I was feeling the rush of pending triumph in a debate over the annual report with a notoriously stubborn co-worker. I had to win — I would win — even if that meant humiliating him! Suddenly, he checkmated me: “Rich, you can beat me in this and other arguments. Let’s go with your approach.” Surprisingly, I found myself mumbling a few words of stunned apology for … well … for being a jerk.

I hadn’t anticipated his surrender, and certainly not sincerity, and never his humanizing me by using my name. In two sentences, he had inadvertently broken me (at least temporarily) of what I realized was less about an issue – a soon-to-be-forgotten issue — than about my ego, ambition, and retribution.

What’s more, the incident was not a one-time tantrum; it was part of an evolving pattern of hardness that had been riding with me for years, unnoticed. It was in my blind spot.

A blind spot is that area of our lives where we put stuff we don’t want to deal with, where we can’t see it – stuff like low self-esteem, anger, greed, selfishness … common maladies. We refuse to believe we are anything but good folks. At work, we present ourselves as who we want to be or want to be perceived as: that is, even-tempered, loyal, open-minded, team players.

That’s certainly the persona during the first few months on a new job. Then, the boss’ unreasonableness, colleagues’ pettiness, and the realization that appearance matters more than results throw you into survival-and-attack mode. You start getting tight-jawed around your boss, cagey around your colleagues, and defensive about your work. And you believe that nothing about you has changed. Before long, some of what was black-and-white morphs into grayness. You begin forgetting who you were, who you want to be.

The bad boys of business (almost all have been men) – some now in prison, others at home with their riches – didn’t set out to be ogres, I suspect. In fact, they probably once were very likeable, even admirable.

We, too, didn’t plan to become street-fighters in our jobs; we used to be about empowering and collaboration. How did we get from niceness to nastiness without noticing? More important, how do we return to our former state?

3 PATHS TO NASTINESS

1 We ignore compounding
Compounding is that profoundly simple phenomenon that says that even something small can increase exponentially over time. That works well for financial transactions (excluding 2009), but sometimes not so well in human transactions.

A small offense by an equal from another department at work is brushed aside, forgiven by you. But others won’t let you forget it; they urge retaliation. They’re right, you begin to think: the offender deserves notice. Emotion turns into attitude, attitude turns to action. You become competitive, withhold information, fail to stop rumors. Your department converts to a silo, the organization suffers, and your professional life is on course for an eventual crash. In short, the unsettling person in your blind zone has appeared.

2 We succumb to group-think
Group-think is a form of compounding. One person believes or wills to believe a desired outcome and through power or persuasion recruits a batch of yay-sayers. One believer in a false cause creates a cult of followers.

Here’s an illustration. It’s generally known that the success rate of mergers and acquisitions is in the neighborhood of only 25 percent. Essentially, don’t acquire unless overwhelming evidence forces you to do so.

Yet, during almost every merger and acquisition process I have been involved in or watched over many years, the bulls run wild. I cannot remember a company walking away from a prospective acquisition that the CEO wanted to make.

In such a situation, to avoid being viewed as disloyal, we are apt to soften contrarian facts and, consequently, compromise ourselves. Objectivity, honest thinking, patience, and the will to say “no” to a bad idea too often get put aside. Ambition, sometimes disguised as entrepreneurism or pluck, slips out of the corporate blind spot. Two years later … you know what happens.

3 We get seduced by impatience
Admittedly, much of any job is repetitious, boring routine. For some, predictability is security; for others, it’s hell. For the latter, after awhile, impatience breeds dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction breeds a sense of superiority: we’re better than those around us. We begin taking credit where credit is not due. The “we” in our conversations, reports, and presentations turns to “I.” I am responsible for success, you are accountable for problems.

Letters to shareholders in annual reports illustrate the problem. Weak performance is due to economic and market conditions, not flawed judgment or, frankly, mistakes. However, record earnings are the result of management’s foresight and decisiveness, not to massive layoffs and plant closings – or to happenstance.

How do we prevent the incipient evil spirits from spreading and turning us into what we don’t want to be?

