Here’s the situation. It was just told to me this morning, you have a team project due in one week. One of the team members is always making jokes at the expense of two other colleagues. Everyone feels the stress, not the humor.
The jokes are really dumb, and some are dicey, just on the edge of poor judgment. No one laughs, problem is no one stops the “jerk from joking” (those were the words that were said to me). One of the newest members of the team walked away saying he would not continue with this poor quality of cooperation.
Let me know. I am ready to give a half hour free coaching call as well as a copy of my book “Don’t Bring It to Work“. By the way, did I let you know the book has won a best business book of 2010 from Nautilus Awards that was judged by publishers, professors, and writers.
The three best answers will also be put on this blog next week. So, think it through. I will also give you my ideas (you go first!).
Avil Beckford is a woman who does not like to skim the surface. Her life and her mission are to go beyond the obvious, beyond the superficial, go into the hidden world and bring back the pearls.
Guess what the name of her successful blog is: The Invisible Mentor. It is well worth reading, there is a wealth to learn. The concept is great. In my interview with Avil, she stated “Some of my best mentors have been books I have read.” And she wants to give all of us access to these mentors that can live deeply inside our psyches even though they come in the form of words on paper or on a computer.
She is clear. “My work is not fluff. I want to reach people who are interested in learning, people who want to deepen.” I would say she wants people, well, people like us!
She has also written a book, “Tales of People Who Get It” (2007)
The book helps to shine a light on the inner workings of individuals who learned to deal with the challenges of growing and becoming, of learning how to master conflict, and how to develop and build teams.
Avil thought of this idea and was amazed that in her research she read about Napoleon Hill, that invisible mentor who has helped thousands learn what he felt was the secret of success. Hill had his “invisible counselors” and would have “imaginary council meetings” where he would get advice from those he called together. Not a bad idea.
Think about who you respect and would love to discuss your work issues with. What if you sat quietly and called them into your own private council and asked the questions that are haunting you. Then just sit and listen. Keep a pen and paper close. You may be surprised at what you learn. And then you can thank Avil for keeping that wonderful method alive.
Go to her site, sign up, you will be delighted. And buy her book, you will have a treasure trove of new “invisible mentors” to help you in your career journey. Happy travels!
Jane Korman and her father, Holocaust survivor Adolek Kohn, spoke with BBC Tuesdayto defend the video they made last summer, which shows the two accompanied by Kohn’s three grandchildren dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” in front of Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites.
“Despite the systematic brutality and cruelty endured, we have still survived,” she said about the video’s intentions. Korman told the BBC that it was about creating something that young people could connect with:
“It was really important for me to create some sort of work that had a fresh interpretation of the Holocaust. Especially for the younger generation, because I could see that even the word ‘Holocaust’ and the images that one sees of the Holocaust were numbing and in fact, they weren’t even interested.”
Since it was put on YouTube in January, the video has received over 330,000 hits and over 2,000 comments from viewers, who have called it everything from ‘heart-warming’ to ‘despicable.’
YouTube user colonelcandoo said “I am sure the millions of peopled who died here would be ecstatic? that you and your family are alive and dancing here. Keep on dancing…”
Other viewers found a different message in Korman’s art, however, which she said is “a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life.”
“This video is touching. Thank you!” Said user zeonchar.
Kohn, who dances throughout the video with the word ‘Survivor’ on his shirt, said that he did not mind dancing.
“If somebody had asked me then that I would come 62 years later with my grandchildren to Auschwitz, I would send him to a madhouse,” he said.
My Responses to this Video:
The video has stopped me from doing other work today. I am fascinated with comments from all over the globe. My book “Don’t Bring It to Work” talks about how patterns of behavior are passed from generation to generation and how they repeat and repeat until someone says “it will stop with me”. Three generations are making their own statement about freedom of speech, of expression, to dance and sing and release the past, it is fabulous. They are creating, not harming! Each of us can give to children, grandchildren great grandchildren the joy of transformation, that is a gift worth giving and giving!
What can we hand to next generations? Adolek Kohn hands his grandchildren a magnificent gift; the ability to go back to places of pain and horror, to see that the past can be cleared, can be honored. He did not defile nor destroy, he danced! And they took his hand and they danced. Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren of those who have suffered atrocities in holocausts through time bear an invisible burden until they can come together, to discuss, dialogue, and ultimately to heal.
