Management Craft

And the antidote to envy is.......

To envy is human. But envy robs us of so many possibilities including:

• Achievement.
• Peace.
• Humility.
• Connection.
• Happiness.
• Our best thinking, our best work, our best life.

So how do we get past our feelings of envy? To explore this, we need to think about what's going on when we experience envy. Envy occurs when we compare ourselves to others and when we feel unsatisfied, outdone, or a lack of confidence. Comparison and regret.

What's the antidote, then? You can't make a chocolate cake without chocolate. Remove either the comparison or the regret and you will prevent envy. And here is a fool proof way to quickly transition out of feelings of envy.

Become a fan. Instead of comparing yourself to someone else, show admiration. Give congratulations. Take the initiative to show support. Don't do this for show, become a fan for real. Shift your thinking from regret to being a fan and you will zap envy in its tracks. It can happen very quickly but only if you are sincere.

Envy is a killer. Envy will get in the way of your goals and dreams. Make it go away. Poof!

#Management Team Pact - A Real Example

I was cleaning out some stuff in my office because we are moving from our apartment in Houston into a Loft and I am downsizing the amount of "stuff in boxes" I will take to the new digs. I have moved lots of boxes many times and it is silly and wasteful.

I found a 20 year old letter that a senior management team crafted and signed. This group of leaders was not modeling great teaming and this was their way to acknowledge the issue and make a commitment to be better together. Here is the letter (I have removed all names):

======================

Commitments to Each Other

As members of the ____ top management team we recognize that we are responsible for the Division's success. That means that we are responsible for each other's success and that there is no business of the Division that is not our business. As teammates, with those responsibilities, we commit to each other the following:

• We will acknowledge each other's successes and contributions
• If we ever disagree with another team member's actions or decisions we will discuss our concerns with that team member (and not others)
• If we cannot resolve issues or concerns we will raise them to the Division President for resolution
• We will learn each other's challenges, goals, and objectives
• We will represent each other's interests in our respective organizations
• We will strive, in all things, to make the Corporation successful and to achieve Division objectives, ahead of individual objectives
• We will represent team decisions as that; we will debate them within the team and support them outside the team
• We will seek each other's input

We also acknowledge that our roles as Division leaders are 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week roles. So, these commitments are always to be lived up to, in all settings and with all audiences.

The letter was them signed by all the senior team members.

=================

If you have some leadership team dysfunction, you might need to do something like this. I have found that the problem will not improve until team members hold themselves to a higher standard and they acknowledge what's going on.

This letter is not perfect - I would change a few things today if I were crafting it again - but it gives you the idea. Your letter should address the challenges you have and the opportunities you seek to explore.

If you struggle with management teaming issues, you might also check out a post I did on the topic a few years back called Dysfunction Reverberates. BTW - hint-hint, wink-wink, this post was one of 69 that made it into my new "best of" book Never-Ending New Beginnings. Have you picked up your copy yet? Thanks so much, if you have.

 

 

Elegant, Simple, Profound and Free e-book from @TNVORA

I wanted to share this free resource with you from fellow author and blogger pal Tanmay Vora over at QAspire. It is a free e-book called Graceful Leadership - you can download it here. This e-book contains 101 important ways to be that are simple and tough at the same time. Common and uncommonly practiced. Not rocket science but often our favorite qualities in those who manage us. Here are a few examples from the book:

Respect your time. Manage it well. If you are disciplined about how you use your time, people will always respect yours and their time.

As a leader, “power” and “control” are myths. “Empowerment” and “trust” are the realities.

Learn to remain silent. You don’t have to add your 2 cents in everything you hear.

You see what I mean? Good stuff. I would encourage you to download the complete collection here and share the link with others. We all can use a benevolent nudge every now and then.

Here is one I would add: If you can do only one thing today, enable someone to do his or her best work. As a leader, there is no higher priviledge than to catalyze greatness in others.

The One Lesson for Making Change Happen @ellenfweber

My blogger/author/educator pal Ellen Weber has done this extraordinary post where she has asked 50 of the top rated business bloggers provocative questions. I am honored to be among the list. Check out the whole post. Here is my response to Ellen's question and a bit more on the topic:

Ellen - you asked: "If you could only garner one lesson from life to improve business most, what would that lesson be?" And the answer is also found in your post. Not only in your words, but in the effort you have demonstrated. The one lesson I would garner is that to make something happen, we need to do something - do something -- do something new, do something different, do something better, do something for longer, do something with others, do something that helps build talent and teams and relationships. It's about showing up - really showing up. That is what changes things. The extraordinary effort you have shown with this post, all the provocative questions, and your deep interest that comes through in your words is a great demonstration of the lesson. Bravo to you!

