Do you let your failures or missteps derail your dreams or do you bounce back quickly?
In Part1, I examined resilience – what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it – to keep on moving forward towards your goals. The good news is that even if you’re not a naturally resilient person, you can develop a resilient mindset and attitude. To do so, incorporate these six guidelines into your daily life:
1. Maintain the right perspective. We all experience bad days and we all go through our share of crises. But we have a choice in how we respond; we can choose to react negatively or in a panic, or we can choose to remain calm and logical to find a solution. Avoid blowing events out of proportion. This is only one incident in your career. It’s time to move on.
2. Determine what went wrong. Your own role in the setback will vary from situation to situation. A company-wide layoff is probably beyond your control, whereas being terminated or reprimanded for performance issues is something for which you can take more responsibility. Regardless, it’s important that you make a thorough assessment of the situation to maximize your learning and correct any wrongs.
3. Identify what was and what was not in your control. Was (or is) the job a good fit for your skills? Do you have what it takes to be successful in the position – or do you need more training, experience, or other development? Did the organization’s leaders simply make a staffing decision based on economics?
4. Recalibrate to get back on track. Determine what you need to do to make sure that you learn from your mistakes and never repeat them. What would you do differently next time? What behaviors or decisions contributed to the setback you’re experiencing?
5. Create a strategy for your career future . You have a new perspective and a new set of circumstances and therefore may need a new career strategy. Brainstorm ideas with your network, assess your options and even consult a coach to decide what’s next for you.
6. Nurture your self confidence. Continue to set goals, make plans, get out of your comfort zone and keep moving forward. Resilient people are confident that they’re going to succeed eventually, despite the setbacks or stresses that they might be facing. A setback only sets you back if you allow it to do so.
Career Success Tip:
Resilient people understand that things change and that carefully-made plans may need to change. To maintain your career growth and satisfaction, resilience is essential. How have you been resilient? Share your experience with others.
Step 4: “Be the Early Bird…”– Plan Evaluation Early
The best time to plan an evaluation is before program implementation has begun. Plan evaluation during the program planning stage. This helps reduce back-tracking and helps to create a culture of evaluation more naturally. This also prevents having to come in with dramatic changes later. People tend to resist change, and late changes can create even more resistance to evaluation. Dealing with such resistance can be likened to trying to turn a huge ship whose course has already been set. It can be a difficult task indeed, but if this where your program is at, it is still worth the effort!
And now for what is the most critical point: engage all stakeholders throughout the evaluation process. A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in your program—national staff, administrators, board members, partners, program implementers, volunteers, program participants, etc. Begin by asking away for their input. Do your best to learn from them. If they see no agenda being pushed and that everyone is committed to learning from one another other, they may drop defensive mechanisms and openness may gradually follow. Encourage open discussion of concerns. Sometimes enlisting your worst critic, given a certain degree of mutual trust, can benefit your program. Critics of evaluation can provide valuable, candid reality-checks. Due to the variety of interests involved, however, conflict may arise. People-skills such as conflict resolution are vital in your program’s evaluator.
While being careful not to push an agenda, constantly look for teachable moments. A teachable moment, as you may know, is a natural window of opportunity that arises when the person might be more open to what you are trying to communicate. During these teachable moments:
share with them what others are doing based on your review of the literature
help them think of evaluation more as a way to improve your program and less as a threat to the program
help overcome their personal fears of negative evaluation results
emphasize how they will benefit from the evaluation
commit ahead of time to sharing evaluation results with all stakeholders in a readable format. Negotiate these agreements ahead of time with administrators. Sharing results can motivate some of your stakeholders to support evaluation efforts.
Promote trust among evaluation participants by emphasizing ethical treatment of evaluation participants– protecting their rights, confidentiality, doing no harm, etc.
Again, the action steps are:
1) Teach the language of evaluation
2) Mentor and role-model
3) Collaborate with like-minded professionals
4) Plan evaluation early
5) Engage stakeholders
What challenges have you faced with getting others on-board with evaluation efforts?
This season give your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To every child, a good example. To all, charity. For Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, this is the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Oren Arnold
Our wish for you is that the spirit of the season carry on throughout
the year. Sharing, loving, giving, are not intended to be put away
and simply pulled out once a year like lights and ornaments. Rather
that they are prevalent and contagious in your daily life. We believe
that the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in
the kindness and love given to others year round.
Soon the new year will be here and with it the perfect time to share
our appreciation. As a song from the movie White Christmas shares
“If you’re worried and can’t sleep, count your blessings instead of
sheep.”
