Don't wait to be asked for help

Every person that walked into my office to read this today furrowed their brow. I almost added the implied sentence but decided against it. After all the responses I might do it different next time.

Here we are back at the do the right thing theme. If you see someone with their hands full, open the door. If you know someone has as tough deadline and needs some help and you have the tools to do it, you should help them. Do what is right. Not at the expense of your career or life, but helping each other is probably not the worst thing in the world.

You don't know what is going on with that person, they might appreciate just an acknowledgment of their existence. They might be feeling rather invisible and a simple holding of the door so they could pass might give them the feeling that they are seen.

More important in my book, is working with your own friend and colleague network to make sure you let people know you think and care about them. Drop them a line, offer to help them move without being asked. Something small just to let them know you are there.

Everyday is an adventure.

I say this a lot to prevent complaining about what is happening in any given day. It is very easy when someone asks you how it's going to launch into a 5 minute accounting of all the road blocks you are encountering. That is a big downer for the innocent person that asked you a question and it allows you to grab ahold of that negative attitude and really relish in it.

When I first started working professionally my first boss taught me a good lesson. No one wants to listen to someone complain non stop. On occasion people will be listen to woes, but those ar eyour friends not your colleagues. Your colleagues know what it is like to work where you are and they may not have the same opinion as you.

Gerry, my boss at the time corrected me every time I would come to her with a "problem" and say that it was not a problem but an "opportunity". Well she has been working for over 40 years at the company and she could manage a positive attitude. When she gave advice I listened. In about 3 months I had gotten the idea. Some people like to wallow in their misery. It's like a warm cozy blanket that they spread over themselves to keep them company. They are also less productive and not as likely to be promoted. So if you want to keep your sanity, friends and have some potential to move on to news opportunities you will need to keep your attitude in check.

The next time someone asks you "How are you?" and you have a Whitney response on the tip of your tongue I encourage you to say instead "everyday is an adventure and I am just enjoying the ride". It's true what they say. The way you talk to yourself has a direct effect on you attitude and perspective. Tell yourself it is an adventure and find the fun in the roller coaster of your work life.

With practice I was able to do it. So can you.

Honesty is the best policy

Interesting responses at work today, at least 2 or 3 people
came in and said “If only people would actually do this…” What does that say
about our society? Where honesty is perceived as a bad thing, or to be
considered rather than done.

I am not a good liar and when I do have the occasion to do
it, there isn’t a lot of time before I am coming clean. It makes me fell dirty
and uneasy to lie. Combine this with my direct personality and it can get me
into a pickle on occasion. This is not to say that I don’t care about people’s
feelings, but I am not going to lie to you about anything.

I am not against a good word smith to ease the pain, but I
won’t leave out the negative of a situation just because I don’t want to own up
to the consequences. Old parent adages are come back to haunt again. Didn’t
your parents tell you and then you tell your children that the truth told won’t
prevent a punishment, but it will prevent a more severe punishment?

While neither you nor I believe our parents, it is the
truth. I would rather know that something bad happened and you learned from it
than to have someone keep making the same mistake until the consequence costs
them dearly rather than correcting and moving forward.

On the flipside, why hold back when you have something good
to say? You don’t want to take the attention away from yourself? Recognition and
exposure are your only goals? Doesn’t every leadership book you have ever read
or had a class about say that if the people around you shine, so will you? And,
your start will get an opportunity to shine as well?

Not everybody likes the messenger, but overall the truth
will triumph over something less than that. And you can walk around knowing
that nothing is going to trip you up.

Can't is a slacker too lazy to work.

Thank you for enduring my 1 week hiatus from posting. I went on vacation, am now back and can return to the wild and zany world of white board words of inspiration.

This is the all-time most common Grandma-ism I have. I was going to save it for the anniversary of her passing, but it seemed appropriate for today. I miss you grandma, more than I ever thought I would, but I think of you almost every day.

You can ask anyone who knew my grandma and without a doubt each person would say the same thing. If you ever uttered the word can’t for any reason whatsoever around her she would snap out “Can’t is a slacker too lazy to work.” There was no thinking or considering of what you might have said can’t about. To her there was nothing that you couldn’t do if you set your mind to it. The constant barrage of that message was passed onto my dad and onto me. I heard it from her lips plenty of times and I say it to my daughter as well. In fact I am pretty sure Grandma said it to her as well during their time together. The truth is she was a product of her era. Everything she got, was through hard work and grit. This made a better world for the rest of us. We all take that for granted and look at where we are now.

