Tag Archives: Reframe

April 1, 2012 · 10:12 pm

My Generation Is Best, The Other . . . Not So Much

That OTHER Generation is IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite team building exercises is to put people of the same generation together and have them describe the other generations.  I have them make a list of the characteristics of the other generations, the strengths and the weaknesses, what most interferes with their own ability to work with the other generations, and what they admire about the other generation.  There are frequently three different generations in the groups I work with these days.  What I enjoy so much about these exercises are:  1) how similar the feedback is across different organizations; 2) how surprised and (frequently) outraged the generations are about how others see them; and 3) how important these conversations are to changing the way these folks look at and work with each other.

The Generations

The three generations that co-exist today in most American workplaces are:

  • Millennials- born between 1984 and 2002
  • Gen X- born between 1965 and 1983
  • Babyboomers- born between 1946  and 1964

Someone born in 1946 was born to parents traumatized by both the Depression and World War II.  Someone born in 1966 was born to parents who were influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and the Sexual Revolution.  Someone born in 1986 was born to parents who were just getting used to computers, two-income families, PacMan and the beginning of CNN.  Each generation is different from the other because of the influence of their parents’ experiences, the differences in their education, and the impact of different political and technology influences.  Each generation thinks theirs is “the best.”

More important, though, each generation is trying to solve the same problems–create a home, have a meaningful life, feed and educate their kids,  make the world a better place, care for aging parents (Millennials aren’t there yet).  They believe that theirs is the correct way to do it, but they all are seeking similar goals.  The similar goals are as important a common ground as the different ways are an area of disagreement.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

The most important thing that comes out of the team building exercises that I do across generations is that each wants R.E.S.P.E.C.T. from the other.  Real, genuine respect.  Sometimes these exercises get quite heated–and it is almost always because  they feel disrespected by the other generations (not even necessarily from the ones in the room, but from other encounters.  These feelings are usually built up over years.)   Respect isn’t possible if you continue to think that your generation’s way is the best.  It is one way.  It is based on what was going on when you hit maturity.  It is not the ONLY way, though.  If you had had the same issues/experiences/challenges as another generation, then you would likely have the same priorities and opinions of how it “should” be done.

Figure out how to appreciate the strengths of the other generations’ approach.  I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t have the Gen Ys to challenge me and the Millennials to help me with the constantly changing technology.  They need me to give them a longer perspective that is tinged with wisdom.  Although it would probably be more comfortable to be in an organization that includes only those who share the priorities and understandings that I have, it would be so BORING!

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March 27, 2012 · 10:29 pm

I Hate My Boss!

BadBoss

Unless you’re independently wealthy, you probably have to figure out how to deal with a boss you hate–at least for a while.  Pretty much everyone has this problem at some point in their career.  The good news is that you can and will learn more from a bad boss than from a good one (especially about yourself).  The bad news is that this isn’t easy.

STEP ONE- REFRAME

The first step is to take YOUR emotions out of it.  The best way I know to do this is to REFRAME the situation.  We assign all kinds of import to the boss/subordinate relationship.  We bring a ton of baggage to it.  We want approval–sometimes even love–from our boss.  We realize that the boss has power over us, so we are afraid of the interaction when  it is unpleasant, and more so when it is always unpleasant.  Maybe he will fire me!  All of this sets us up to be more emotional in our interactions with a bad boss.  As long as you’re focused on your boss’ power over you, and your needs that aren’t getting met (appreciation, approval, respect), it is unlikely to get better.

Think of a relationship that isn’t as important to you.  Maybe an acquaintance, or a sales person, or a customer (that one is my favorite).  Think of your boss as someone in that other role.  How would you treat that person.  Hopefully you wouldn’t be rude, but you would be matter of fact, and you would continue to try to make the situation work out.  If you think of your boss as a customer, then you can position yourself to try to make her happy (the customer is always right, right?), but you’re not going to blow up if the customer is rude.  You’ll deal with it.  You’ll be responsible and even-keeled and you won’t stew over it forever.  Remember, REFRAMING is only the first step, but it is an extremely important step.  It will be hard to be able to do the next steps if you can’t get yourself to this more neutral stance.

STEP TWO- UNDERSTAND

Oh, you’re not going to like this step.  You need to see the situation through your boss’ eyes.  You may need help to do this.  Ask others–several others.  Ask them for their opinion of what the boss’ perspective is.  How does your boss see you?  Why?  Does he think that he’s told you what you need to do and you haven’t done it?  Does he think you’re just not right for the job?  Does he think you don’t listen?  Does he think you’re more trouble than you’re worth?  Forget all the ways that he’s wrong.  Really understand how/why your boss thinks what he does.