Thank you for reading our blog in 2011. May your blessings
be abundant in 2012.
James Carse has written a wonderfully provocative book on the nature of our interactions in the world[1]. His work is particularly relevant now, during the Solstice season, when all seems to pause, reflect, refocus, and, with the increasing light, return to growth and activity.
Leadership Quiz
– I approach leadership as a game to be won, with clear rules, goals, and opponents.
– I approach leadership as a game to be played with others in order to advance the play through our collaborative work and ensure its continuity over time.
If you picked the first, you are not alone. In fact, this is the leadership model that has been in play for the last 50 years at least. If you picked the second you are also in good company. Your peers are the trailblazers of the Internet world and Gen X corporate leaders. In either case, we are facing a world in which Finite Play (defined by option 1) limits our abilities to respond to the challenges and surprises 21st Century leaders confront daily. The answer to this conundrum is not to jettison Finite Play, but rather to embed it into an Infinite Game.
Finite Games
Finite Games have three characteristics that I feel are key for leaders to understand, least they overuse this form of interacting with the world.
Finite Games come to a definitive end. For example, promotion, profit, or beating your competition in market share. Like sports, these are games in which everyone can agree on who is the winner.
This leads to the second important aspect of Finite Games: The rules and procedures are externally defined. This means that the rules cannot be changed during the course of play. Hence, these games are slow to adapt to changes in the environment or changes of context, both of which are important in business today. Additionally, the rules are different for each type of Finite Game. For example, leaders who are awesome on the shop floor may not do well in the home office, and promoting expert leaders into roles that require the people skills of a generalist can cause problems. Rule makers can also remove players at any time, especially when they are no longer needed for the game, very common during downsizing.
Finite Games have definitive boundaries. These boundaries are designed to limit the players involved based on their skills, knowledge, and expertise , which are specific to the game being played. Hard boundaries produce silos, the rigidity of hierarchical organizational structures, and the inflexibility of jobs, roles, and titles (not my problem syndrome).
Infinite Games
In my mind, Infinite Games are where leaders can really shine, but they are inherently paradoxical and require an open, inquisitive mindset.
Infinite Games are played for the purpose of continuing the play. These are the corporate games led by visionaries, strategic wizards, leaders who navigate turbulence, embrace surprise, and manage paradox by engaging with the game as it unfolds. Leaders who play Infinite Games transform organizations and develop (not just promote) those around them.
The rules and procedures of Infinite Games are internally defined. As the environment and context in which the game is played changes, these change as well. In fact, the rules of Infinite Games are designed to deal with specific threats that would end or limit the game. This creates a system that is adaptive and resilient – encouraging learning and enlarging the pool of players to meet the demands of the situation.
Infinite Games have soft, semi-permeable boundaries. Players form networks (formal and informal) and actively enroll others who can contribute. Players can self-select, coming and going as the game changes and the need for their skills and talents changes.
Infinite Games can contain Finite Games. This changes the way the Finite Game and its players are perceived by leaders.
infinite players… enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy [but] without the seriousness of finite players. …For that reason they regard each participant in finite play as that person playing and not as a role played by someone.“ James Carse, emphasis the authors
Integrating the Two
Carse’s book presents a view in which ceaseless change is met with the continuity generated by Infinite Games rather than discontinuity generated by Finite Games. Leadership in this model is fluid, engaging our humanity and creativity in a form of play that can hold the rigidity of Finite Games and still advance the overarching Infinite Game. To blend the two requires a leader that, in the words of psychologist Edwin Friedman,
can shift [their] orientation… from one that focuses on techniques that motivate others to one that focused on the leader’s own presence and being.”[2]
Look back at the characteristics of Infinite Games; they fit with Friedman’s assertion that leadership is an emotional process rather than a cognitive process. To lead an Infinite Game requires one to have clarity about themselves and their own emotional processing. This allows them to manage their own reactivity when others around them are anxious and uncertain. To be sure, this is not easy. But neither is it available to only a few, any leader can improve their capacity for being present and connected to those around them.
This brings us back to the Solstice – the end of exhale … the pause before drawing a fresh new breathe of air. Is 2012 the year you begin playing the Infinite Game of leadership?
[1] Carse, James P. Finite and Infinite Games. Random House, New York. 1986.
[2] Friedman, Edwin H. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of Quick Fixes. Seabury Books, New York, 2007.
As the year comes to a close and I begin to reflect on the previous twelve months, I realize as adults we are always learning and re-learning important lessons. Many of the lessons I learned this year were simply reminders of lessons learned years ago. Below is the beginning of my list and will serve as part one for the Twelve Lessons I Learned (or Re-Learned) This Year blog series. These lessons are universal in many areas of life.
