“It is better to be alone than in bad company.” – George Washington

Other people do form opinions about you based on your group associations. This is also why good employees leave bad teams. They simply do not want to be associated with a group that has a bad reputation. They rarely hang around to try and improve that reputation; they get away from it as fast as they can.

For the sake of argument perhaps you spend time with a group of people and you are not a bit like them. You happen to be the ‘odd person out’ so-to-speak. How long does it take for someone who is not part of the group to determine that you are not like the others? Will people even take the time to notice that you are different, or will you just get lumped into the group?

onsider these statements:

“Oh, yes I know who you mean, he hangs around outside with the rest of the bad attitude gang.”

Or

“Good luck getting cooperation from that team. We call them the department of how can I NOT help you.”

Let’s put other people and their opinions aside for a moment. Have you ever considered the impact that the people you spend time with have on you, your outlook and your success? How do the people around you make you feel?

Now, wait just one minute. Does anybody MAKE you feel anything? No of course not. You know that you are responsible for your thoughts and emotions. But to think that the people around you do not influence your thoughts and emotions is not very realistic.

Have you ever been really excited about an idea, only to share it with others and walk away feeling completely discouraged?

Have you ever felt completely discouraged about a situation, only to discuss it with a friend or group of friends who help you see the upside of that same situation?

Then you know the power of associating yourself with the right people over the wrong people. The wrong people drain your energy and stomp on your dreams. The right people help you feel inspired and motivated. When you spend time with the right people, you look forward to it; you don’t dread it or think of it as an obligation.

Try to minimize the time you spend with the negative people in your life. Sure, fall out of touch with those who you don’t really need to be around. When you find you must be around negative influences, protect yourself. Do not share your important thoughts and dreams with them. Do not give their negativity any power over you, when you leave them, leave their thoughts and attitudes behind. Do not carry them with you, do not mull over any discouraging words they have uttered.

Spend time with good company and your own company over bad company.

Hope you find yourself in good company this week!

It was 4:45pm and the requirements review meeting had already gone fifteen minutes beyond the scheduled end time. Joe was becoming agitated. He needed to get out the door at 5:00 pm exactly in order to pick up his daughter from soccer practice. The meeting was not showing any signs of wrapping up. He let out a big sigh. He pointedly looked at his watch. Finally Joe blurted out “Who cares if the report displays in landscape or portrait format, just list the fields you need on the report and move on.”

The entire room fell silent. After what seemed like an eternity, Joe’s customer said, “You know we have already run late here, why don’t we wrap up and get together tomorrow to complete our work.” Joe made it out the door by 5:00 pm and arrived in time to pick up his daughter. But Joe found it hard to enjoy the time with his daughter. He kept thinking about the meeting and his outburst. He knew he had not been at his best. He wished that instead of becoming impatient that he had said “Is there a specific business need for the report to be in landscape versus portrait? Do we need to define the page orientation now or can we let the number of fields and the size of the fields on the report dictate this requirement?”

When Joe arrived at work the next morning he called his customer and apologized for his impatience. His customer was more than willing to forgive and forget.

As Joe further analyzed his own behavior he realized that he had been experiencing conflict between supporting his team and supporting his family. When the meeting at the end of the day was running late he was torn between completing the work at hand and his desire to keep his commitment to his daughter. He did not want to be the first one to leave the meeting and he also did not want to be late to pick up his daughter. Unfortunately Joe did not handle this conflict in the best way. Fortunately he did have the presence of mind to apologize to his customer. Joe also realized that although apologizing was the professional thing to do, it would have been better not to owe his customer an apology.

Now that Joe has a better understanding of at least one situation that triggers him to behave less than professionally he can work to devise some mitigating strategies which will help prevent him from landing in this type of situation again.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life. – Brian Tracy

You have probably either heard me say (or read an article where I have reminded you) that you can develop your emotional intelligence. Perhaps you have also read an article where I remind you that you can adapt your conflict resolution approach and while you cannot control difficult people, you can control your own behavior. You can learn the best way to deal with your jerk at work. All of these are skills you can acquire and strengthen. Communication is a skill too. Don’t let anyone tell you, “Too bad you are a poor communicator and that is just how you are.” Do let them share with you how they think your communication skills can be improved, because YOU can improve.