I am frequently wondering if we make our daughter’s life to easy, will she understand the work it requires to find success? Will she know the feeling of a job well done and the rewards both internal and external for that hard work? We don’t want her to suffer to overcome, but we do want her to have an understanding of hard work can bring rewards that are immeasurable.

What about you? Today’s adult population needs a lesson from those WWII depression babies, that broke their backs to make this country the super power it became and we are threatening to let go of. Forget politics and things bigger than what you are facing at home and at work. What are you doing to value what you have and make the best of it? If you are uttering can’t about anything, why are you? How did you get put in a situation that made you think you can’t. The way you talk to yourself and the choices you make in the face of a decision that is need vs. want say a lot about your resolve and self-control. If you say you can’t because you perceive someone as standing in the way of what you want, then you are passing the buck. No one can stand in your way, but yourself. This person you are blaming is just an obstacle in the road that you need to work your way around.

All the good things in life do not come instantly, have some patience and recognize that good things really do come to those who wait. I am just as bad as the next guy, but I get better all the time. Reminding myself that I don’t need it right now. I can wait and see what develops and the right opportunity will come along. Besides you appreciate those things so much more when you know it’s the right thing, not just the right thing right now.

What you put into it, you get out of it.

There are lots of forms of this phrase, but the general principle is that if you give of yourself you will get that much and more back. Personally this is more true than anyone can really realize. Your family and friend life can be so enriched by engaging with those people on a level with honesty and truth that will bring fulfillment back to you in buckets.

This can mean setting your pride aside and admitting your mistakes in an effort to maintain relationships. We are human and mistakes will be made the true measure is that you are willing and able to accept that, make things right when it happens and move forward.

This is another situation where work and life while they would have similar if not the same outcomes, for whatever reasons being at a place called “work” you can feel inhibited about your conduct and interactions. I can say that I try to be who I am both at work and home, but my personality being what it is can be too much in both places. All of you reading this know that I am a strong personality that cares deeply for everyone around me. I strive every day to help people succeed in what they are pursuing. I do this for myself as well, and spend a large amount of time learning to tame and control my overbearing personality to work in a positive manner both for myself and for my community at large.

On a whole these efforts are repaid with getting to witness people that otherwise didn’t think or believe they could do something, stepping out past their fear and into an experience they never thought they would get to have, or get their in a way that is both fulfilling for them and me. I throw myself into this because I get great joy in even the encouragement of others to reach out and try new and strange things for their universe and succeed or enjoy it.

In my zeal for this activity I can lose control of my personality and it can turn from encouragement and straight talk into something altogether uglier. I am not proud of this part of my personality, but it is there and must be acknowledged. In an effort to push the best out of myself and other people I can (with those intentions that lead me to hell ) instead make those people that I am trying to help feel judged, pushed or told how to be, do, or live.

Not a very pretty thing really. For years I didn’t even know I was doing it. Once I did realize it I instituted a new personal apology rule. When I do this and it happens probably more frequently than I recognize, I go to that person or persons and apologize. There are times when the person does not feel an apology is necessary, but when you have a personality such as mine it is really a good idea. People then understand that you recognize your behavior and own the responsibility of it.

It is one of the great shames of my life, but you must accept people for all of who they are and that includes yourself. While I am not proud of this part of my personality I am able to deal with it. All this story is to say that I work daily at using my strong personality for good in both my personal and work life. On the whole I am repaid with shared positive experiences of my friends and co-workers.

If you put a little extra effort in you might find that you are rewarded with overall a better feeling and experience leaving you a little more fulfilled than you might have been previously.

Just keep swimming...

Dory was a very wise fish. She is amongst my internal dialogue often. Just thinking it makes me smile just a little bit. I picture her swimming down into the darkness with faith and no fear of the unknown.

Children have the same blind faith, but adults have seen that there are reasons seemingly to fear the unknown. We all know that it will eventually work out in the end, yet we fear the uncertain and the unknown as if the end of our world may come upon us in that unknown future.

We can not control what happens in the future, we can only control ourselves and how we respond to the situations that we are faced with. I am a firm believer that no matter how bad things are and your desire to quit is strong, if you just keep moving a little bit at a time you will get through it and things will work out.

My life is a living testament to that, but the best example that I have is from when I was in college. A storm came through town and I was supposed to drive to another town an hour away. I called ahead and said the weather was bad, the sky was green and I had actually seen a twister
in a place where twisters didn't happen. The people I was supposed to meet didn't believe me and made me feel like I was exaggerating. I felt compelled to make the drive.

