Leading Up to The Summit

Well, every week can feel like a bit of a mountain climb at times.  Work is busy, life is busy and all that just to enjoy the weekend.  The climbing analogy for a work week is that its a long haul uphill to look forward to the end and for me, this analogy has been especially true venturing out to climb a few local summits in the nearby Rockies.  I wrote a few weeks ago about climbing Mr. Allan with my Unicycle and how it needed great perseverance.  I generally love to always take my uni with me, but I knew this climb was not a good fit for having it since there was a fair bit of scrambling and some bouldering to do.  Neither of which fair well with a unicycle on your back.  After doing the trip though now for the first time, I’ll go again for sure, and perhaps with the uni next time just for the fun of it and some scree downhill runs.  That would be excellent to ride on the unicycle!

Anyway, I had a shortened time frame on the weekend as I had plans to get to the lake for some wake boarding in the afternoon so I planned to pack light and move quickly to summit Mt. Yamnuska west of Calgary.  It was an absolutely perfect day and luckily I made it out early to the trail before anyone else so was fortunate to solo the entire trip up without seeing a sole.  Perfect solitude!  Sometimes I wish the hectic days at work could be started out in similar solitude, to clear the mind and get focused back on life, purpose, God and nature.  I guess that is what the weekend will have to be for when you with a lot with other people.  Don’t get me wrong, I love working with others, but sometimes I just really like time to myself and the beautiful world I find myself in.

So as usual, I had some great adventures on this climb as I don’t really do anything in my life like the masses so of course I didn’t stick to the trail, I had to venture off finding new things, getting turned off course and venturing out on slopes that really are not the best places to be.  After a few hours of climbing, some detours and a bit of backtracking I made it up to the summit to enjoy the incredible views with not a cloud in the sky.  Amazing!

Photography

Definitely one of my passions in nature is to capture it and photography, especially natural landscapes I have always had a keen eye for.  I spend a lot of time taking photos on a hike and then move quickly to the next vista to capture it as well.  Some people call me Mr. panorama since I absolutely love panorama photography and take them at every chance I have.  I’ve learned a great deal about photography through my artistic and 3D graphics business/hobby.  I have always used Canon’s digital elph series of point and shoot cameras (since I must be able to easily pack them in my active sporting / hobbies) so I really find myself always pushing the limits of such a simple camera without going all out for a DSLR or something more impressive.  Personally, I like to the challenge of taking great photos with a less than fantastic camera and it drives me crazy to see so many people with camera 10x better and worth 10x more than mine who don’t even know how to run them.  Photography is about knowing your camera in order to capture the perfect photo, its NOT about having a camera that CAN capture perfect photos yet not knowing how to use it.

The digital aspect of photography is really what I enjoy about it.  I love learning and playing with photography software tools and making the photos look their very best with some editing.  Panoramas are perfect examples of this as you just can’t do them without digital editing and the software tools now for it are simply stunning.  Please have a look through these select photos and panorama views and I really want to encourage you to look at what you capture as far as moments in life, how do you remember your adventures and is photography an element that you use to reflect on life and personal development?  I know if it for me so I wanted to share that and a few thoughts on that subject here.  I hope you enjoy it, I’d love to read your comments!

Note: If you are interested in seeing the summit panorama I created it as a full 360° view using quicktimeVR and an interactive summit panorama using Microsoft’s new HDView.  Both available free using those tools.

Fun in the workplace comes in many flavors and obviously what I consider fun won’t necessarily be the exact fit for you or your workplace but my examples and suggestions here can easily serve as ideas for building your own fun work environment.  Not surprisingly, most elements of fun in the workplace require some imagination and fortunately, imagination and fun both lead to more innovation and ideas sharing among co-workers.  This is one of the many great impacts fun has on an organization as well, especially in one where design, innovation and new ideas are an important part of the company’s success.  It certainly is in mine and so fun brings even more than its most obvious personal benefits by also encouraging the visual and imaginative mind to do more than what is required for day to day tasks.

Elements of Fun

Personal enjoyment

Everyone wishes their jobs to be something they enjoy and fun adds an element that creates that feeling of enjoyment.  If the workplace is fun, you will ultimately like your work more and put more effort into it and be happier with the job. A good job helps make a person happy and can add a lot of fulfillment and personal enjoyment to a person’s life.

Sparks creativity and imagination

Fun in the workplace can come in many forms and many of those, such as humor, games, jokes, competitions, interesting challenges or systems with prizes require new ways of thinking, wit or cleverness, teamwork or challenge and other activities that trigger new ideas, thinking and creative work. Many people simply consider anything creative to be fun (I’m one of those people) so tasks that involve these elements are often close associated or even sparking new creativity, innovation and imagination among those involved.