You really have the ability to take command of the experience you have at work. You have so many skills available to you. It really comes down to prioritization. Where will you place your time and attention first? If you do not know, that’s OK. Ask someone you trust about your soft skills and your strengths and weaknesses. Think about some of your working relationships and experiences. Don’t dwell on the negative or beat yourself up, just objectively consider some of the situations you have faced. When you recall situations that you think could have gone better, think about what you think you could have done differently. Is this an opportunity to become more self-aware? Is it possible that you could have communicated differently? If so, here is an opportunity for you improve.

Like the quote above says, “If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.”

Sometimes your behaviors support you and sometimes they do not. The key is to identify the supporting behaviors or opportunities so that you can use them more and to identify the behaviors that are damaging or the threats so that you can learn to prevent them. When you pay close attention to your behaviors you can learn what causes certain behaviors and what is caused by those behaviors. In terms of emotional intelligence I would say that being self-aware is what leads you to exhibiting self-control. And feeling motivated (or not) can lead to opportunities or threats to your career and image too.

How do you know? When you receive a review or a performance appraisal, where are your highest marks? Where are your lowest marks? A quick thought about your lowest marks, do not DWELL on them. So many of us (me too), have this tendency to look at reviews and appraisals, gloss over the great comments and spend hours obsessing over the ‘could use improvement’ area. Even on a stellar review. STOP IT!

Another area to consider is the feedback you receive from others. These are the comments or compliments you receive from individuals at work. How do they perceive you? What do they say about your work and the way in which you accomplish your work? What do they say about the way in which you interact with others?

Here is what I would like you to consider. Take some time when you can think quietly and to yourself. (Unless you are an extravert in which case you may want some background sounds or other stimulation and you may want to think out loud.) Review the past year and even more if necessary. Think about what you consider to be events or work where you wish the outcome had been different and think about events or work where you are pleased with the outcome. Jot down some notes about each. Now review each with an eye for who you are, your personality, your way of handling conflict, your emotional intelligence, your professional brand or image, dealing with difficult people and your communication style. Make some notes about how each of these areas either supported your outcome or detracted from your outcome.

This is definitely NOT a quick exercise. This is something that you may want to work on in multiple sessions over a period of time. It may be two weeks; it could even be a month or more. How will you know when you are finished? When you stop thinking of examples and when you have had a chance to really take a deep look at each of your examples. This really calls for you to be very open and honest with yourself.

What do you do next? Next you dig deeper. You look at your examples and consider what led you to behave in either a positive or negative way. Your goal is to encourage yourself toward the positive and mitigate yourself away from the negative.

Don’t worry; we will work on this together in the near future.

“But communication is two-sided – vital and profound communication makes demands also on those who are to receive it… demands in the sense of concentration, of genuine effort to receive what is being communicated.”
Roger Sessions

What a great reminder that there is a sender and a receiver involved in communications. There is someone who is sharing information and therefore sending a message and there is someone who is the receiver. Certainly when you are sharing information you want to do everything in your power to ensure the message is clear. You want to use the best possible medium to share the information. You want to think about timing, you want to eliminate as much noise as possible. Noise does not just mean sounds, it also means distractions. When you are communicating with others you are trying to do it in the most effective way possible. I don’t think you would give someone their performance appraisal while you were both riding a roller coaster. THAT would involve noise (as-in the sound of the roller coaster and the screaming riders) and distraction in the form of the actual ride. A better location for a performance appraisal would be in a quiet office or conference room.

What about when someone is trying to share information with you? Well as the receiver of that communication you have a responsibility. Your responsibility is to do the best you can to understand and interpret (or decode) what you are being told. If you cannot hear, you need to say so. If a word or expression is not clear to you, you need to say so. If you are not sure why certain information is coming your way, you want to ask about it. Why are you being told (or sent) this information, what are you expected to do with it or about it? If the timing is wrong, perhaps you are in the midst of a crisis or walking down the hall to a presentation, you should mention that another time would be better.