Lesson One
It’s not about me. This is an important lesson that crosses many areas of my life. As a parent, teacher and HR professional in the trenches it is important to focus on the bigger picture. Parenting isn’t about the instant gratification of giving my child want they want in the moment, it is about giving them what they what they need to develop the skills and abilities that will carry them through life. That also applies to my students and those with whom I work daily. It is so much easier for me to just handle the situation or give them the answer. But it shouldn’t be about what is easier for me, It should be about what is best for them. It isn’t about me.
Lesson Two
Growth can be painful. This is another lesson that is applicable in many areas of my life. While doing many of my workouts this past year, I have heard a voice in my head, that keeps me moving. It’s the voice of some trainer from a workout DVD repeating something like this, “Don’t give up when it gets hard. That is when the body is changing.” It is the same in all other aspects as well. Use your internal dialogue keep yourself focused on what you need and want to accomplish especially when it hard. This is when you will grow. This is when change happens.
Lesson Three
Know where you want to go and make a plan to get there. I am sure many of you have heard the saying that the difference in a dream and goal, is that the goal is written down and an action plan is in place. Don’t dream it, do it. Decide what you what you want to accomplish and get a plan in place to get there. If you aren’t sure where to start, don’t be afraid to reach out and get some help from someone in the field.
Lesson Four
Surround yourself with others and put yourself in situations where you can be your best self. Again, this lesson is so applicable in all areas of life. Regardless of what you want to accomplish or where you want to go, you will need encouragement and will need to avoid discouragement. Unfortunately discouragement comes in all forms and can even be disguised as encouragement. Seek out situations that will keep you focused. Finding other with a similar goal or interest is a great way to start. If you want to run a marathon, find a training partner and use a gadget to track your progress. If you want to change the culture in your company, find a professional organization or a coach to help you focused.
Don’t forget to check back for the rest of lessons. What lessons can you share?
Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz.
Consider a DBA
This is especially important for national and international charities, where if you are a small national or international non-profit, everyone may not recognize your name.
The national and international lists are rigidly alphabetical; if your official name is “The Best Charity” you will be listed in the “T”s for “The” not in the “B”s for “Best.”
There are many charities whose names begin with “American” or “International.” And, the information for all of those organizations will be listed among the other nonprofits whose names begin with those words.
One technique that charities may choose to deal with this situation is to file a “Doing Business As” (DBA) change of name with their state and/or with the IRS for their workplace giving campaigns.
One example of a foundation that does this is the American Hospice Foundation, which is a member of the America’s Charities Federation, and in their workplace giving campaigns they are listed as “Hospice America.” By doing this, their information is listed near other hospice related charities, making it easier to find them than if they were listed among the charities whose names begin with “American.”
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During his 25-year career in the Federal sector, Bill Huddleston, The CFC Coach, served in many CFC roles. If you want to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign, maximize your nonprofit’s CFC revenues, or just ask a few questions, contact … Bill Huddleston
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= We’re taking a break. Be back on January 3rd.
Enjoy your holidays. Hank, Natalie, Rick, Jayme, Lynn, Bill
Whenever I ask people what, in their opinion, makes for an appealing speaker or presenter, the first word out of their mouth is usually “confident.” We all want to look and sound confident, and we all fear looking, well, nervous and scared. One of the easiest ways to express confidence in your voice is to avoid the dreaded upward inflection, you know, the one that makes it sound like you are asking a question with each statement you make.
Consider the following:
“Hello? I am Jane Jones? And I work for Brown Packaging? I was just calling today to introduce myself? And see if I can help you with your packaging needs?”
Whoa! I hope you could hear the questions in your mind as you read this dialog. Now imagine it again with more powerful inflections.
“Hello! I am Jane Jones from Brown Packaging! I am calling today to introduce myself, and to see if I can help you with your packaging needs!”
All right, everything you say doesn’t need to have an exclamation point after it, but my hope is that you “heard” a much different sound this time. One that is confident and enthusiastic. By the way, when you are holding a virtual conversation, presentation or meeting, your vocal inflections and habits are more important than ever.
Having just facilitated a workshop with a group of people who nearly all had this questioning inflection in their speech, I have to wonder if we use this inflection when we hear it around us. I think we do. So a good start would be to listen for it in others, and then if you hear it around you, listen for it in your own speech.
Generally, awareness is the most important step. If you suspect you may have this habit, check your voice messages, informal conversations, and meetings to see if you do, and how frequently you hear it. Or ask a trusted colleague to listen to you and see how often they can hear it.