Can be a strong change proponent

So fun will trigger people to think about have more fun, often improving systems and processes or tasks along the way to make them both effective and fun in the process. This creativity is a wonderful partner to fun when it triggers ideas and rally’s support for change.  Change is scary to many people and so making change part of something that is enjoyable takes the fear out of it and it helps to support the change instead of add fear to it.  The ideas that come from fun programs then often encourage or reinforce even more change and it can continue to feed on itself if the systems are dynamic enough to let fun steer some of the work tasks and processes.

Engages teams and cross functional teams more easily

Most things that are fun in the workplace will only be successful if they are done with multiple people and when people have a chance to work together or compete with one another doing it.  Many of the systems and programs I’ve seen that are fun are when multiple departments or teams come together.  This can be anything from team building exercizes or job sharing to competitions or social events.  Activities that bring people together from multiple areas that do not generally work together are more social, and even if the activities are entirely work focused, the new social aspect is fun, and engages people more than without these activities in place.  And its this engagement between teams then that really starts to benefit the organization as the company works more and more integrated among its people instead of in silos or separate areas.

Builds personal relationships faster for more effective teamwork

The engagement between teams just above obviously happens within teams as well and the advantage of this is that personal relationships are build faster among teams when they are having more fun in their work.  People interact more and communicate much more frequently during fun activities and ultimately, when they know each other better.  People with closer relationships understand one another well and can be much more effective as a team than people who do not know each other well.  This is the case in all areas of life and it works well in the workplace as well.  Fun in the workplace is simply an element that can encourage this to happy and provide the environment needed to allow effective teamwork.

Increases employee loyalty and lengthens employee service time

People who are happy doing something tend to do more of it or to do it longer and so this is certainly true when it comes to work.  If you like your job and work because you have a lot of fun doing it, you are more likely to stay. People who are more likely to stay, will provide more value to an organization through gained expertise, strong relationships and teamwork with colleagues and by reducing overall training time and learn curve ratios compared to their delivered results.  All can be had by using fun in the workplace to keep wanting to stay!

Examples of Fun in the Workplace

These are just some of the things I have experienced in my work environments or know of that help to promote a fun work environment:

• Encouraging and allowing people to personalize their workspace with personal items, signs, posters, favorite team jerseys, flags, objects, gadjets or any other simply items.
• Keeping formalities out of day to day business and making daily communication informal, interesting and lively.
• Ensuring that staff meetings and group meetings are upbeat, lively and exciting.  Leaders must bring energy and enthusiasm to their teams and make it obvious and visible.
• Diverse personality types is advantageous for many reasons, but especially for adding fun, since you get more variety in the type of people working together when you have a mix of personality or behavior types.
• Managers and leaders must allow and promote fun themselves so that all employees know it is not only allowed, but encouraged.
• Jokes and humorous stories should be regularly available by postings, newsletters, and in scheduled meetings.
• Create and support an active social club to organize events, games and sports for all to participate in outside of work.
• Have the social club coordinate monthly social lunches and BBQs.
• Encourage simple, harmless practical jokes around the office
• Use team names and nick names for people based on their work or areas of expertise
• Play on people’s reputation with words, encouragement and tactful teasing
• Ensure high amounts of teamwork without individuals becoming too self situated in their roles
• Rotate job functions within teams to experience varying styles and personalities in repetitive tasks

Risks with Fun in the Workplace

There are of course some risks with adding more fun in the workplace and while they should not be ignored, they can easily be mitigated and controlled.  The most easily occurring risk could be that jokes and practical jokes get out of hand or unprofessional.  It is very important to know that any humor must be clean and clean from any prejudice, racism or sexism.  If this is monitored and correctly quickly when it is visible at any level, the humor can be kept professional and fun without the risk of hurting feelings or attacking anyone’s character.

Another obvious risk is that fun can be a distraction to actually getting work done and it can sometimes seem like a waste of time where pressing deadlines and tight schedules just don’t allow any time for fun.  I’d definitely argue against this thought process since I’ve seen how much more productive people are (including myself) at times of stress when there is some fun still to be had in the workplace.  The ratio of time to let the workplace be more fun instead of stagnant, is well worth the small number of hours lost considering the increased productivity, loyalty and imagination that the fun aspects of work bring out in people.  The benefits easily outweigh the risks and with attention and clear expectations about fun and time spent having fun in the workplace, it can properly be managed and encouraged to make all employees enjoy their work a little bit more!