I was listening to Bob Costas' interview of Michael Phelps after he won his last Gold Medal. One of the things that Michael said that showed great perspective is that the results he got are the ones he prepared for. That had he trained for 4 years, he might have done better on the races where he struggled. But he chose to take 2 years off and this surely impacted his outcomes. This is called ownership.

See the connection between the two thoughts? To make something happen, WE need to do something. Now. This moment. And in the next. Most of the time this something has to do with people. Management is a social act, afterall.

Always be at peace with your results. They come from what you have done and the choices you have made. Want different results? Do something different. Woulda, shoulda, coulda thinking has no place in our minds. It will cloud our judgment and affect our choices.

I will be the first to admit that this idea is not always easy to manifest. It is human to feel regret, anguish, defensiveness, and envy when things don't go as we hope. And if we can quickly get beyond these human responses and transition to another very human response - dogged determination - we will thrive and change our worlds. I think about this everyday - talking myself into a more effective action whenever possible.

Best of #Management Craft - PDF or Print Version now Available

Never-Ending New Beginnings: A Manifesto on Personal Impact

The Very Best from the Management Craft Blog 2004-2012

Download the PDF Version here - $10.00

Order the PRINT Version here - $15.00

A few days ago I told you all about my new "best of" collection available with the best 69 posts from the last eight years from this blog. I am pleased to let you know that there is now a PDF version available, too. All the info is above and below. I have heard from several folks who have started reading the collection, here are a few of their comments:

From Trish: "I am sitting here in tears and soft smiles - secret knowing head shakes in sync w your thoughts as I read your book. I am so moved. And tickled many shades of pink and various colours. :)"

From Steve: "I’ve been dipping into it over the last 2 days and have enjoyed every piece."

From Elaine: "I just read of few of the chapters. They are so inspiring; they are so YOU!"

From Jerre: "I can’t wait to read this, ... You continue to amaze, inspire and tackle the world. Sending the best of everything through ones and zeros."

I would love to hear your feedback as well! Thanks for your support and I hope you pick up a copy, analog or digital. If you have enjoyed the blog, I ask that you support this project. PLUS, I think you will love the collection. It will make you smile and give you the uumph you need to conquer your world. Really!

Download the PDF Version here - $10.00

Order the PRINT Version here - $15.00

Never-Ending New Beginnings - The Very Best From #Management Craft

Management Craft just turned eight years old this month. This means that I have been blogging for egith years - that's just crazy. Never in a million years would I have predicted that I would have kept at it this long. There is one reason why I am still doing it. It's you, my dear readers. I love the way you chime in to tell me how my writing impacts you - even when it angers you. As someone who likes to think and play with ideas, you ensure I stay current and on my toes.

In the last eight years, I have written about 1800 posts. Of those, several dozen have resonated in a big way. Many of you are newer readers and this means that you have only seen more recent posts. But some of those older posts are still relevant. I have been thinking about a way to give older posts new life and new usefullness.

I have been thinking for a few years about doing a "best of" book with only the cream of the crop pieces from this blog. I wrote a bit about the process several days ago. I am pleased to announce that the best of book is done and available.

I have self-published this book using Lulu.com. This has enabled me to keep it easy and to keep the price down. It contains 69 of the very best posts. The book is called:

Never-Ending New Beginnings: A Manifesto on Personal Impact. The Very Best from the Management Craft Blog 2004-2012. It costs $15.00 and is available here.

I hope you don't mind if I am so bold to say that I love the title and I love this collection. It is my most personal book yet (because this blog is personal) and I think my best book of all time in terms of its potential to be a game-changer - to affect people's lives.

I hope you will pick up a copy and I would encourage you to use this as a book for your managers and leaders. It contains all the best stuff about how we can do our best work leading others. I think you will really, really, like this collection.

Other reasons to do this book:  I wanted to do something to celebrate eight years of blogging. Also, I wanted to explore the essence of what I have been writing. And third, it seemed like a fun thing to do.

I am calling this a manifesto on personal impact because when I read the collection of posts all the way through, that is how it struck me. As a manifesto that has evolved over eight years.

This would be a great gift for someone who you would like to help get reconnected with his or her work. There is a lot of possibility and personal reinvention addressed in this book. If you would like to use the book for a book club, I will send a personal email to your members and call into your book club to kick it off.

Let me know what you think and thanks for your support.

Where Disproportionate Responses Come From

Managers describe team members as being high-maintenance, their teams as high-drama, and their discontented employees and high-sensitive. When I ask for particulars - specifics - I notice that they are often complaining about disproportionate responses.