5 STARTERS

• Admit that you are capable of becoming the person you dislike.
• Unload your issues and justifiable complaints from work every couple of months on someone older and wiser, and let her or him repeat back what you said. Then go home bruised and better.
• Reconnect on FaceBook with your childhood friends and high school classmates. Swapping stories will remind you of who you used to be.
• Look in a mirror at the beginning and end of the day and say hello to yourself by name. Silly? Yes. But you may be amazed at the simple curative power of hearing your name from someone who knows you.
• Edit out as many “I’s” as you can from your writing and speech.

Richard Skaare 11.05.09
Photo credit: fellowapeman

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I was feeling considerable pressure preparing for a three-day seminar I was to teach on “Communicating Effectively Under Pressure.” How could I be struggling with something that I had obviously mastered enough to teach others? Besides, I am a seasoned presenter.

Yet somewhere between cooking the content and serving it up, I lost confidence and control. What I thought I knew, I suddenly didn’t. What made sense in my head didn’t quite look right on my computer screen.

The pressure caused me to over-prepare, and by the time I arrived in London for the event, I was mentally and physically exhausted.

What went wrong? First, tell me that this has happened to you, right? Of course it has, or will. For me – for us — I came up with three reasons why I (we) over-prepare and five ways to prevent us from going batty in the process.

3 reasons we over-prepare

1. We see dead people.
   How many presenters, professors, and preachers have you heard rolling on endlessly without passengers – without the audience? They were so absorbed in their content, or two-stepping with technique, or shielding themselves behind PowerPoints that they forgot why they were there. Retaining listeners and causing listeners to retain what they heard seemed unimportant.

   For me, however, as I prepared my presentation and visualized the audience, all I could see on day one were faces begging to be engaged not lectured and, on day two, saying, “Huh?” and all of them looking like corpses transported from other seminars with life-changing titles.

   The presentation I had crafted from recycled, dense lecture notes would not revive them, I realized. I had started with the wrong material. The audience was my material. The more I focused on them, the smarter and clearer I got. But that meant a lot more work because I was preparing for unpredictable people not just adeptly stitching together stuff I knew.

2. We gotta believe
   Have you, like me, come across too many professional bluffers who knew their stuff but didn’t practice it—inspiring marriage counselors in broken relationships, empowerment evangelists who never would accept contrarian ideas?

   Thinking ahead to my seminar, I knew I could have danced, sounded clever, waxed passionately and convincingly. Nah, I couldn’t — or wouldn’t. I heard myself prodding, “C’mon, do you really believe that? Could you do what you’re asking your audience to do? Give me personal examples … stories. Turn information into conviction that generates passion.”

   I had to convince myself before I could convert others. And that required more time and soul-searching. It required over-preparation.

3. We want to make it damn good
   Sadly, good is acceptable these days; good gets you paid. That’s not good enough for me because too often good is just polished mediocrity. Too many seminars are good because they are pre-fabs modeled after reportedly successful seminars that can be quickly assembled, seem to satisfy buyers, and generate a profit.

   Perfectionism has its problems, too, of course. Striving for excellence has a certain cache’. However, perfectionism can create a great product – an impressive presentation – that lacks stickiness.

   Between mediocrity and perfection, I have found my standard; it’s called “damn good.” Damn good is that sense that you outdid yourself. You started with a good idea and a modicum of self-confidence and ended up with something amazing because you could never get the topic out of your mind and yet would never let it own you; you stayed in control. You stuck with the idea until you understood it enough to explain it to your mother.

   Damn good takes time, takes over-preparing.

5 ways to over-prepare without losing your mind now or later

1. Become the application. Half-way through preparing your presentation, draft a one-page plan of how you will – will, not could – apply your emerging recommendations to your own job. If the plan sounds realistic and do-able, continue preparing your presentation. If not … well, you get the point.
2. Be willing to trash. When you’re flat-lining in the wee hours from piling every piece of information you could find on the topic, stop, go to bed, and when you wake up, extract from your pile only that which will turn audience yawns into, “Hmm, I never thought of that. I bet I could do that.”
3. Assemble your work with Velcro, not screws. Prepare one solid, well-crafted presentation but then organize your notes for what-ifs: have case studies ready for the possibility of only five people rather than 12 showing up; have lots of stories should eyes glaze over during your talk; and have profiles of attendees’ organizations should you find the content out of sync with the audience’s real needs after the first day.
4. Prepare for the presentation after this one. Think of what you might learn from this presentation – you talked too much, the case studies were too generic, etc. – that would improve your next presentation. You’re now ready to do a bang-up job on this presentation.
5. You’re an expert, you’re okay. You were asked to present most likely because you are known as an expert on the topic. That said, you don’t have prove it in your presentation. Ease back, trust you smarts, and think about going into your session to mingle and chat with the audience. That’s the style that will convey much more credibility than a tedious argument with pinpoint logic.