So I started my journey, the roads were flooding and the rain was so strong my wipers couldn't really keep up. I was in 2nd gear and barely moving. I made it to the freeway and I was still in second gear. Now the hail started and it was inches thick on the road in minutes. Cars were
pulling off the road and visibility was almost zero. I was now in first gear going up a steep hill with cars pulling off left and right. Literally as I crested the hill (20 minutes later) and the storm abruptly ceased with the edge of the cloud cover. It was a sunny drive the rest of the way. Two hours after I arrived the storm hit the town I had just driven too and the people couldn't believe I had made it.

To this day I use that memory to remind me that even if I only move my feet an inch at a time, eventually I will get somewhere. Once I get there I can move to the next place. I will sometimes get there faster than other times, but hard or easy I will move through it.

Have an Attitude of Gratitude.

As we officially move into the Holiday Season it seems
appropriate to remember that no matter how bad you think you have it, someone
else has it worse.

That is not to say that bad things haven't or aren't
happening to you, but ask yourself a few simple questions...

Do you have a roof over your head? Enough to eat? Clothes
enough to wear? Generally enough to get by? We have covered in previous posts
that someone is watching out for you and cares about you. Taking all of this
into consideration it should be a pretty easy jump to say that we all have a
lot to be grateful for.

Sure there are plenty of irritations in each of our
lives, but on the whole we are doing pretty well. while we should probably do a
little more for our community than we are doing right now, our own personal
situations are in as much control as can be expected.

Knowing all of this why can't we be more grateful for
what we have? Our nature is such that we need more and in times when the news
is nothing except dire circumstances are bearing down on all of us. How can we
not worry and fret ourselves into a wary and stressed bunch of selfish crazies.

I am simply suggesting that you stop take a deep breath
and then take stock of your situation. Think rationally for one moment and
realize that no matter what you are going through there is someone, somewhere
that is suffering more than you are.

Be grateful for what you have and say thank you to people
you know that do a good job or something nice for you or someone else.

Be accountable

My apologies…Halloween hindered my ability to get this posted last night.

Accountability is a universal topic amongst you and your peers at work. At home it is the same but probably spoken about in regards to doing the right thing or making amends where necessary. Natural consequences are more easily acquired at home than at work. For whatever reason at work nature has less sway over people’s response to influences. There is a level of invincibility at work that makes this topic more prevalent at work.

If you are on the receiving end of someone not being accountable you are left demanding that atonement and often left wanting. Frequently an assignment is given and the tasked employee either does not do or only half does what has been requested. Then the next party is asked to work with that and be successful. When the downstream partner that got half done work complains there is no way to make the person who led you to this state be accountable for the low quality of work they are providing. How did we get here? I would argue that good intentions may be leading us down the wrong path here, but at the same time I would also argue the laws to protect your employment are not wrong. The effectiveness of those laws is left to the implementation by people. People are the variable element and not every person is created equal in the eyes of accountability.

It seems that every boss you ever have will have a varying degree of skill at confrontation and accountability on difficult topics. You may have the avoider, someone who pretends the issues aren’t there and just let’s everything slide. The joker, who tries to joke with you about the mistake in hopes that it will entice you to perform. The micro manager, who will come and teach you how it’s done and finally do it for you if you seem confused or incapable in some way (or at least act like it). The dictator that condemns you for poor work without helping you understand what it is you might have done wrong, leaving you to hopefully puzzle it out on your own. The coach, finds a way to reach you as an employee, ensure that you know what is being asked of you and gives you the tools to do it. If you still do not perform after that they set clear expectations and then follow up on whatever agreement is made.

Unfortunately there are far too few actual coaches out there and way to many other forms of leaders. Now this is not an excuse to be lazy and slip shod in your work. In fact I believe it is more incumbent on you as a person to be accountable to yourself and your own reputation. Do your best work, be respectful of both your up and downstream partners. If you can serve them well and they reciprocate all of your performance goes up and theoretically the companies as a result. This domino effect will improve your situation and work both personally and financially.

Go back in your mind to a time when you thought someone was not being held accountable for some poor work that had been done. Do you want someone to think that way about you? No. Does feeling that way give you leave to do the same? No. Lead by example and hold yourself accountable to the job that is at hand, do it right and you will be rewarded with gratitude and recognition from your peers. Feel proud of the work you do and what it does for your team and your business.

Take this same mentality home and watch it bloom. It is often much harder to be accountable to people that have to love you because you are related to them. I submit this is the more important place to swallow your pride and do the right thing. You will need your family as much as they need you, even if they do drive you crazy. Someone has to lower their pride and just take the first step in extending the olive branch. It may not work the first time, but with continued, consistent effort, trust can be rebuilt and a relationship healed.