What are disproportionate responses? They are reactions that don't seem to fit the response.

• Like a woman who blows up at a cashier who drops her quarter change.
• Like the MANY political ads.
• Like the team member that believes his or her manager is out to get him or her (this is rarely the case).
• Like the team that bands together to complain about a manager who is implementing new accountability systems (this really happened) and saying that she is mean and unfit to manage.

You get the idea. The question I like to explore is WHY do people respond in ways that seem disproportionate? What's going on? Each situation is unique but here are a few common catalysts:

• Control - or fear of loss of control. At the heart of control issues are confidence issues.
• A lack of love - when people feel unimportant and unloved.
• Groupthink - this is behind many of the political ads, I think. Together we spin tales into movements into today's truths. (Groupthink is a disproportionate amount of connection)
• Disconnection - I will be more likely to respond in a way that seems out of whack if I don't feel connected. Connection builds perspective and interest.
• Learned incompetence - this is too common and occurs when groups get good at circumvention, sabotage, and end up holding themselves to a very low standard of team performance.

As a manager, you can impact many of these catalysts and reduce their power and impact. Instead of playing the victim and calling out these behaviors and then stopping, dig further, ask a few questions and get things moving in the right direction. See things for what they are and resist the urge to have your own disproportionate responses (managers freak out too). In return you will enjoy more high-independence, high-adaptable, high-satisfaction team members.

It's Not Just My Mood - But My Theme, My Title Song, My Apparent Obsession - Personal Reinvention

I have been working on a project every now and then for a couple of years. An hour here, an afternoon there. It is something I have been meaning to do.

I am putting together a collection of the "best of" posts for Management Craft. This August, this wee blog will begin its 9th year. That is nearly a gazillion in internet years. And in the 8 years I have been blogging, a few predictable tones and hues keep popping up. I would not have seen this so clearly had I not taken on this project.

BTW, one reason why I have not done this sooner is that 8 years is a long time and I have done thousands of posts. I downloaded a complete backup of the blog as a Word document and it was 6,000 pages long. Really. I took one look at that and concluded it would take me another 8 years to find and sift through all my posts.

So I abandoned the project due to overwhelm.

From time to time, I thought about other ways to approach it. A friend suggested focusing on only the last 3 years since one would assume that my writing has improved and therefore the best posts are recent ones. Buoyed by this idea, I went to the 6,000 page document and whacked off the first 5 years. Much better, but still over 1,000 pages long.

So I abandoned the project due to overwhelm.

A week ago I went for a 3 mile walk around Memorial Park here in Houston. It was early in the morning but still very hot. My mind was drifting and feeling fuzzy and I think I started hallucinating part way through because this "best of" book seeped into my brain and would not leave.

Eureka! I thought of a way to find the best posts and get this thing rolling. At last I did not feel overwhelmed.

I am doing the final massaging of the collection and figuring out what it will all look like. I have picked only those posts that I think have the potential to be game changers for readers. Not all of them for all people all the time, but the posts that are catalytic in some way.

There are about 70 posts that I am including. 70 unique posts that feel like they belong together. They feel the same even though the messages run the gamut. They are kin. They are all about personal reinvention. I did not seek to pick 70 posts about personal reinvention, I picked the 70 posts that I felt were my best and it turns out that they all touch on this theme. Geared toward managers, sure, but about how we constantly hone who we are to make something happen.

Apparently I am obsessed with this idea of reinvention even though I had not recognized this. Today I got an email from a reader relating to yesterday's post that said, "Lisa, you are writing the most wonderful, pure-pursuit messages for real living these days. Thank you. My hat's off to you!!" Thanks Allan, I guess I am still singing the same tune.

BTW #2: Once I noticed the underlying theme of personal reinvention, the title for the collection popped right into my head. It will be called,

Never-Ending New Beginnings:  A Manifesto on Personal Impact

The Very Best from the Management Craft Blog 2004-2012

What do you think? It ties in with my personal logo, you can see that here. I will let you know once I have the best of collection loaded up into Lulu.com and available. I am self-publishing this one because it is a labor of celebration more than anything. Not something I want to hand over to a publisher's red editing pen.

A bit of irony: Given the size of the archive I selected the posts from, this book - arguably the easiest one to write because the posts were already written - has taken longer and more work than the books I have written from scratch.

Another bit of irony: This collection holds together better than many of my books that have been planned, plotted, outlined, and vetted from the beginning. Perhaps our spontaneous mind is the most ordered.