Favorite Articles and Highlights from June

Treasure Trove of 50 Free Classic Personal Development eBooks

Naked in Eden (Book Trailer) – Robin has become a good online friend through our blogs and so her book and site are definitely worth a preview.

How to Avoid The Personal Development Plateau – Marc and Angel always have great coverage of ideas and this article is a good resources for continuing personal development.

Sharing Life Skills Newsletter – a new personal development newsletter that I contributed to for Jonathan from Advanced Life Skills.  This looks like it is going to be a great growing resource and currently available for free so please do go check out the premier issue and sign up for future issues.

Lists and Archives

From my own archives here, I thought I would highlight one of my earlier archives.  This one is about the common excuse everyone makes about not having enough time.  This is easier than you might think to overcome.

LearnThis has made it into another top blog list.  This one is the Top 50 productivity blogs to watch in 2010. Thank you so much for the inclusion among all of these great blogs!

There are many analogies that bloggers use in their articles and this one is no exception.  I’ve always looked at my hobbies and certainly my mountain unicycling as an example for many things that reflect my personality in my life.  Learning to ride a unicycle is not an easy task and it requires perseverance and a high level of dedication to stick to it until you get it.  It’s a skill I’ve mastered and having that mountain unicycling skill always reminds me that I can take on new things by perseverance.  Well today was no exception, I planned to seek out a mountain top about 2500m and day hike it with my unicycle so I could ride back down (as much as possible anyway).

I decided to go up Mount Allen in Kananaskis about 1.25 hrs from my house in the Canadian Rockies.  It’s 2800 m high actually and a very difficult ascent with over 1500 m of elevation gain.  This task proved to need serious perseverance.  I had read it can take 10hrs to hike to the summit and back due to the technical hiking and steep slopes.  I was hoping to complete it in about 6-7 hours by packing my unicycle and riding whatever areas I could to cover distance faster.  Plus I had some new hiking shoes to break and I really don’t like going anywhere in the mountains without my unicycle.

So, I started the trail head at 9:30 am and starting heading up.  I was able to ride some of the lower sections through the forest and a few areas above the tree line but most of the slopes were steep switchbacks and loose rock, not something I wanted to even attempt riding up (down is another story though).  Pass a few marmots, plenty of squirrels and chipmonks but didn’t see any other wild animals.  Lots of signs of bear with prints and scat in the snow and on the trail.  I didn’t see any bears directly though.  I was the third hiker up (I could tell from the snow prints and by meeting people coming back down once I got closer to the summit) and when I did summit, the group behind me said they saw about 25 areas dug up on the trail by a bear digging out bugs and whatever else it could find.  I didn’t see these dug out areas until I headed back down so the bear was between me and that next group only about 30 minutes behind me.  Anyway, back to the point of this article.

Along the climb, its funny how perseverance comes into play.  At many points I was thinking that I would turn back early since my pack was heavy, my back was already a bit sore and my feet and calfs were definitely feeling steep slopes early on.  Luckily, I keep thinking about getting to the next point, bit by bit and then continuing to push myself again once I get their.  That is really what perseverance is all about, it simply motivates you keep going and persist on your goal, in this case, the summit. Surprisingly, I came across a group of adventure runners and I knew one of the women in the group and she was quite impressed to see me doing the hike with my uni, so she had to take a picture together.  I hadn’t seen her for a couple years so this was yet again, another thing that inspired me to persevere and press on to the summit instead of turning back. The final summit climb looked the most daunting and fortunately by this point, my back and feet were sore but not getting worse, so I knew I could press on and get to the summit.  There was a lot of snow and some areas you had to hike up 30-40° snow slopes on skree which made it a little risky and I definitely had to go very slowly and carefully to keep my footing without slipping.  A slide down a mountain with half snow, half rock is not an experience I ever want to have!!

So, I made the summit at 1PM so the hike took 3.5 hours.  I stopped for lunch, a break and many photos and to chat with the next group that reached the summit after me.  So 50 minutes later, my pack back on, I headed down the mountain.  I found a safer route than what I climbed that was mostly rock, with little snow, so the summit descent was much safer than the climb luckily.  I then enjoyed many of the downhill areas and technical rock areas riding my uni so was able to get down much faster in about 2 hours.  So it perseverance of course that keeps me riding my cycle to places many people wouldn’t even dare walk and its perseverance that got to the summit and back in 6.5 hrs, which I was quite happy with.  I’m sure you have your own stories of perseverance, I’d love to hear them and I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from my hike today.