I once was having lots of problems with a boss and I just couldn’t understand it.  I had made so many improvements in the brief time I’d been in the job!  From my perspective, I was doing one of the best jobs I’d ever done.  Maybe he was a sexist.  Maybe he was an idiot.  Maybe he just didn’t know what he was doing.  (You can imagine that there was no “maybe” in my thinking.)  No matter how hard I tried, he wasn’t satisfied.  It seemed like everything (including the situation that I had walked into) was my fault in his eyes.  One day he said pretty much exactly that.  I suddenly realized that although I’d only been in the job for three months (too little to fix it, I thought), he had only been with the company and my boss for two months.  He actually thought that it was all my fault.  No wonder I was on his wrong side.  Telling him that I had just started was not sufficient to change his opinion of me–we had been pushing each others buttons for a while.  It was enough, however, for me to finally understand the problem.

Once you can see the boss’ perspective, you have many more options.  You DO NOT have to agree with the perspective.  You just need to see it.  You also need to figure out what makes your boss tick.  Does she make decisions based on lots of facts and details?  Does she rely on others’ opinions to make decisions (others who have issues with you?)?  How does she like to be communicated with?  Does she like frequent updates?  You need to spend the time and energy to figure your boss out.

STEP THREE- MANAGE THE BOSS

Now you need to start to manage your boss.  Who gets along with your boss?  What do they do?  (This may be especially difficult if you don’t like the person who is succeeding with the boss—but you don’t need to like them.  You need to understand what they DO that works.)  Start to communicate in the way that your boss prefers (not the way that you prefer).  Provide the information that your boss needs to make decisions.  Stop making it obvious that you don’t like/appreciate/respect your boss.  Remember she’s the customer.

Pay attention to your assumptions about what the boss knows, wants and needs.  Look at the others who are succeeding with the boss—what assumptions do they seem to be acting on?  Pay  attention to the way that you communicate with the boss.  Do you question the boss when others just say OK?  Do you make sure you’re clear on what the deliverable is?  Does the boss know what you’ve accomplished?  Are you cheerful or glum?

Your job is to help your boss succeed.  Are you doing that job?  It is really possible to turn this “bad boss” situation around.  I’ve done it.  I have had lots of clients do it.  In fact,  it is more common to fix this situation than not.  Don’t give up.

STEP FOUR= FIGURE YOURSELF OUT

Now it’s time to focus on you again.  WHY  does your boss bug you so much?  What buttons is she pushing?  Who does she remind you of?  What do you think that she should be doing (for you) that she isn’t?  This is how you can learn more about yourself from a bad boss than from a good one.  As long as those buttons are “pushable,” then you are not in control of your performance.  Sometimes you don’t even know that they are there until a bad boss starts pushing them.  Don’t blame the situation entirely on the boss.  This is a relationship like any other—two are responsible for it.  The more you understand about yourself, the more successful you’ll be in improving this situation.

STEP FIVE- MOVE ON

If doing these four steps doesn’t work, find a new job with a new boss.  DO NOT bad mouth the boss, however, as you do it.  You’ll set yourself up for a bad situation with the next boss—if you even get the job.

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March 13, 2012 · 10:20 pm

Genericize Yourself, Increase Your Options

Change Your ThinkingBroaden Your Opportunities

For the first ten years of my career, I did product development and operations at an electronic publisher.  Before the Internet.  Explaining what I did was very hard.  (It would be a lot easier now).   When I started looking at other career options, I found that there were a limited number of electronic publishers in the country and none of them were within 100 miles of where I lived.  If I wanted to work at another company, my options were pretty limited.  I looked at job postings (again, before the Internet) and I couldn’t find anyone looking for anything remotely similar to what I did.

The fact that my company was being sold made me realize that I needed to figure out ways to open up more opportunities.  The way I did it was to examine the positions within my company that existed in other companies in my community–human resources, organization development, strategy, government relations, fulfillment, and customer service.  I looked at ways that I could get more experience in those areas so that I could market myself to other companies.  Luckily, I didn’t get swept up in the layoffs associated with the sale of the company.  Also, I was lucky that my company was open to me getting experiences in other departments.  I acquired enough experience to make myself credible in a number of different positions.

Then Broaden Them Some More

Today, if I wanted to genericize myself, I would do it differently.  I would become an expert who is broad and deep in a subject area that expands beyond inside-organization jobs to external contractors and consultants.  These would be jobs like Project Managers, Program Managers, experts in ERP systems,  global operations or social media marketing.  These would expand the opportunities to reflect the way job opportunities exist now–inside and outside companies.

And Then Some More

At the same time that you are building your skills to make you credible across companies/industries/delivery models, you should be building your brand as a complete player in your area of expertise.  If you want to go to the top you also will have to make it all fit together.  Your understanding and performance at that point will have to be broader than it is deep.