To improve your sound patterns: When you are recording a voice message, listen to it before you send it, to be sure you sound confident. When you are rehearsing for a major presentation, record your practice and listen for upward inflections. Stamp them out in your next rehearsal. Then start with everyday communication. When you catch the upward inflection sound, correct it and move on. Try to insert those more positive sounds. “Absolutely! Of course! Yes!”
With practice and a little patience, you can fight the dreaded upward inflection, put more positive power in your voice, and maybe even spread this good habit to those around you.
In some cases, I’m sure digital learning or distance learning can have a positive effect.
In an article I wrote called How to Make Training “An Affair to Remember I didn’t talk a lot about different training methods; I was concerned mostly with the trainer’s role and responsibilities in making classroom instruction most effective. For a long time I highlighted this point on my website. Even though some time has passed, I still think the ideas are valid. My training group on Gov Loop received a question which merits a revisit to that article.
Here’s the question: Do you think this [article] refers only to traditional training methods – or can it also be applied to e-learning and distant learning? Is there a way to capture the charisma and energy Shaw highlights in digital training modules?
As a public speaker, psychologist, actor, director as well as a trainer, I believe we all need an audience to interact with us–even if it is unperceived by the audience itself. This is in the form of biofeedback.
You can make e-learning and distant learning more exciting with dynamic presenters, however, the biofeedback is hard to add. Whether online digital even with video of individuals, and dynamic special effects has the same effect on learning is suspect. In some cases, I’m sure it can have a positive effect. In others, I’m not so sure because some people are simply more prone to respond to others who respond to them in some direct fashion. How much effect has not really been studied, but the ads for these programs would have you believe they do indeed have a healthy impact. They are certainly cost effective.
With either training method, there is little direct feedback the presenter can see (or sense) in the audience and adjust his or her presentation for that particular audience in the moment of time it is occurring, if at all. With pre-packaged programs, there is none at all; the closest you can get is anticipating audience reactions. Still not optimum. I’m not saying there is not a place for this kind of training, but it can’t compare with the right trainers motivating and working with an audience, and immediate learning taking place.
E-learning and distance learning, for the most part, are designed to reach more audiences or audiences that can’t be reached by traditional methods. It’s also cheaper. Some e-learners can learn with applications that involve the students interaction and learning by doing as opposed to or in conjunction with seeing and hearing. It’s not the same thing; however, I won’t deny it can be effective for some.
Generally speaking, people probably do not learn best by this method or even stay attentive. Going back to my experimental social psychology days in graduate school, I suppose we could place electrodes on their fingertips, brain or elsewhere on their body and when they drifted off zapped them to attend to the subject at hand. It might result in getting their attention, but not making sure learning took place. We know learning takes place best when it is self-motivated.
Ironically, a blended teaching and training method is taking hold. It’s not just the Corporate Universities, or the pragmatic universities like Phoenix, DeVry and others whose market is mostly those who work and don’t have time for a traditional college-level program, but many traditional universities teach many blended or online courses to cut down on class time and costs. In some classes it can be more effective, but how valid is it in a public speaking class or a class that needs lots of time in face-to-face discussions? It’s not much different from training.
There is a different between what people say online and how they say what they “say” (subtext included) in a face-to-face discussion; the same goes for class room training or coaching. Body language plays a part, especially questioning or puzzled looks, I-don’t-understand looks, I-don’t-agree-but-I’m-not-going-to-say looks. These are times you can adjust. With the other methods, you can’t adjust if you don’t see it.
A more dynamic presenter can add “charisma” and even a dynamism with some creativity to e-learning and distant learning modules, but it still loses something in the direct connection.
Keep in mind that the stage is different from the television or the computer screen in the actual performance approach by the trainer. Just like acting for the stage is different from acting for television or film; one is a distance medium and the other is filled with close-ups.
I would treat the e-learning and distant learning as a close-up performance because your audience is mostly intimate. You can assume otherwise, but I would say the same rules apply. By the way, if you are talking teleconferencing, remember that even radio announcers use mirrors to give them the feeling they are talking with a real audience instead of an imagined ones. It’s hard to make numbers of people real, but that is one technique to make it easier, believe it or not. Ask any DJ whoever did a show in an empty studio. Should work for podcasts, too.
Miriam Reichenbach and Frank Myers star in LOVE LETTERS, playing at Sketch Club Players of Woodbury, NJ.
It bothers me a bit that we are losing our direct contact with our people through our wonderful technology, but hopefully, we can adapt as we go to get the feedback or make the best of what we do receive. My novel, hopefully out this year, deals with the subject of what happens when we stop talking face-to-face and rely only on the devices for acceptable communication.