Related posts:

1. A usual (for me only) snow day in Calgary on the Unicycle
2. Unicycling at Powderface Ridge
3. Another Week, Another Mountain

Run From Gossip

This tip is unfortunately well known but rarely practiced.  It’s about gossip in the workplace, the dangers of it and why you should run away from gossip whenever you detect it. I’ve written an article called, How to Free Yourself From Gossip which is a great article to refer to if you need help on implementing this tip which is basically to avoid gossip and run away from it whenever you can in the workplace.  Gossip destroys relationships, it creates unhealthy conflict, bitterness and even resentment.  There is no value in it and usually it is much more destructive than people ever know.  If you want to make your working life easier and keep more friends, you can do this by staying out of gossip and not participating in it and even staying away from it altogether.

The most important steps for this career tip and to know when to run from gossip are outlined here. First learn to recognize gossip.  Listen specifically for it and use the basic rule that you should never be talking about someone else without them attending unless it is a discussion about how to help them.  Most other conversations about a person not listening is gossip, this the easier way to recognize it.  Second, excuse yourself from any gossip by simply saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk about John unless he is here as well, so please excuse me.”  Finally, learn what people tend to gossip, when they do and simply stay away from it, excuse yourself consistently from gossip and keep your distance from it as often as you can.

Running away from gossip is a smart thing to do in your career and an important skill to learn.

Career progress and performance is an important area in life and through my experience in striving to improve my performance I’ve learned to find many ways to perform well in my career.  It’s not been without its share of hard work though!  And as a manager, I also have insight and perspective from the other side of expectations and performance improvements and so these career tips come from that mix of experience and from my own study and practice in my career.  Please comment below if you have related experience or any experience/stories where you have used this tip!

Keep Your Resume Up to Date

Weather you are in a position since last week or last century, there is great value in keeping your resume up to date for your career.  You never know what can happen and especially in recent times of the economy, things can change quickly and it a possibility for pretty much anyone to suddenly find themselves needing a resume for a job hunt.  That said, you should keep your resume up to date BEFORE you need it and you will save yourself much pain and frustration from occurring at the same time as other struggles if you are hunting for a new job  This is especially true if you have been in a role for a year or more as there should be a number of accomplishments that you think about including for your resume.  Make them specific about what results you obtained whenever possible instead of the resume’s that simply list mundane tasks and impress no one.  Put some effort into updating your resume every few months or at least twice yearly to ensure you have recent accomplishments and responsibilities outlined and so that those items are passed by forgotten.

Another great reason for updating your resume as it can give you a significant advantage for review presentations or performance reviews.  Often you need to include comments or your accomplishments and major activities.  If you already have this on your resume from updating it regularly, this review will be a piece of cake.  Having details on hand can even help you to address things forgotten by your manager or extra points to highlight which can drastically help to influence your ratings and review issued.

Depending on your level of role and network you engage with, you may also find that you are often contacted by recruiters for positions or offers.  Having your resume on hand and up to date might be the difference from them pursuing you and going to the next guy.  Anyone who keeps their resume up to date is more professional and serious about their career (recruiters and hiring managers know this already) so its very helpful to ensure it is recent and ready to send out at any time when needed.  How long has it been since you updated your resume?

I have to say that I am hugely impressed with Jonathan from Advanced Life Skills for the speed and overall style of how he has put together a brand new free resource newsletter.  He asked me just a few weeks ago if I would be willing to offer an article for a new newsletter idea he was planning and he just release the premiere issue!  I am not only impressed by Jonathan’s style and speed with this, but also with the caliber of the articles and overall newsletter.  So, I am happy to be an author in it and wanted to share it with my readers here for each of the articles included as there really is some exceptional content.  You can also visit the site to read more about each of the authors in this edition (scroll to the bottom

So, don’t hesitate, head on over put your name and email in the list to receive the first publication immediately and to subscribe to future issues for free.  You will surely be as impressed as I am!

http://sharinglifeskills.com/

There are a number of rules and laws that are often used to describe leadership, such as Steven Covey’s laws of leadership and specifically the law of reciprocity. This one happens to show up in leadership to me because leadership is so heavily dependent on building great relationships.  I believe any leader has to be able to form strong relationships to lead and so I’ve put a spin on this law to look at it more specifically with the joy of reciprocity in relationships.  The dictionary definition of reciprocity is:

A mutual or cooperative interchange of favors or privileges, especially the exchange of rights or privileges of trade.