Thank you to this beautiful family for being courageous enough to show, not just the capacity to survive, also the capacity to flourish. What if we could all come together, to sing, to dance, to join hands together to release, no longer to ignore, negate, nor wallow in history; rather to transform the past and free the present? It’s about all of us, it’s about you, it’s about me, and it’s about time!
I was doing some research about the environment. My mind went to Henry David Thoreau and how he was a “gadfly” to keep people connected to nature. He was a searcher for the truth and knew that our inner nature is connected with outer nature.
His life, his writing, was about seeking the deeper meaning, of everything. We have become such a “sound bite” nation any idea that takes more than five words to express is ignored.
Maybe we do need to stop, during these summer months and be quiet in nature’s bounty. Sit with the tress and flowers, sit with the sand and water, sit with the stars at night, and just sit. It was in this quiet that Thoreau wrote “Walden“.
What does this have to do with work you are wondering; nothing and everything?
We are living in such a polluted world and it is not just the physical chemicals, the oil, and the trash that is bearing down on us. We are also burdened with workplace conflict that seems to get worse and worse all the time.
With my coaching clients I am hearing more and more disaffection that co-workers have with each other. With all the team building programs, all the pizza parties, all the community days set aside, there is still an edge of tension in most work environments.
This emotional pollution is causing untold stress and it tumbles from home to work to little league. What can be done?
The idea of being an office environmentalist came to me as I was researching information about Thoreau. He died at the young age of 44 and left a legacy for others, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King to look at what I am calling emotional pollution and take a stand.
We are spending way too much time yelling at company officers who have done poor jobs, not just BP, check out the poor quality cement work of Halliburton in the Gulf as another example.
It’s not about how bad “they” are. What about our personal responsibilities for maintaining our beautiful planet, for being kind and civil to each other at work, in our communities?
This Thoreau quote stayed with me, I offer it to you “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
Take some quiet time this summer and think about how you can help get to the root.
Here is the scene: at an off-site I was facilitating last week someone on the team was angry with a colleague. How did we all know Ted was angry?
He smiled. He answered questions in a smooth, quiet voice. He looked engaged……almost.
Yet, whenever his colleague, Dan spoke, Ted would shift from side to side. He would stop smiling and look as if he was sucking on a lemon. His would squint, as if tracking an impending storm in the far away clouds.
Soon everyone in the room had taken on a similar look; twelve people sucking on invisible lemons and waiting for the storm to start.
I waited until the first break and took Ted aside. What was happening? He was “surprised”, actually, surprised and relieved that I had noticed. “Well” he hesitated for a long, long moment. “Well, Sylvia Dan is a liar.” He waited to see how that statement went down.
I responded with a “request sentence” I teach participants in our Total Leadership Connectionsprogram. “Tell me more” I stated and then shut up.
The essence of the issue between Ted and Dan could derail the entire group if it is left blowing in the wind. It can cause havoc because they are two strong and competent leaders who would intentionally or unintentionally cause the rest of the group to choose sides.
Have you ever been on a team where members are smiling, talking properly and yet the dissention is there; and everyone knows it? I bring this up because it is a vital part of team dynamics and all team building programs should require a section about workplace conflict resolution. Unless conflict is faced and resolved it become like a systemic disease that impacts everyone.
I’d like to have you send me your “war stories” and how they were (or were not) handled elegantly. The first three will receive a copy of my book “Don’t Bring It to Work” and will be the basis of a series of blogs I am doing to help diminish conflict in the workplace.
There is a fascinating debate in most companies about transparency. How open should you be? It sounds so good, doesn’t it? And yet…..
How much openness is enough? Open to what, to whom? When do you close the valve of self disclosure? What are the ramifications of bringing up the curtain on your inner life?
The discussion, part of a Total Leadership Connections session, went late into the night. Here is how it started:
We had finished the powerful second session of the four part program, the time when everyone has the opportunity to answer the pivotal question “What formed you? What are the patterns that were handed from generation to generation that you have carried into your life, both at home and a work?
No one is required to reveal anything. It is an individual decision what to say or not say. Yet this is one of the few times that a program is set for business people to look at the patterns they learned in their original organization, the family and how those patterns were transferred to their present work organization. The level of “aha’s” is astounding.
Okay, so the formal presentations were over and it was time to unwind and chat. One thing, as they say, led to another, and one of the participants turned to a colleague and said “Remember when I mentioned that my brother has been an outcast in our family? Until you talked about your sister who was the black sheep and how you decided to find her and bring her back into the fold I never thought about doing anything to help. I have been embarrassed and really never talk about her. It’s private and painful.”
They continued until a plan was formed to call the same private detective and begin a search. The intention was set; the plan would wait till the morning. Neither man had ever realized that the pain of a discounted family member had landed right in their work settings. They talked about how each had become a denier; when there were deep conflicts at work, the principle way it was handled was to get rid of the “problem” and make sure that everyone stayed happy and job focused. No one ever talked about the emotional undertow of someone who was fired or downsized. It was business as usual, as if the person who left had never existed; just like in their families.
The next day they sat together and called the detective. A search would begin for the missing brother.
Life, as we know, is always more intriguing that fiction. At a lunch break when folks were checking computers and phones, the lost brother surfaced. No need for detectives. It was as if the intention to reconnect was enough. These kinds of synchronises happen when we are ready and willing for change to happen. They make differences for us in all aspects of our lives, at home and at work.
The key to leadership is not about being open or closed, as much as it is about the where, when and how. I suggest that it is all in the timing.
Leaders need a safe place to explore what pushes their buttons and what to do about it. They need to connect the dots of how home and work lives connect. They need to factor in the emotional with the rational.
The best advice I can give is to find a safe program to get under the obvious of leadership and peel the layers away. You never know who or what you can find and have a happy ending.
Where do you think you waste the most amount of time at work? Is it spending time gnawing on your hurt feelings about upsets with co-workers? Is it rewriting reports that have been done poorly by direct reports? Is it intervening in workplace conflict that is dragging your team down? Maybe it is in the time wasted in overly long, boring, or unnecessary meetings.
There is mental waste, emotional waste, and physical waste that can be eliminated at work that once cleaned out creates a more efficient, economical, and time saving culture.
Take meetings for example. They have been called the “black hole” of the workplace. Most people when asked, say they dread the length of time spent in meetings that are often seen as unnecessary and insignificant.
So many meetings are of the “just because” variety; just because it’s Monday, or just because we are senior leadership, or just because we are on the committee.
Take the time to evaluate routine, regularly scheduled meetings. The question to answer is “What is the key purpose?”
Once you decide the meeting has value follow the following rules and you will have waste management under control.
1. Meetings are living theater. Have a title and an outline of important issues.
2. Start and end on time. The curtain goes up, the play is the thing, and the curtain goes down. Run your meetings to stay within the structure of theater and you won’t go wrong.
3. Have a main theme: No more than two subplots or you will lose the audience.
4. Facilitator is the director. Keep the meeting lively and make sure all the “actors” know what is expected of them. Pre-rehearse with the main characters so they are prepared with reports and power points if necessary.
5. Present with panache. Pictures are truly worth a thousand words. The brain will remember one picture sprinkled with emotional words longer and better than a long dissertation with vast numbers of numbers.
6. Careful with handouts. Less is more in this overly stimulating world. Give a single page with key phrases rather than an entire presentation to follow.
7. Ask questions. Give participants space to think in new ways and have time for Q&A. The key to successful meetings is engagement and involvement.
Meetings that are structured like theater are remembered and successful. The first few you do may be like off, off Broadway. However, as you become more comfortable with plot, subplot and the emotional aspect of drawing people into the importance of what you are doing for your team and your company you will get more and more buy-in. Who knows, Broadway is always looking for great stories, maybe one of your meetings can become a major winner. So, start thinking, which star would you like to play you in the theater production?
One of our Total Leadership Connections groups did an inventive skit about what they had learned in the four session program. They took turns, one hand on “Don’t Bring It to Work”, other over their heart, swearing not to bring their most disconcerting behavior patterns to work.
One had to own the victim pattern; he was always the one who felt that no matter what happened, it was his fault. Another was a procrastinator, mostly late with his projects, and another was the martyr who felt she did everyone else’s work and was always exhausted.
The skit was filled with whimsy and great insights into what had been learned, about the benefits of self awareness, and accountability of behavior. This group of individuals has excellent careers ahead of them. They have done the hard work of peeling back the layers of ingrained behaviors that travel with us from childhood, and if not looked at and transformed, go with us to the grave.
In most companies there are no processes in place to look at the office politics that cause so much distress and strife, the workplace conflicts that boil and bubble from day to day, so much wasted time and lost productivity when there is a need to play “CYA” day in and day out.
What are the signs of distress that can be warnings that patterns are getting bigger and bigger and are in the way of productive work getting done? Here is what to look for:
1. Behavior repetition: coming in late day after day for example
2. Language repetition: telling same story of upset day after day
3. “Tattle-telling” about co-workers behavior
4. Offering “secrets” to you and only you
5. Continuous miscommunication; “I never said that”
Please remember, employees bring who they were until now into the workplace. They come to work with all the baggage of their previous work relationships and the issues from their original organization, the family.
The more we can become aware of our patterns the more we can tame and transform them. The more we stay the same, repeating what we learned as children for our own survival needs the more we create atmospheres of mistrust and lack of productivity.
Give your employees; give yourself the gift of growth. Learn the way OUT to observe your patterns and begin the change process. Understand where the patterns began and change is long lasting and deep. Transform the patterns and become a leader who inspires others to also take the risk of growth.
When I ask participants in my seminars how many of them are comfortable with conflict my hand is usually the only one in the air. When I ask how many are comfortable with change about 25 per cent of the hands go up in the room.
So, therefore, from this vast scientific experiment I deduce that workplace conflict is dreaded and workplace change is a little bit easier to accept.
I then took the challenge to peel away the layers of why conflict and change are so difficult for most of us. What seems to be at the core of the resistance is the fear of not having any control.
Think about it for a minute; as a kid you were told what was going to happen. You were told you were moving to a new house, or a new city, or a new school. Your family did not wait until they got your “buy in“, you were just packed along with the furniture and off you all went.
At work when change occurs there are 3 major issues to consider:
Change is emotional: you can offer the best rational reasons for change to take place yet, unless you help people grapple with the emotional underbelly of what is going on you miss the key points, the ones that need to be talked about but rarely are
Everyone needs to contribute: this is critical to the success of the change process. Otherwise it is too much like the kid being told and it breeds resentment and restrictions
Change takes time: projects need tending and require time and conversations. This is where everyone can become comfortable with the action plan and do their specific part, it creates the glue of cooperation when everyone works together and keeps the vision of the new alive.
The best way to handle the conflict that erupts when change is happening is to keep lots of visuals around the office. One slogan that works is “From Now to New” and let staff find the icons that speak to where the change is meant to take everyone.
I have found that pictures do take the place of 1000 words and one icon that kept a food and beverage company moving forward was of Santa on a surfboard, beard and belly flying. It signified that the team would get a great extra vacation period when the tough work, like Santa’s, would be over. This playful image was on walls and in emails and helped to bond the teams together.
All workplace relationships include personal stories that are often buried under the stresses and strains of getting the job done. We then never get to know each other past a quick “hello” and “see you tomorrow”. When a situation occurs that is life changing it not only changes the individual or individuals involved, it can also change the entire organizational culture. Jay Steinfeld shows us the power that rests with individuals who are willing to become self aware, explore the connection between personal and professional life, and make changes that are deep and profound. The courage to change, a core of all leadership development, is written in his words and actions.
How Empowering My Staff Powers My Business
by Jay Steinfeld, as told to Jennifer Alsever
After running two Houston window blind stores for more than a decade, Jay Steinfeld and his wife and business partner moved most of the business to the Web in 1996, founding Blinds.com, now a $50 million business and the No. 1 seller of blinds online. Yet after his wife’s death in 2002, Steinfeld underwent a personal transformation that changed how he did business.
Blinds.com CEO Jay Steinfeld
Ten years ago, I wasn’t as nice of a guy as I am now. I seldom complimented anyone. I wanted everything done my particular way, and I reamed out people when they failed, even if they did 90 percent of the job right. Then my wife Naomi died in 2002. We were married for 26 years. She was my best friend and my partner in business. Naomi’s death devastated me, but it also woke me up. At that point, both my parents had died, I had three kids to raise and I had a business to run. I realized I could not do everything alone.
A new mindset, just in time
I got counseling and poured myself into books on business and psychology. My favorites: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankel. I realized my 70 employees weren’t my servants. I worked for them. They needed to be encouraged to take risks and empowered to do their jobs.
I sought out smart, top-level people for chief operating officer, chief marketing officer and chief technology officer so I could rely on them to develop their own departments. By giving them more leeway, I had more time to think about the future of the company, and we were all free to be more creative and come up with more ideas. I wanted them to seek continual improvement and experiment without fear of failure. I owe my company’s survival to that shift.
Boosting sales through brainstorming
Our company’s sales hit $50 million this year and profit went up 17 percent. But for the past two years, the market for window blinds has been in a tailspin. Dismal new home sales means dismal blinds sales. Two large regional blinds manufacturers recently filed for bankruptcy, numerous retailers closed their doors, and the industry’s sales are again down 25 percent this year. To grow, let alone survive, we knew we had to do something. But I didn’t take it on alone like I might have a decade ago. It had to be all of us innovating and trying new ideas.
Some of the risks we took were complete flops. One crazy idea that failed miserably was advertising on dry cleaning hangers. We tested three different messages, and each was worse than the other. We tried revamping the category pages on our website, spent a lot of time asking customers what they wanted, did internal focus groups, and went live showing the new page to half of our visitors, and the existing page to the other half. We saw zero change in sales.
Solving customer problems pays off
One of easiest ways to rev up innovation was simply thinking about our customer’s problems. What might prevent someone from buying blinds online? We figured out that customers get overwhelmed by the thought of measuring and installing blinds themselves, so we made about 65 two-minute videos that explicitly show how to measure and install blinds. My daughter, Esther, our PR manager, regularly searches Twitter for tweets about installing blinds. She responds with links to our videos. So far, the web pages on our site with videos bring in about 15 percent more revenue than the ones that do not.
We also spent $150,000 and six months building a widget that helps buyers who don’t know what they want. They answer questions such as if they have kids or pets and what’s more important to them, price or blocking out light. That tool gave us another 15 percent lift to our sales.
Finding partners for profit
Letting my chief marketing officer, Daniel Cotlar, and his team run with ideas has been huge. By doing cross promotions with Flowers.com, Cooking.com and OmahaSteaks.com, they helped boost our gross margins per customer visit by 25 percent over the past two years. Someone who buys a certain amount of blinds get discounts from other companies, and vice versa. This turned out to be a really low-cost way of marketing.
My senior leadership team also drove the boat on an idea to partner with big-box retailers — an idea that for years was pretty scary. We worried that if we partnered with big-box stores, offering them technology so their online customers could buy blinds, we would create big new competitors. But whether we helped big-box stores or not, they would eventually get into the blinds business, and the bad economy was a good time to do it. We wound up striking deals with Office Depot, Linens & Things, Window World, Rugs Direct, and Overstock.com. We do all the selling, fulfillment, customer service, technology — everything. It’s been a pretty good deal for us: It’s looking like it might increase sales by 10 percent this year.
Testing, testing, testing
I could not have done this alone. Free-flowing ideas are key. Risk taking is key. It’s all about testing and retesting ideas in small ways and then continually improving them. We set 90-day goals and check in with each other every 30 days. Today, we get more done in 90 days than we did in all of last year. It’s a complete culture shift – one of clear and focused execution. I know it because when I come to work every day, our employees are energized. And we still have jobs. In fact, we’re hiring.
Sylvia’s Response:
Thanks Jay for sharing so openly. Your desire to search for meaning is powerful. The fact that it changed the way you do business is a great example of my hypothesis that we can change the world of work as we become more self aware.
In “Don’t Bring It to Work” there is a list of the 13 most common difficult behavior patterns in the workplace as well their complimentary positive opposites.
As I read about you I saw how the “persecutor” aka bully boss can morph into a visionary. Instead of pointing a finger at people that same finger can be pointed upward toward a vision of better ways to work together. That is exactly what you did. Also the super achiever in you turned into a creative collaborator. And the fruits of your personal search are being felt throughout your company.
I would classify you as an “elegant leader” and just want to acknowledge how out of the ashes of your personal tragedy there is a whole company that has benefitted.
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I was doing some research about the environment. My mind went to Henry David Thoreau and how he was a “gadfly” to keep people connected to nature. He was a searcher for the truth and knew that our inner nature is connected with outer nature.
I waited until the first break and took Ted aside. What was happening? He was “surprised”, actually, surprised and relieved that I had noticed. “Well” he hesitated for a long, long moment. “Well, Sylvia Dan is a liar.” He waited to see how that statement went down.
How much openness is enough? Open to what, to whom? When do you close the valve of self disclosure? What are the ramifications of bringing up the curtain on your inner life?
I have found that pictures do take the place of 1000 words and one icon that kept a food and beverage company moving forward was of Santa on a surfboard, beard and belly flying. It signified that the team would get a great extra vacation period when the tough work, like Santa’s, would be over. This playful image was on walls and in emails and helped to bond the teams together.
