What will you start, stop, continue? Right here, right now – not January first?

New Year resolutions irritate me.

I said it. I wrote it.

I briefly hesitated. Shall I replace ‘irritate’ by something less strong?

It’s rather rigid and judgmental of me to get irritated about something like New Year resolutions, especially if they're not even mine. 

But I do, because they totally don’t make sense to me. One of procrastination’s biggest allies is a resolution for the future. Why wait one more month, week, day, or even an hour?  If you know where to go, how to go, how to be, what to do, what to stop, and what to start, why do you have to wait for a certain symbolic date?

You don’t. It’s just another excuse to let you off the hook for right now. I did this so many times with smoking. I was going to quit at the beginning of summer. I would quit on January 1^st. I was most definitely going to quit after that party… Until, on a very regular, normal day, right after and before another fun event, I stopped. Yes, with the help of a loving friend, and no, not postponing it even one more hour.

How to do this? Simple (maybe not easy): Be true to yourself. Be honest. Be realistic. And be determined.

Better 1 action put to real practice than 10 ideas that remain floating between that desirable future accomplishment and here-and-now implementation.

This is about you. What will you start, stop, and continue to do as of NOW?

Tough conversations

As leadership expert Geoff Aigner found in his own research, the biggest road block managers and leaders (but anyone alive, really) must overcome is their reluctance to engage in tough conversations, usually for fear of being unkind. There is a common mistake at work here: confusing compassion with kindness. Leaders who truly care about the development and growth of their employees are able to push through the awkwardness, and tell it straight. Just like parents who really care about their children, adult children who care about their aging parents, friends who care about their friends… the list goes on, beyond the workplace.

Tough conversations can be and usually are the most valuable conversations we have. If you throw caring, courage, and candor in the mix, you will be able to provide people with information and perspectives that others might have too, but are unwilling to share. Tough conversations help us decrease our blind spots. Tough conversations force us to move away from self-distortion and ego-saving defense mechanisms. Tough conversations, if held well, decrease the need for cover-up practices. Tough conversations are tough in the here-and-now and become some of the strongest bonds between people.

What are you afraid of? What is holding you back? What skills do you need to strengthen in order to start tough conversations? Why not start now? Mistakes are okay. These types of mistakes aren’t fatal, you know. 

Discomfort leads to Avoidance – But it doesn’t have to.

You missed your step while walking down the stairs to your basement. You hurt your left knee - badly. The next few days you’ll be working hard to relieve your left knee by putting most of the load on your right leg and knee.

You hit your right shoulder real hard at the office when a colleague opened a door unexpectedly and slammed it right into you. Of course you are doing everything with your left arm now, in a determined effort to spare your right arm and shoulder.

You slipped on a muddy path while walking your dog in the woods and fell. You hurt your tailbone and are now trying to minimize the pain by using your body differently – That was me, yesterday.

We all know what the problem is with these examples: In your efforts to minimize pain and discomfort you step into avoidance mode. To a certain extent this is necessary for your body to heal – every physician will tell you this. You also know, however, that those body parts that are supposed to help you avoid discomfort stemming from the injured limb, they will be over-used. They will be strained to a point where they create their own discomfort and problems. You know this and you act upon it, or so you should.

Why is it then that we think it’s so different in communication and collaboration? Why is it that so many people avoid the discomfort of having that bold conversation with their peer about underperformance that has hardly gone unnoticed? Every such conversation that is left ‘not held’, is creating new problems or exacerbating the original problem. Why is it that so many employees do not provide candid feedback upwards and so many managers don’t provide it downwards? Every feedback being held back is a chance missed to increase trust, collaboration, and effectiveness. Why is it that bad leadership goes unchallenged for so long?

Leaders know that many of the people around them don’t dare to be honest with them. Most the leaders participating in my coaching programs tell me during our conversations - which are, of course, candid, direct, confrontational, provocative and disruptive as needed - that this is lonely and counterproductive. Many other leaders belief that their people do tell them the truth about what’s happening in the organization and about how they perceive their leaders, which they generally don’t, given the nature of a leader’s authority and power. Leaders will have to actively seek candid feedback and, when they get it, respond with an open mind and with curiosity. You don’t necessarily have to feel on top of the world and be all happy when you receive negative feedback. You can however make it a ‘habit of attitude’ to welcome candid feedback for the sake of learning about others and yourself.

All feedback, whether downwards, upwards, or sideways, that is being withheld, creates new problems: confusion, secrecy, underperformance, lack of alignment, hidden agendas, disengagement and much more.

Getting back to the ‘Why is it that … ‘ question, and without going into psychology too much I will say this. There are many dynamics at work besides the workings of authority and power, such as habits that were formed in a land far away, our striving for harmony, self-defense mechanisms, projecting our own desires and fears unto others whether right or not, inconsistent or unrealistic expectation management, thinking errors and more. And yes, I do know about hierarchy, about organizations where the culture is far from open let alone that candid feedback is appreciated and encouraged. I do realize that your upcoming performance feels endangered with a candid-feedback-session.

