Tag Archives: communication

Once Upon a Classic

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There is a fabulous fantasy series called “Once Upon A Time” that I admit I watch/tape.  I enjoy it because it takes the fairy tales that we all know and love — and re-arranges them a little.  It puts a different spin on the “same ole, same ole”.  It’s very innovative.  If you haven’t bumped into it — check your local tv listings for it.

So — what does this have to do with today’s discussion?  EVERYTHING!

Have you heard of the Butterfly Effect?  (if not — watch below video).  What can you do differently today — to put a little bit of a spin on things?  I’m not suggesting anything too dramatic.  But, what do you think would happen if you were to :

  1. Instead of always asking your kids “How was your day?  What happened today?”  — You asked them “What do you want to happen differently tomorrow? What are your plans for tomorrow?”
  2. Instead of always asking your co-worker “How is it going?” — you told them how much you appreciated their help in XYZ?
  3. Instead of always accepting a task that you don’t have time for — you were deliberate about your time and always honest about your current task list?  What if you periodically recommended someone else for a task that doesn’t fit your current goals?
  4. Instead of always secretly complaining about how a meeting is run — you were to step-up and facilitated one of those meetings?
  5. Instead of coming home always exhausted – you took the time to walk around your block before entering the house?  A brisk walk allows you to clear your head, get oxygen into your body and usually uplifts your spirit.  You will be greeting your family in a much better and energized mood.

What if you altered your habits just slightly?  What do you think would happen?
Watch this video on the Butterfly Effect — and let me what steps you are ready to take right now.

How To Say No/Tactfully Leave Volunteer Positions

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I recently received the question ” How do I say ‘no’ to volunteer positions I don’t have time for or don’t want?”
How does one tactfully leave a volunteer position that has become overwhelming, stressful, or is requiring too much time? How do I take better charge of my time in the new year?  Read on www.lauraleerose.com/blog
Although this is a common situation —this really isn’t as difficult as we often make it, if you truly understand and accept your value AND acknowledge all the opportunities there are to help.
CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE:
1) You are in the driver’s seat in a volunteer position.
2) Legitimate volunteer organizations appreciate your un-paid time, energy and talent. They don’t really want to do anything that would burn your bridges with them. The ‘tact’ responsibility is therefore, on their side; not yours.
3) Any time, energy, attention you can provide is appreciated with nonjudgmental hearts, at any legitimate volunteer organization. Volunteer organizations do not expect these volunteers to be long-term. It’s not how they work.
4) Volunteer organizations expect short-term stays and large turn-overs. Retention rates are 0. They are equipped to handle this. It’s not a big deal to them. This is in their wheel-house. So – don’t make it a big deal. Don’t make it personal.
4) If it has become too time consuming and overwhelming — this is on you. Therefore, consider reducing your hours or limiting your task responsibilities. Volunteer organizations are appreciative of any level of assistance. They are not the ones telling you that you need to put in these hours or do these tasks.
5) If you can not assist at all at this time, don’t apologize for taking care of yourself. You can not help others if you aren’t taking care of yourself. Things change. Lifestyles and events ebb and wane. Volunteer organizations understand this and they do not take it personally.
6) The volunteer organization has the entire community as a resource; you have yourself. They have better opportunities to fill their positions than you have in accomplishing your personal goals. Therefore, offer to keep an eye out for other people that might like to volunteer for them. Continue to refer others. Although the work needs to be done, it doesn’t have to be done by you. Helping them to find a replacement will be of value to them (although I would not agree to stay in that position until they find a replacement. Doing this gives them no incentive to find a replacement).
7) Realize that if the work you are doing is truly a MUST DO for their organization — they will find someone else to accomplish that task. If they don’t have someone to replace you — that means it wasn’t a MUST DO in the first place.
Sometimes (but not all of the time) it’s not the volunteering that you don’t have time for — it’s the way you are going about it. The way you can make a difference is unlimited.
Volunteer differently:
1) You can reduce or limit your time or tasks — so that it does fit your current lifestyle.
2) You can ask them to contact you in 6 months (or whenever you feel you will be able to donate again). Or contact you when they have a special occasion that needs some extra hands.
3) Consider re-aligning your tasks to support your own career and professional goals. If you are a software developer, then instead of agreeing to clean out the cat-litter at your local ASPCA — offer to work on their website. If you are in marketing and sales — offer to handle their promotions and marketing projects. Integrate your volunteering directly into your professional business development plans.
4) Refer both business opportunities (money making opportunities) and other volunteers to this organization.
5) Use your social media contacts (i.e. facebook walls or linkdin contacts) and blogs to tell people about your experience at this volunteer organization. Ask this organization is there are specific highlights or emphasis that they would like you to publicize.
6) Donate a portion of your Visa or Mastercard Reward Points to this organization to show your appreciation. Since Reward Points really don’t cost you anything — suggest that they create a Reward Point Donation center…such that others can easily donate a portion of their reward points.
7)Offer to keep an eye out for other people that might like to volunteer for them. Continue to refer others.
If you relax into the knowledge that volunteering isn’t an off-on switch or yes/no opportunity, you will be more at ease with handling these types of changing situations. Stress often comes from limited thinking. For example: “If I help, I have to help this way. I want to help — but I can’t do it this way.” This causes an internal dilemma and therefore stress. Volunteer organizations are open to all sorts of collaborations. I recommend that you be open as well.