There’s an interesting play, LOVE LETTERS, that I reviewed for STAGE Magazine. In the play, a couple are separated but write each other all the time. What the audience sees on stage are actors reading the letters, but the letters tell the back story, which loses a bit as the audience sees what happens without face-to-face communication.
Letters are cleaned up; versions are adapted to ensure the person receiving them gets exactly the message we want to send. The point of the play is that the subtext that is missing or words and feelings left out for the sake of brevity may be important, too, leaving unanswered questions and even miscommunication.
The same can be said for digital learning, and, in fact, any kind of training that does not take place where the trainer can see his or her audience and react to them. Even an actor, with lines memorized, does not act in a void. An actor wants an audience because it makes the performance complete; it also makes each performance a little different. So, it should be with training.
That’s my opinion and I stand by it. As always, I welcome opposing views and if there is research out there, I’d love to see and post the statistics for all to see–either way. My other “outrageous” writings are available on my website, or in my new e-Book, The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development, which is a common sense guide to training and development. Personally, I think it takes you back to thinking what training is all about from the beginning rather than finding a single focus to ply your trade. But I would be wrong to say I haven’t found my niche, and it’s a passionate one. We go with our strengths and I hope I’ve made the right choice for me just as I hope for you have for yours.
I’m here for you. Have your say and come back often. I’m pleased to have guest bloggers who have different points of view or focus on one aspect of training. speaking of which, Sandy Cormack will be back with Unlocking Creative Potential – A Neuroscience Approach, Part III. It’s good to learn to stay fresh and stimulated. Happy Training and Happy Holidays.
Find yourself stopping blooming Facebook crises in their tracks (with a single bound!) and coming out bearing Likes from everyone involved? Are you the person the C-suite comes to when the proverbial bleep hits the fan in the office? Well then, you just might be a crisis manager!
In his latest article, hosted on the Bernstein Crisis Management blog, Jonathan Bernstein finishes the statement, “You Might Be a Crisis Manager If…”
Feel free to submit your own “You Might Be a Crisis Manager If…,” reader responses will be featured in an upcoming issue of our Crisis Manager newsletter!
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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How do you start out on the right foot so that everyone will get on board the change train quickly? No matter the kind of change or the extent, it is crucial that managers communicate with employees early, often and well.
When the change message is not well-defined and well presented, people tend to respond by sitting on the fence, dragging their feet or even worse sabotaging the change effort. Suddenly milestones not met, customers are upset and your stakeholders or shareholders start pounding on your door for better results.
The challenge for managers is to lessen, as much as possible, the potential speed bumps of change. Here are the first three steps for communicating change so that there will be less resistance and more commitment.
1. Analyze your own feelings about the change. How we manage change can be dramatically affected by how we personally feel about the change. It is important to make the time and take the time to first answer these questions for yourself.
How is this change going to affect me now? Later?
Do I agree with the change or do I have reservations?
After the change, what am I gaining? What am I losing?
Finally, whom can I talk to abut my reaction(s) if I feel the need? At work? Away from work?
2. Obtain the many facts surrounding the change. This is not the time to “wing it”. You must be very clear about the big picture and the small details.
What’s changing and what isn’t? What’s going to change right now and what later?
What’s the time frame? What other important details do I need to reassure my staff?
How much control do I have over how the change is made? What’s negotiable? What’s not?
Is their information I either don’t know or can’t share with my staff? How will I handle this?
3. Decide when and how to communicate the news. The timing of the communication is very important. Consider when you are at your best as a communicator and when your employees are most apt to be receptive. What is the best time to talk with your staff? Will key people be there?
How much lead time is necessary between the announcement and the actual change?
Is there enough time for adequate planning but not too long to allow anxiety and resistance to build?
What is the most effective way to communicate the news? Is it n a group meeting or one-on-one or in a memo or email or some other way?
Management Success Tip:
When you’re on an airplane and it encounters turbulence, you want to know what’s happening. Not knowing makes you nervous. Employees also want to know what’s going on. If they don’t understand, then anxiety mounts, trust declines and rumors fly. That usually leads to change resistance rather than change commitment. Part 2 will give you the next three communication steps.
Do YOU know how to lead right – motivate right – hire right – get the right results?
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In Part1, I examined resilience – what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it – to keep on moving forward towards your goals. The good news is that even if you’re not a naturally resilient person, you can develop a resilient mindset and attitude. To do so, incorporate these six guidelines into your daily life:
