expected the writer to admonish his readers to just “buck up” and find their shiny, happy selves. Instead, there are some pretty good ideas in the article…in particular the last one under their category of Wisdom.

If you’re unhappy, examine why. Do you dislike the people you work with or is it the actual work? Are you in a dead-end position? Think back to your interview and see if you missed any warning signs that this job might not be the one for you. Use your experience to avoid falling into the same predicament in your next job. If the situation didn’t turn sour until after you’d been with the company for a while, you know to stay attuned to shifts in attitudes and practices…Making the best out of a bad job situation doesn’t mean being complacent. A positive outlook shouldn’t replace your plans to move on (emphasis mine).

This is brilliant advice. I know from personal experience and from coaching clients that when the crapstorm at work starts to get wild, there’s a strong impulse to jump ship. Yes, there are times when it’s necessary to move on (say, when our health is at stake or the situation has become toxic), but it’s not always the best plan for our working future. Most times, these bad jobs are chock full of learning that we need to absorb in order to make better future decisions that will help us find work that has meaning and purpose. Or else, we risk falling into the same situation again and again (think Bill Murray’s plight in Groundhog Day).

If you’re in a spot where you’re edging toward the end of the plank and thinking about leaping for another ship, take some time to answer the questions posed above. Take full advantage of the wisdom and experience that this experience is offering you.

Also posted at Career Hub…read more articles at the #1 HR Blog according to HR World.

Mistakes Happen…

by on January 20, 2008 in Life

…it’s how we deal with mistakes that count. The universe must want me to learn something important because within 30 hours, two distinct situations occurred to illustrate this point. In one instance, I was on the mistake-maker side and in the second instance I was on the receiving end of someone else’s mistake. And in both cases, I’m not at all sure that I handled the mistakes well. Here’s another installment of my not-so-newly created series called I Screw Up So You Don’t Have To.

Mistake #1: Chris as Mistake-Maker
I’m working with a client on several different projects, each one different in its complexity, scale, and timeframe. It’s a client that I like and enjoy working with. And I feel that we have a good working relationship. We first discussed these projects back in November and I worked on them up through December. Then I took a two week holiday retreat and promptly neglected this client’s work when I returned. It wasn’t intentional and the work wasn’t entirely forgotten – it just took a back seat to other work that felt more pressing these past few weeks.

You’re probably thinking it’s not too surprising that I received rather curt and angry voicemail and email messages on Friday asking for an immediate update. My apology was met with, “That does me no good. What are you going to do? I expect a full accounting by Tuesday.” Now, I have a client who undoubtedly feels pissed and betrayed…and truly for good reason.

Mistake #2: Chris as Mistake-Receiver
The next day, I took the family to one of our favorite local pizza joints for dinner. We ordered a small cheese pizza for the girls and a medium meateaters for Carrie and me. Around 15 minutes later, our server showed up with the meateaters, but no cheese. We all thought that maybe he’d be right back to bring the cheese pizza. A couple of minutes passed and it becomes clear that a cheese pizza is not coming. So I visited the register and asked about the cheese pizza. I got blank, confused looks in return. There was no cheese pizza. Now, I’m starting to get pissed and insisted that they need to get moving on making the pizza that I paid for. Then, one of the folks from behind the counter came and asked me again whether I paid for a pizza and asked me to confirm the size, crust, toppings, political affiliation, next-of-kin, etc. He said, “We’re just trying to track down this order.” Okay, now I’m definitely pissed. He’s here trying to track down an order rather than make the actual damn pizza. I make my second trip to the counter and discover that apparently the cheese pizza was not included in the original order (but it should have been because the gal taking the order asked me what type of crust we wanted). The kick in the pants was the fact they still charged me $2.64 even though I argued that I should not be charged at all.

Roughly 13 minutes later, the gal who took our original order brought the pizza and apologized. She said, “I didn’t do it on purpose.” The thing was that she was right. She didn’t intentionally screw up and I told her so.

So, what’s the learning here?

Learning #1: Be more forgiving of mistakes. Rarely does someone screw up on purpose…that would be blatant and willful sabotage. Yeah, sometimes screw ups are due to incompetence or lack of care on the part of another person. But more often than not, mistakes are made for more innocent reasons. I guess at the root of how we view mistakes is whether we believe people are good or bad. And what I need to remember is that perfection is bullshit and I’m immensely capable of screwing things up at a moment’s notice. It’s the whole glass house thing.

Learning #2: Accept the mistake and move forward. Coming back to my intro, mistakes happen and it’s what we do after the mistake that matters most. If we screw up yet blow it off, then we’ve compounded the mistake by not taking ownership and figuring out how to make things right. Imagine my reaction if the pizza folks had – rather than try to make it into my problem – quickly said they would bring us a free cheese pizza and some breadsticks for the girls while they waited. For my client, I now have the job of determining what her “breadsticks” are.

Learning #3: Be more emotionally-aware. Being on the mistake-maker side, I understand my client’s emotions. She’s angry and frustrated because I’ve put her in a bad spot with her executives and board members. However, there’s a part of me that’s a bit embarrassed by my behavior as a mistake-receiver. There are times when I allow my emotions to get the better of me and raise more hell than I should to get what I want. Even those of us who coach and advise others on how to best navigate professional relationships are challenged to heed our own words. See learning #1 above.

Learning #4: Keep the focus on learning. This post is my example of learning from mistakes. It’s my way of reflecting on what I can do better in the future. Mistakes aren’t bad…they’re essential if we choose to grow. If we’re not making mistakes, we’re not trying hard enough. So, let’s keep learning.