But let me ask you: What’s so bad about discomfort? Why do we act as if it were a permanent state of mind and body? Why do we often treat it as an all-or-nothing situation? What happened to having a candid, bold conversation while at the same time remaining sensitive to and actively inquiring about how our views are being perceived? What happened to correcting mid-course if the conversation isn’t working out the way you had planned it? What happened to clarifying your intentions to set the right stage? What happened to speaking from the heart to the heart?

Please, be candid – It’s the best show of respect and of a genuine connection. Please be candid – It’s the only sure route to learning, collaborating, and succeeding. Please be candid – speak out, stand up, and be the one who notices and discusses. If you do it respectfully, in a direct and transparent manner, and, if necessary, in a private setting, you’ll be surprised how many people appreciate your perspective, even if they don’t immediately acknowledge it. I’m the living proof. Ask my customers, ask my former colleagues, ask my former bosses.

If you wish to read more on this topic, two good articles are:

http://artpetty.com/2012/11/09/just-one-thing-the-destructive-power-of-the-words-youve-left-unsaid/

http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2012/11/have-the-courage-to-be-direct.html

And last, a TED talk by Margaret Heffernan about good disagreement being central to progress: http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin 

Overload, Productivity, Perfectionism, and Assertiveness

Too few hours in a day.

Too many tasks and projects waiting for your time and attention each day.

No one can change that for you except you!

As my title suggests, I see a strong link between overload, productivity (or the lack thereof), perfectionism, and assertiveness.

Here are some of my thoughts:

Focus on being adaptable and resilient, not on being perfect. Yes, we all wish to prevent mistakes from happening. That’s a good thing and lets keep working on that. At the same time I urge you to work on the other side of the equation: acknowledging mistakes to learn from them and to move on – to move on wiser, more adaptable, and more resilient than before. If you really need to be perfect, than become perfect at learning from your mistakes and at strengthening your adaptability. Not everything can be completed to perfection. Not everything has to. Distinguish, choose, and adapt or die.

What captures your attention controls your day. What’s controlling your day today? Who is in control of your time and energy today? What do you focus on? What do you allow to grab your attention and distract you? Is it a welcome distraction, helping you pause and refuel, helping you take a step back, relax, and open up creativity? Or is it a distraction that clogs up your already crowded agenda and mind? Is it a distraction tied to procrastination, denial, risk-avoidance or other interesting but often disastrous dynamics?

Don’t over-think when you have to make decisions. Sure, you want to and need to look at the pros and cons of a diversity of alternatives, but in all this analysis don’t forget to learn to be comfortable with the fact that any of your options can lead to failure. Know when enough thinking is enough thinking.

Practice not just to delegate but also to ignore, whether for the time being or completely. Every day there are tasks and odd jobs that cease to be a task or job after I ignored it for a while. They either get done by someone else who couldn’t ignore it, they can be combined with other tasks, or they cease to exist because life and work changes constantly. How often have you helped a loved one find something, spending quite some time on it, to only find out they didn’t need it after all? How often have you prepared a document or resent something that the recipient later found or didn’t need after all. Make sure to find out how important and urgent a request is.

Yes, I love the open-door principle, and I love the closed-door lets be clear about when not to interrupt me principle. And it doesn’t stop with the door, of course. My smart phone and laptop are there to benefit me, not to continuously and needlessly interrupt and distract me. It’s okay to not answer the phone immediately. Anyone remember the days when a telephone was a heavy device standing on a table or hanging on a wall with a long cord – If you weren’t nearby you wouldn’t hear it ringing and you couldn’t pick it up? Sounds like good old days? Just don’t pick it up if you’re focused on something that you made a priority. Just don’t be tempted to respond to the sound alerting you to a new text or e-mail. Let it be, it will be there in an hour or at the end of the day. Of course you can check who it is, especially applicable for working parents who want to assure their children aren’t calling in some state of great distress, or for people on-call in critical stages of whatever business process. Just know when to resist the temptation.

Last and most importantly, practice your assertiveness. Learn to say “No, not now – it’s not urgent. I will work on that at x pm”. Learn to say “No, that is not important although I’d love to spend time on this if I wasn’t so busy”. Learn to say “I’m sorry, I miscalculated that. I have to give this task back to you or to someone else” (or: I have to postpone this to a later time). I’m sure you can think of variations to this theme of assertiveness.

Only so much can get done in 24 hours, and hopefully sleep and relaxation with loved ones is part of this time frame. Tame your perfectionism, practice the skill of ignoring, know and influence what grabs your attention, become more productive by being unreachable, and assert yourself – no one else can do it for you!

Any thoughts you want to add?