All of this requires that you look beyond today’s job to tomorrow’s job and beyond.

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March 11, 2012 · 10:01 pm

Being Told “No” Changed My Life

The most important lessons I have learned came from people who told me “No,” or “Do it faster.”

NO!

I was “reorganized” into managing a large department with twenty managers reporting to me.  Only a few of those managers had been in the their position prior to the reorganization and few of these managers knew each other very well.  I decided that they  needed leadership development training, both to give them the skills to succeed at their jobs and to help bond them as a team. I proceeded to get estimates from several vendors and took the best of them to my (also newly reorganized) boss.  She looked at the proposal and said “No.”  She didn’t believe in that kind of training and she certainly wasn’t willing to spend that much money in this newly configured organization.  It was a well thought out proposal, with a a curriculum that was well designed to set my whole organization up for success.  I couldn’t believe she was saying no.  She said, “If you really believe in this, do it yourself.”  I don’t know if she was calling my bluff, or if she was just  blowing me off.    I went away pissed.  I had never really had a boss tell me no before on something that I thought was that important.  But she clearly meant it.

I thought about it.  What would it take to create the training myself?  I had never done anything like that before.  I did it.  I probably did it because if I didn’t, she would be able to say that I didn’t really believe it was worth it.   It changed my life.  It changed my career.  I found that I loved developing and delivering this kind of training more than anything I had ever done.  And I never would have/could have known that if my boss hadn’t told me no.    I went on to create an executive development program for the company (different job) and to create a business doing for other companies.  All because I was told no.  I probably should thank her, huh?

Do It Faster, Much Faster!

I was hired by a CEO client to implement his company’s strategic goals.  I put together what I thought was a very aggressive timeline to get it done.  As far as I was concerned, to hit my timeline it would take absolutely everyone in the organization doing everything they needed to do as quickly as they could to actually hit the schedule.  I pride myself on being an optimist, though, so I had hope that we could do it.  His reaction to the plan? Do it quicker!  Much quicker!  He looked at the plan to hire key players and cut the time to do it by 80%.  Absolutely impossible! I thought.  He was unyielding, and I decided to see just how fast I could do it.  I was shocked to find that we were able to meet his deadline! I won’t even tell you how fast we did it, because you wouldn’t believe me.  It took managing each task with urgency.  It took not approaching the tasks as “business as usual”, but rather with focus and intent to get it done quickly.

When you go into work on Monday and look at what you have to accomplish this week, think what it would take to get it done by end of day Monday.  Your first reaction is likely to be like mine:  impossible.  Think about it, though.  What would it take?  What if it meant you had to to keep your job?  To feed your kids?  You get a lot more creative (and urgent) when the stakes go up.

The Lesson

The difference between taking no for an answer and not, is your decision.  The difference between “business as usual” and moving fast enough to deal with this constantly changing world is your decision.  It’s your mindset.  You have the ability to reframe like I had to at any time.  You don’t have to be told no, and you certainly don’t have to take “no.”  You can DECIDE to do it anyway.  You can DECIDE to do it fast.  And once you learn this, you won’t be the same.

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February 17, 2012 · 7:43 pm

Get Ready to Lose Your Job

I hope you never need this advice. Chances are good, though, that you will–even if you are a high potential, can’t-do-anything-wrong super dooper employee. Most of us end up out on the job hunt street in our career.

The number one thing that you can work on right now to prepare for that day is to build your network. When clients end up on my coaching doorstep after a recent job loss, their number one regret is that they didn’t keep their network current. Ask yourself: if you lost your job next Monday, how many people in your network are familiar enough with what you do to be able to start referring you for job leads immediately? How many of them would want to? How many of them have you had contact with in the last month? year? five years? How many of them do you have current contact info on? When someone starts a job search, it usually takes months to rebuild a network. Months! How can I get your attention about this?

Yeah, I know. You don’t have time. You have to do (keep) your current job, take the kids to soccer, re-do the house.
If you lost your job, you would find the time. And you would wish you had done it sooner.

So what do you do? Start with two things:

1) Join, attend and volunteer for the appropriate professional groups. The people who do jobs like yours belong to these groups. They are also the first to know of the job openings in their own companies. There is a reason that the leadership of these professional groups (PMI, SHRM, ASTD) move easily from company to company. They know people.

2) Join/update/participate in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is becoming the largest recruiting tool in many professions. Join groups that interest you. Post answers/questions when appropriate (but don’t spam people with it).  Set your LinkedIn account up so that you get an email update of changes in your network.  Reach out to those who have had a change.  It doesn’t take much time, but it keeps that contact warm.  Post things of interest periodically.

Approximately 75% of jobs are landed through knowing someone who has some connection to the job (in the same company, referral, etc). 75%!  Make sure you are ready if you ever need it.

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