Designing an Above Average Performance Rating

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Designing an Above Average Performance Rating

Professional development series

This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.

In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered some tips to taking more control of our own performance evaluation process (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail.   Or better yet; attend the workshop at https://www.lauraleerose.com/take-command-of-your-performance-reviews/

Last few interviews and articles; we introduced the Personal Business Commitment tool as a great way to communicate your goals and commitments to your manager.  We also discussed the importance of frequent meetings with your manager on the topic.  This is great for getting a “Meet Expectation” or average performance rating.  What if I wanted to get an Above Expectations, Above Average or even and Exceptional performance rating?  How would I go about that?

How do I go about designing an Above Average rating?

Well – the first step is having a frank discussion with your manager on what he/she sees as “Above Expectations”.

For example:  A developer’s primary role and responsibility is perhaps to design, code, test, and deliver high quality products and services.  Being an exceptional development is exactly what your manager expects of you.  Therefore, being an exceptional developer (even though you feel that it warrants you an Exceptional rating) is a “meet expectation” to your manager.  There is nothing wrong here – except there is a mismatch of understanding.

Above Expectations or Above Average often refers to activities outside your regular development duties (while still accomplishing your regular duties with high quality).  If you were to get published in a technical journal, present at a technical conference, bring back sales leads (contact names, numbers, email address from people that attended your presentation or workshop), visited client sites to provide on-site Q&A, job-shared with a Technical Support person so that you gained additional customer insight into your product, manned a Tradeshow booth as the technical support partner to the sales force, or conduct an executive business strategy proposal based on your innovation – those things would fall outside normal expectations for a developer.  If you were to accomplish those things in addition to your high quality development responsibilities, that would better warrant an Above Expectation rating.

Gosh!  If that’s an Exceeds Expectations or Above Average, what the heck is Exceptional and Excels Expectations?  This rating seems impossible.

Once again, it means sitting down with your manager to discuss what they see as Exceptional. More often it is tied to the business results of your “extra activities”.   For instance, if your client visit (which is outside of the normal duties of a developer) caused the client to purchase $50,000.00 more product or services – that would be exceptional.  If you conference presentation and subsequent collection of contact names/emails, lead to a huge sale – that would be exceptional. If your presentation to the executives an on innovative business strategy was accepted, executed and successful – that would be exceptional.  If the business result of your activities propelled the business forward faster to the business goals – that would be exceptional.