Because I have this blog, I can easily - well not easily - look back and see my patterns. See my themes. See the tune I sing the most. The idea that I return to and practice. My fellow blogger pal Dick Richards wrote a great book Is Your Genius at Work several years ago. In the book he helps you discover your driving force and then use it. Perhaps this process has helped clarify that for me. You might try it checking out this book, as my process takes too long! Funny, even though I have typed his name dozens of times over the years I am just now noticing that he has two of the same names - Richard Richard. I digress.

And since I am digressing, I highly - HIGHLY - recommend this TED talk from Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the mega best-seller Eat, Pray Love). In her talk, she asks and answers the question about how one should approach her work when her most successful creation is likely behind her. It is a wonderful way to look at personal creativity and how we can approach our work in ways that battle our self-imposed barriers. I have watched this talk many times and still love it. And, yes, it is about personal reinvention.

Acting Without Self-Consciousness - My Ongoing Experiment

A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of authenticity and how acting without self-consciousness was at the heart of it. Since then, I have been experimenting with the idea of self-consciousness. I have been:

• Noticing when self-consciousness occurs.
• I have been testing ways to talk myself away from feeling self-conscious.
• And I have been noticing my results.

Here is my conclusion. This is more powerful and simple than I would have imagined. Let's start with the simple part - noticing self-consciousness.

The feeling of being self-conscious comes up as we are planning to do something or just getting started. They are those little thoughts that trail into our minds and create worry, fret, or apprehension. Many of these thoughts have some merit and many do not. But even those with some logical basis might not be helpful. Here is a rather graphic example that I bet we can all relate to:

• Action: Signing up for a Pilates or Yoga class.
• Self-conscious thought: Worrying about passing gas.

Face it, when bending one's body into pretzel-like shapes, the likelihood of provoking the release of gas is higher. This worry has merit especially if you have consumed foods and drinks that cause gas.

At work, similar situations occur. Prior to a meeting, or during it, we might feel a tinge of self-consciousness before deciding whether to bring up a difficult topic. You might be judged, shot down, or get an unfavorable response from the boss. It could happen! It does happen!

And we all pass gas. So we should not do the Pilates?

No, that would be a cop out and inauthentic to our intentions.

Notice. Choose. Move forward.

When we notice these human moments we enable ourselves to make some choices. Sometimes we will hold back. If we can talk ourselves through the apprehension, new things are possible.

It is not all about talk. We can take actions to reduce the feared negative outcome. We can change our diets prior to the Pilates class. And we can prepare more fully for the meeting. We can think about how we might say something so it is heard as we intend it.

Over that last several weeks I have been noticing when I have thoughts of self-consciousness and making the choice to talk myself out of the fear and take action that moves me forward. I have done this at least a few dozen times and I am very pleased with the results. I might need to remind myself (often repeating the mantra, "without self-consciousness, without self-consciousness") a few times to stay in action, but it works. It really works.

I invite you to notice your moments of self-consciousness and get through them at least some of the time. As a manager, there are many aspects of your work that will provoke self-doubt. It is natural. But being authentic means that we are willing to act consistently with our intentions without self-consciousness.

BTW: I am not suggesting that we disable our filters. This is not a post about being irresponsible and immature (which is the definition of having no filters). Acting without self-consciousness is about removing our self-imposed barriers to manifesting our intentions.

Repeat the mantra if that helps. "Without self-consciousness, without self-consciousness.."

One more observtion. People notice us less than we think. People think about us less than we think. Most of our little worries are silly because no one is paying attention. You are not the only one at the Pilates class who worries about passing gas. And when you do - and we all will at some point - it will be no big deal. We will not have to leave the class in shame. The earth will not start spinning in a different direction. This I know for sure.

He's not trying to annoy you, that is just the way he breathes.

Think about styles and preferences a bit differently and you will enjoy working with people a whole lot more. It is so easy to get perturbed with people. It is easy to assume that people are trying to frustrate us, make things difficult for us. It is a piece of cake to render a judgment about another person's motives and intent.

The kicker is that while it is easy to respond to people in these ways, we are often wrong. And it is a cop out.

I used to let styles really get to me. And I am not perfectly cured of it. But I am better ad happier and more successful because I truly believe that how we are - not who we are, HOW we are - is something that is so comfortable that it is like how we breathe.

So instead of taking on an assumption that has a high likelihood of being wrong, repeat after me: " she's not trying to annoy me, that is just the way she breathes."

I am not suggesting that we all don't need to learn how to be better partners and I am not excusing bad behavior. My suggestion is to be more choosy about what we classify and the assumptions we have about how people act and communicate.

Most people are smart, hard-working, and well meaning - even if they are frustrating to work with at times. BTW - you are likely smart, hard-working and well meaning AND frustrating to work with at times.

It's just the way you breathe.