The responsibility for communication does not reside with just the sender or just the receiver, it is a joint responsibility.

PS – It is not too late to join me for the ‘What’s YOUR Communication Style?’ webinar, tomorrow, Tuesday, January 24, 2012. Follow this link (or cut and paste it into your browser) to register. https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/716075702

Each day you bring strengths and weaknesses to work. You walk into the room (virtual or otherwise) with what makes you unique. Or as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. That is a good thing. It is all of the elements that make you, well you; that differentiate you from others. You cannot escape yourself, but you can GROW yourself.

Remember that the definition of a risk includes both positive and negative events that impact the success of your project. Let’s update that in terms of what it means to you:

Your risks as a leader include both the positive and the negative behaviors or tendencies that are part of who you are and how you behave. Your goal is to enhance or take advantage of the positive behaviors as they are opportunities for you to become a stronger leader and to minimize the impact of the negative behaviors that could threaten your success.

Acknowledging that you have strengths and weaknesses does not imply that you are a threat. It is recognizing that you like any other human being possess positive and negative characteristics. I ask you to recognize all of these risks – the threats and the opportunities and decide how to mitigate them. Your goal is to minimize the threats and maximize the opportunities. To do this you must conduct risk analysis and assessment on yourself.

An important first step in this process is for you to get to know YOU. The basis of your risk identification and analysis is to understand who you are and what makes you tick. You also want to understand what makes you ticked off. Who you are is the basis for how you lead. Who you are now is the as-is in your development. In order to plan for the to-be version of yourself, you need the as-is and then you need to do a gap analysis.

HONESTY is critical to the success of your risk identification and analysis. We are really talking about self-discovery. There are many areas for you to consider for example; how you like to think, how you like to speak, how you like to communicate to others, how you like others to communicate with you, how do you behave when faced with conflict, and are you aware of how your behavior impacts others? Basically you are taking a detailed inventory of YOU.

You are embarking on a significant risk identification and analysis project. This is not a four hour brainstorming session. I invite you to look at this as a long term project and proceed accordingly. Think about the areas mentioned above (and more) and consider why they matter and how you can identify your related behaviors.

THEN you want to determine if your behaviors are strengths, weaknesses and what opportunities do they bring (or prohibit). It is a lot to think about right? But you are not alone, I am on this journey with you and you can look for more guidance on this process very soon.

You know that things do not always go smoothly. Why be surprised when issues arise, when instead you can be prepared when issues arise?

The only thing I said is what you heard.

I can’t take credit for this expression because I learned it in a coaching skills course a few years ago. Once I took a minute to process the sentence, (because my mind had one of those ‘Hey, wait a minute, what are you saying?’ moments); it really resonated with me.

It is an excellent reminder that when you communicate, you have a responsibility to make sure that your intended message is received. I know for a fact that when I was new to the workplace, I was often afraid to let people know I did not understand everything they told me. I would listen carefully and then return to my desk. Once I was back at my desk I would frantically look up the pieces that did not make sense. Isn’t it sad that I did not feel comfortable just asking?  Of course I need to take responsibility for not speaking up. Sure, some people I worked with (or for) would not make it easy for me to ask questions, but not everyone would have made it uncomfortable.

When it comes to communicating, the sender or originator of the message is responsible for making sure the receiver gets the message. One way to do this is to ask the receiver to tell you in their own words what you said. Of course you want to do this in an open, friendly and non-combative way.  You want them to understand that you care about having good clear communications.  If anyone had done this to me when I was new to the workplace, they would have known when I did not ‘get it’. Because when I did not ‘get it’; I would have parroted their words back to them, exactly as they had uttered them. This is definitely a clue, since most of us have our own style of speaking. If someone had asked me to describe what they had just said in my own words, my lack of understanding would have been clear. Boy that sure would have saved me all kinds of research time later! It also would have helped teach me that it was my responsibility as the receiver of the message to say ‘Hey, I do not get it.’

Another version of this expression; the only thing I wrote is what you read. So no matter what I think I have stated in this blog entry, the part that really matters is what you take away from it as my reader.

(If you keep doing the same old things)

You have probably heard or seen the expression, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This expression has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein and others.

For the purposes of our time together, it does not matter who said it or how many times you have heard it.  What does matter is how you apply this to your life and to your professional relationships. It is a new year and you are probably assessing what you want to stay the same and what you want to improve. That’s great, what are you going to do about it? If you are saying “This is the year that others will recognize what a reliable and trustworthy team member they have in me”, then I hope you are going to exhibit behaviors that will lead others to see you as reliable and trustworthy.

I still remember my programming days. Sometimes I could test my code and find my errors right away. Other times, I would sit and stare for hours and not see the problem. When I got really frustrated I would keep executing the same test over and over again, hoping the results would be different OR that I would receive sudden inspiration and my problem would be solved.  I hope this does not mean I was insane. I hope it means that I was (and still am) human.  What I know now is that:

• Sometimes I needed to just let go and take a break and approach the problem with a clear (and open) mind. In fact when I did relax and let go, a solution to the problem would usually present itself.
• Sometimes I needed to do some research or learn something new in order to master my problem. It is hard for me to learn when I am stressed and frustrated, so taking a break was a definite requirement to prepare my mind for receiving new information.
• Sometimes I needed to ASK SOMEONE for HELP! I find it easier to ask for help when I can discuss the problem calmly and concisely.
• Repeating the same approach over and over again NEVER solved the problem. Doing the same thing over and over again was not advancing me toward a solution; it was just wasting time that could be used to open myself up to the right solution. AND repeating the same approach over and over again only made me more upset and frustrated, which in turn did not make my mind open and clear to find new possibilities.

Guess what? The same thing is true about your professional relationships. If you keep approaching them in exactly the same way, what do you think is going to change?

If you are a leader and you continue to expect your team to know what you want without giving them clear goals how exactly is that going to work? How is that working for you now?

So remember New Year plus the right new behaviors will equal new results.

I know you, you are a giver. How do I know this? It is a common theme shared by my community members. You might not even KNOW the ways in which you give. Certainly with the year coming to an end you are receiving requests and reminders for charitable donations. And if you are able to make financial donations, that is terrific! But giving is not just about money.

For you, the decision to give is probably easy. It is part of who you are. You want to give, to make a difference, to contribute. The decisions about giving, like how to give, when to give and who or what to give to are not always easy.  Did you know that there is a guide to giving? It is called GIVING 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World by Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. I was GIVEN the opportunity to read an advance copy. What immediately jumped out at me was that this book is like a strategic plan for giving. I ask you to be strategic in your treatment of others, to think about how you want to develop your soft skills, why shouldn’t you be strategic in your giving? And why wouldn’t you want the way in which you give back to make the greatest impact possible?

How and what to give are important decisions. Will you volunteer with your family or with a friend or partner, or will this be something you do by yourself? Will you set up a fund to go to a cause that you believe in? Will you plan a fundraiser? Maybe you would like to start your own non-profit.

GIVING 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World, helps you consider the many options that are available to you. There are checklists and questions to help you to define your strategy and to become really clear about how you want to give, there are action items so that once you make a decision you know how to ‘make it happen’. Perhaps best of all there are the stories about real people and how they have incorporated giving into their lives. These are people like Taylor a twenty-year-old from Los Angeles who asks his family to make online donations instead of giving Christmas presents and Ben, a senior IBM executive and son of an immigrant, who inspires students to study math, science, and engineering. In other words people like you, like your families and like your friends.

If you are curious, be sure to check out http://giving2.com/; you will find some excellent resources to support you. I also want you to know that the author Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is donating 100% of her royalties.

I thought a philanthropist was someone who was super rich, gave millions of dollars and had entire buildings or wings of buildings named after them. But according to this quote “A philanthropist is anyone who gives anything – time, money, experience, skills, and networks – in any amount to create a better world.”

Guess what? You are a philanthropist.