Conclusions:

The key is to have this discussion with your manager to understand what your manager feels is Above Expectations. If you have no clue on your manager’s scaling process, you are less likely to hit the target.

If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/

The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1)      Time management
2)      Career maintenance
3)      Business networking
4)      Work life balance strategies

If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info

 

Detaching from results opens doors to new possibilities.

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Detaching from results opens doors to new possibilities.

This week I have been reviewing some of the events that lead me to some of my largest successes.  Almost all of them stemmed from unexpected and unforeseen resources.

Some examples:

  •   Last several years I had been invited to speak at the DevLink Technical Conferences in Tennessee.   Last year SSWUG.org was attracted to my DevLink seminars and invited me to Tuscon, AZ to tape 4 seminars for their SSWUG.org online webinar series.  This led me to a wonderful working relationship with Stephen WynKoop (founder of Bits on the Wire and SSWUG.org).  We now have a weekly interview program and online coaching series on professional development.
  •  A few years ago, I presented at a local company health fair.  There I met Theresa Corcoran (who was manning another booth at the fair.  Today we are business partners at 360 Degree Inspired Success  (www.360degreeInspiredSuccess.com)

 

In both cases, I had no reason to expect these results.

 

1)      Although DevLink is an exceptional conference, I had no reason to believe that another company would be interested in video and incorporating the 4 presentations into their main-stream learning cycle.

2)      After I connected with SSWUG, the DevLink invitation stopped coming.  This was very interesting to me because it led me to believe that my DevLink interaction has completed its mission.  The sole reason for DevLink to cross my path this way was to allow me to hook up with SSWUG and to better sales opportunities.

3)      The local company health fair only had 20 employees.  On the surface, one may have thought it wasn’t worth my time or energy.  But I met my future business partner — which is leading me to better recurring revenue stream in areas that are in my genius.

Bottom Line:

Don’t attach to a specific result.  Chances are that the results of our actions are not always predictable or immediate.

Take a deep breath and relax….everything is unfolding perfectly.

Give Reasonable Directions

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Follow up instructions with reason.

Professional development series

This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.

I experienced two very different situations that highlighted the need for explaining the reason for your instructions.

1)     A friend received instructions from her doctor to take the next few days off and away from work.  My friend agreed to take several days off – then proceeded to continue to read work emails and call into conference calls.

2)     A family member wanted to increase their protein intake and purchased some Whey powder to mix in with their coffee.  Since the canister’s instructions mentioned that 9 scoops will cover their daily protein requirements, she returned the product because she would not be using 9 scoops in her coffee.

As you can see from the above (very different) examples, different people interpret instructions differently.

But what if the instructions came with the following explanation or reasons?

What if the doctor said: “The reason I recommend taking several days off and away from work is to allow both your mind and body a break from work-related issues”?.  I want you to unplug completely for several days to recharge and get well.  This means no emails, no meetings, no nothing.  Hand off any immediate tasks to your manager and then completely unplug.”

What if my family member understood that the protein supplement is just that, a tool or supplement to add more protein to your current dietary program?  You wouldn’t necessarily need to use 9 scoops, if your current meal plan already included protein.  It is only meant as a tool to assist you in absorbing the right amount of daily required protein in a balanced plan.

If my friend and family member had understood the purpose behind the instructions, their response would have been more in lined with the intent of the instructions.  But by providing just the instructions, we have allowed room for error.

So – how can we, as team leaders and employers, avoid these pitfalls?  The first step is to avoid one-way instructions or directions.  Although email may be a convenient “instruction” media, it does not assure that the directions were interpreted correctly (or the way you had intended).

Here are some steps to assure that you will get what you want.

Understand the intent or goal of your instructions:

If you cannot articulate the reason for your request, it’s impossible for your employee or teammate to ‘hit it out of the park’ for you.

Verify that every step of your instructions support and are aligned with your goal.

Everything changes.  What worked last month may not be relevant today.  Verify that your current process is still aligned with your intentions.

For example: Requiring your salaried employees to submit time cards to verify that they are working the proper number of hours.

 This procedure may not be accomplishing your true goal.  Your goal is probably to make sure your salaried employees are performing and accomplishing the work they are committed to accomplish.  You may want to consider weekly one-on-one meetings to verify status on projects and tasks (versus keeping track of the hours they are logging).

Convey both the directions/instructions and reason to your staff/team.

To properly convey the instructions and reason, you need to also include active and empathic LISTENING skills.  Merely stating the instructions and reasons, only, do not assure that the message was received properly.  You need to also ask Open-ended questions to verify the message was received correctly.  This means sending an email-instruction is not sufficient.  You need an interactive face-to-face or phone meeting.  Some things to validate on that interactive meeting:

  1. Convey your instructions and reason
  2. Ask audience members to paraphrase your instructions and reason
  3. Ask audience members to share what these instructions mean to their current roles and responsibilities
  4. Ask audience members how these instructions will change the way they do their jobs (both positive and negatively)
  5. If any negative changes results, discuss/brainstorm on alternatives to accomplish your goal without negative impact to the team.

Conclusions:

Although these above steps take a little more time upfront (versus merely providing an email directive), it will avoid misinterpretations and some email-churn of Q&A after the project has started.     Being impatient or too concise with your direction may cost you in the long run (because your instructions can be misinterpreted and your project derailed). Allowing your team to play a co-creative role in this solution will lead to a more collaborative working relationship.

If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/

The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1)      Time management
2)      Career maintenance
3)      Business networking
4)      Work life balance strategies

If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info

Design your next performance review workshop

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Greetings from Laura

I just completed a great lesson plan on “Designing your next performance review.” for my online coaching series.  I’m really excited about the materials, techniques and alternative references that I have been including in this subscription based lessons-learned series.
But this particular episode holds a particular soft-spot in my heart.   Most of my professional friends are disappointed at one time or another about a recent performance appraisals.   This particular lesson outlines several easy steps to assure an exceptional review.

If you would like this on-line class material (at no cost and one-time limited offer), please fill in this order form.  No credit or payment information is required.

My hope is that you will find the material very valuable and decide to subscribe to this continuous on-line coaching series.

Even if you decide not to enroll in the series, please use this particular lesson to your best advantage.

Warmly,
Laura Lee Rose

Design your own performance review

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In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, we cover real-life professional dilemmas such as the below.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please signup for the continuing online coaching series.

Do these feelings sound familiar?
  • Made it through my yearly eval with only one ‘below expectations’ – the overall eval was ‘average’.
  • I was prepared for the absolute worst.
  • Someone who had their eval earlier that day handed in their resignation immediately after getting their eval
Is this the way you really want to approach your performance review?  Take the time NOW to visualize what you really want your performance review to report.  Then set upon a plan of action to achieve those SMART goals.  You will be much more successful if you use the work-year to actually create your perfect performance review, versus just letting it happen without your design input.
Other things to incorporate:
  • YOU initiate quarterly reviews of your performance (if going well — more frequent if you are not on target)
  • YOU articulate your performance goals to your manager
  • YOU keep track of your achievements throughout the year that illustrate your accomplishments of these goals
  • YOU ask your manager on what projects and opportunities he/she  commends for you to accomplish your performance review goals.
Most people act as if  their career goals and accomplishments are their manager’s responsibility.  This is actually a false premise.  If you are interested in more tips on how to take more control of your professional development and career, please check out my on-line coaching academy series.We talk more about how to incorporate this philosophy into the real-world professional environment in my on-line coaching academy series.  <check out our GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional>

How many mistakes do you want to make today?

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How many mistakes do you want to make today? – Find out the secret to making zero mistakes this week, month and year.  Read on….

In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, we cover real-life professional dilemmas such as the below.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please signup for the continuing online coaching series.


On Tuesday afternoon, I opened an email regarding a radio broadcast of some interest to me.  Unfortunately, the radio show was set for Tuesday (today) at 11:00am.  My initial thought was: “Darn I wonder when this originally was sent.  It looked rather interesting.  It was about smart women – and I’d like to think of myself as a smart person who happens to be a woman.”

I checked the timestamp of the email, and it was originally sent Tuesday (today) at 9:00am. Having a project manager background, my next thought was: “Darn.  That was poor planning.  These smart people weren’t really setting themselves up for success on this particular event.  Oh well….maybe they will have a replay available that I can take advantage of later.”

Wednesday, I received another email stating that the broadcast would be rescheduled.   When I opened the email the note said that it was going to be rescheduled for late Sept/Oct.  There was no other news on the topic.

  This led me to wonder:

  1. Since this message was send 24 hours after the event was supposed to take place, were people left hanging?  Or did they just broadcast another program instead?
  2. Was this rescheduled because of lack of attendance?  No one called in because of the late notice?
  3. Did the guest speaker get confused? Was he being taped today – but the actual broadcast would be later?
  4. Was this rescheduled because of technical difficulties?
  5. Was this rescheduled because the guest did not show up?
  6. Was there a mix-up on the studio reservation?
  7. Will I even want to tune in late Sept/Oct?  I can’t really set aside a date/time in my calendar.

Then my mind continued with other possibilities and conspiracies.

Things certainly pop-up and take us off-course.  Since we know this up-front, how should we  professionally approach them?  Is there a creative way to turn these events into our favor?  How can we use these mishaps to actually strength our resolve and integrity of purpose?

In this small example, should we:

  1. Be a little more transparent on what happened?  Telling our audience (or email contacts) some of the details – avoids them imagining their own answers. It also shows our integrity in taking responsibility for fixing the issue.
  2. Actually provide the rescheduled date/time?  This allows people to make note and mark it in their calendar for the future tune-in.
  3. If the future date is unknown, publish the date that the air-date will be known?  Then assure your viewers that you will update them at that time with more information.
  4. Publish this new date/time in your upcoming newsletters and scheduled promotions (now)?
  5. Provide everyone a link to the  sample taped/mp3 version?  This could be a quick summary of what was going to be said on the program, which might help keep people’s interest ignited.  We could also provide an registration page that allows us to notify these particular people of additional news and offers associated with this broadcast.

Conclusion:
Do you know why SNAFU’s and missteps happen all the time? It’s because they are not actually missteps.  Things naturally just happen.  It was our unrealistic expectations that deems the event as a mishap (not the event itself). Once again, the event is merely the event.  It is our expectations that defined it a mishap or mistake.   Therefore, it’s not the ‘mistakes’ that slow us down, but how we interpret and respond to the ‘happened events’.

Homework assignment: Think of some recent mishaps at the office.  What follow-up steps can you do ‘right now’ to turn that into an advantage?

99.98% of all mistakes are actually imagined.  What’s to say that your mistake isn’t one of those imagined?  What’s to say that this event isn’t actually an opportunity for bigger and better?

We talk more about how to incorporate this philosophy into the real-world professional environment in my on-line coaching academy series.  <check out our GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional>

Feel free to share this newsletter with your family, friends and colleagues. My business relies on satisfied clients as the primary source of new business, and your referrals are both welcome and most sincerely appreciated!

Why do we interrupt each other?

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 Would you like to know the following 2 secrets?
  • Why do people interrupt (or, rather, why do people who chronically interrupt do it)?
  • 3 Tips you can use to stop a constant interrupter at the office
Quick overview on ‘why’:

On the average, we speak at the rate of 125-150 words per minute. We can comprehend and listen at the rate of 600 words per minute. This means that our minds are underutilized by a factor of 4-5 when listening to others. Therefore, it’s a struggle to keep our minds on topic. Often times, we hear one or two phrases of the conversation and we jump ahead to a solution or experience that happened to us. We’re quick to share our experience and expertise before we realize that this wasn’t really the focus of conversation. Because of our boredom, we inadvertently created a tangent and separate conversation (either in our heads or out loud).

Our society also supports and encourages this lifestyle.
Not only does our minds working at a faster rate, other things are happening so fast these days. With the internet, cell phones, texting, beepers, and instant messaging – information is constantly streaming at us, for us and by us. Even our interruptions are interrupted. For instance you may be working on a task and then you get interrupted by an instance message or “online chat” by someone (or via phone call). While responding to that initial interruption, someone else enters your office. It’s situation normal. We even have a name for it: “multitasking”.

Tips:
The way you conduct yourself can greatly diminish the amount of interruptions you encounter.
1) Spell out your intentions up front.
Example: “Hey, John (the boss). Thanks for agreeing to meet me on this topic. I’m having this problem and I value your opinion on this. There are a lot of different pieces to this explanation; so please bear with me. I want to tell you the entire story. Then I want us to wrap around and get your thoughts on specific details.”
Example: “I really want to keep this meeting on schedule, so I need this meeting to be brief and to the point. The purpose of this meeting is XXX. I ask everyone’s help to keep us on target. I ask everyone for their patience and avoid interrupting each other –with one exception. I ask everyone’s permission to interrupt if I see the meeting go off topic.”
2) Value your time and others will as well.
Make use of your “Do Not Disturb” sign on your cube, phone, chat and instant message for blocks of time when you do not want to be interrupted. OR make use of “open office hours” publishing blocks of time when people can interrupt you.

Example: “Hey, Joe (co-worker). I’m in the middle of a task here. I’ll be done with this at 3:00. Let’s meet in the break room at that time to discuss your idea (or schedule a real meeting to fully discuss it).

Example: “Hey, Joe (boss). That’s a good point. I want to give that issue the proper time and focus. Because I am focused on this right project now, I can’t give it the attention that your topic deserves. Priority wise, do you want me to delay delivery on this and switch to that? Okay — I’ll be done on this by Thursday noon. Let’s schedule a longer discussion for Thursday at 2:00pm.

3) If there is a particular person that is a frequent offender (or perhaps its you), give them an additional role in the meeting. For example:

  • Ask them to be the note-taker.
  • Ask them to keep the Parking Lot list (list of important topics that were discovered but not really on the agenda).
  • Ask them to be the time-keeper

Because interruptions have become so natural, we may not even notice that we’re doing it.
Read the short article: “Interrupting is a 2-way street”

Interested in an online coaching series?  <check out our GoTo Academy: Tools for the GoTo Guy and Gal>

Don’t miss a tip for career and time management:  <Subscribe to the Rose Coaching newsletter here>

Your mission, if you choose to accept it….

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In my GoTo Academy: Tools for the GoTo Guy and Gal class exercises, I ask my students to do the following:

  • First week, I ask my students to list three heroes (dead or alive) that they would like to meet (and why).
  • Every week thereafter,  I give my students a problem or scenario to solve or improve.
  • I then ask them to pretend to be one of their previously listed heroes.  They are to redo the previous exercise with their new mindset.

They are often surprised how their answers differed — even though their knowledge set, their environment, and their resources did not change.  They only thing they changed was their mindset or perspective.

Putting on the robe or attributes of your favorite heroes makes it easier to take that leap.

Your homework, if you choose to accept it:  When faced with a challenge, pretend to be one of your most admired mentors or Brainiacs.  What would they do?  How would they react or respond?  Pretending to be someone else makes it easier to think out of our default ‘box’ and take that leap.  And since we gravitate toward heroes that exhibit more of who we really want to be — we can’t lose.

p.s.  The best part is that no one needs to know that you are doing it.

Let me know what you think.