That exchange of favors that seems so natural with benefits for both parties is also, unfortunately, what gets in people’s way before reciprocity ever occurs. People get caught up in looking for the immediate benefit to themselves in many situations and don’t initiate that generous first step of offering their own help or service first. They also often expect a favor in return or feel that they owe someone who has done good to them. This selfish thinking or score keeping often stops a good deed from being done in the first place, which over time limits the good deeds returned. Its a cascade effect and emphasizes cynical thinking and just reinforces the selfish attitude and solitude for an individual.

The law of reciprocity is NOT a law that can be measured in any instance of time or even between the same parties involved for the give and take. It works across ones whole life and so the payback or benefit can’t be recognized by looking at any scorecard with an individual or even in a specific relationship. Its a balance beyond any single measure, any single relationship and even beyond the time you serve here on earth (Romans 2:6 – He will reward each one according to his works)

Instead, what needs to occur is simple generosity. Be willing to offer help, give that time, pay for lunch, make that apology first, share some vulnerable personal story, step out of your comfort zone, make a step in faith, be brave, be first and be generous. Do this without keeping score, offer it every chance you get. Put the effort into your relationships without expectation! Everything about doing this changes your attitude, increases your outlook and joy in life and is eventually paid back, if not immediately, later in life and even in eternity. Every personal connection you develop is another opportunity in your life, both with business colleagues, friendships and family. A generous mind will graciously give AND accept offerings of help, money, service and advice. And these will come to you more naturally, and at the time of need for yourself or others.  So, put everything you can into your relationships and experience the joy of that on its own and eventually the joy of the reciprocity that will occur if you simply put in everything you can and let the law of reciprocity occur!

Building on Others’ Ideas

Ideas are an important aspect of change and change is what drives any organization closer and closer towards excellence.  If ideas are not used to feed the company’s progress, then growth will typically halt.  However, ideas need to be shared in a way that reinforces that ideas culture, not destroys it.  Ideas are often very personal and the reaction to an idea can easily have a lasting impact that influences future behavior quite strongly.

When an idea is presented some people criticize that idea and others ignore it and come up with another idea or change it. Saying something as simple as, “Here’s a better idea, blah blah blah” is very common but in actuality, it is harsh criticism about the original idea and a way to claim the new idea selfishly.  It is subtle but very destructive.  This tip is to change your working and approach when it comes to ideas and that is to always build on others’ ideas instead of criticizing or replacing them.  Changing your response to, “That is a great idea AND we could add this or do that also” is an easy way to build on others’ ideas.  Supporting people’s ideas instead of judging them is important to promote cooperation and collaboration to work together instead of against each other.

Replacing ideas or criticizing them builds competition and quickly has people learning that when they share their ideas, they are criticized, which leads quickly to people NOT sharing their ideas anymore.  This is the last thing you want for any organization and its especially not something you want for your own reputation either.  So, support others and their ideas and build on them, adding value and leaving them the credit instead of looking to take it or replace their idea with your own.

Do Work Your Boss Does

This tip is really key when it comes to demonstrating that you are interested, willing and able to advance your position.  It’s to do some of the work your boss does, especially the work that is not necessary your responsibility, yet!  When you are able to show your ability to do work that your boss does it shows you boss and their peers that you are capable of being promoted.  There are a number of ways to go about this and many are straightforward and obvious, while others may be long term learning areas, either way they are worth seeking out and demonstrating that you can work at their level or on tasks that they are currently responsible for.

There are many areas to do this and finding out about your boss’ role is the first step.  Hopefully, they are a good boss and meeting with you regularly in a one on one where you have a chance to ask them questions about their own role.  If not, you can request to have a meeting from time to time with them asking specifically about their role and tasks that you may be able to help them do or practice doing yourself with their help or for their feedback.  If you don’t have an option or are uncomfortable asking them directly, you may be able to find out from HR, your boss’ peers or simply by observing their work and learning to understand their tasks on your own.

No matter how you find out, pick some thing that they do that appear like something you could do yourself and just ensure it is not sensitive work like anything involving knowledge or information that you should not yet have.  You don’t want to pry for information that you are not supposed to have.  Once you have the task, start practicing it with or without your boss’ authority and when you are ready to present your results or take it to the next level, its important to ask them for feedback on how well you did and always make sure you are prepared to still let them control that task or stay informed even if they have an option now to rely on you for it.  Offer to do it for them whenever possible and ensure you give them the results and the credit.  This is important!  Doing the work of your boss is best when they want you to do it and it helps them, this will be seem very positively and will almost always impress your boss and open up more options to learn more and take on new responsibilities.  In the long run, this can put you in the running for promotion much sooner than waiting for it and it lets you steer your career progression instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen.

Finding the work that your boss does and learning to do it will let you work more WITH your boss instead of simply, for them!