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Love or hate his politics, you have to admire the President’s knack for talking like he writes and getting his wordsmiths to write like he talks. He sounds the same in his books, at the lectern with a prepared speech, and in a Town Hall without notes.

That’s because President Obama understands instinctively that the mouth and typing fingers are merely different conduits from the same thought process, whose aim is to engage others in dialogue of some sort.

Writing like you talk, which I talked about in my last piece of writing, is challenging but doable. Injecting the dynamics of exchange from conversations into your copy can be intimidating for some. The changeover requires shifting your focus from the form and pride of writing to its purpose, which is, simply, to talk with folks. But you can pull that off.

Talking like you write … well, that seems considerably more awkward and somewhat unnecessary — but not less desirable, right? Wouldn’t upgrading your conversational style from dribble and drabness to approximate crisp writing raise your self-esteem and perceived value? I think yes. I also think there are other reasons.

I’ll point out 3 .

1. Perception is often reality, like it or not.

The impression we make on others such as higher-ups at work comes mostly from the innumerable impromptu dialogues we have with them, not from prepared presentations at meeting. Yet we invest enormous amounts of time and money developing presentation skills yet not talking skills.

As a result, notice what happens if you interrupt some polished presenter with a difficult question. Suddenly, he starts stuttering and dancing. When he returns to his presentation, he is less credible and less fluid. Better if he had prepared himself to talk not lecture and to speak from his soul not his PowerPoints.

2. PCD — Post-Conversation Distress — is painful, even ruinous.

PCD strikes when, for instance, you say impulsively and flippantly to impress your boss that the architect you met last night was a horrific bore, only to find out that he’s your boss’ brother-in-law. (That happened to me.)

When our mouths are tethered to our emotions rather than hotwired to our brains, we generate regrets – regrets about what we should have said, what we should not have said, and what we are determined to say next time – assuming there is a next time.

3. For those with leadership leanings, talking smart is a smart trait.

Up-and-comers are regularly thrown into situations where what you say in conversations will represent and reflect the organization and/or executives.

For example, you are sitting across from a major client when the boss calls your cell phone to say he will be seriously late to the meeting and wants you to cover for him, though you don’t have his agenda or presentation.

Small talk won’t work here. You can’t look like you’re sweating, trying to kill time, or merely acting as a stand-in. What you say has to be business-like, productive, and, oh yeah, engaging.

How, then, can you become not only a good conversationalist but an integrated communicator – that is, someone who communicates consistently and naturally whether chatting with a colleague, presenting to the Board, or writing a report on budget cuts?

Here are 5 suggestions from writing that should help you master the art of conversation.

1. Strong leads
   If you want to yank in your reader and link with your dialogue partner, start with something bold, interesting, and other-directed. Not this: “Hey, Ed. Awful weather we’re having, huh? They say more rain is possible tonight.” Yawn.

   Such a trite opener suggests you don’t have anything worthwhile to say and are hoping the other party takes over the conversation. It would be akin in writing to plagiarizing, “It was the best of time, it was the worst of times.”

   Instead, begin with something that draws in the other party’s interest. For example, “Hi, Ed. Whew! The last time I saw rain like this was during that dreadful trade show we attended in Wichita, remember?”

2. Short paragraphs

Attention spans have always been short for listeners, and now readers, too, have become easily distracted scanners. If you want to convey something important, you must train yourself to talk in pithy phrases and write with short paragraphs. Your objective is to generate the right phrasings and a bit of drama to win and keep the listener and reader’s attention and trust.

3. Lots of bullets

English majors and too many academic writers balk at using bulletins because bullets, they think, clip and cheapen important points that require deep and long explanations. That may be true, but, again, most readers and listens are not into deep and long, sad though that may be.

Therefore, organize your conversations and your writings to be visual and aural. Inject three points or two ideas, and use your voice and fingers to emphasize that these bullets points are important stuff that won’t take much of her time.

4. Season with stories

Good writing is built on good stories. So are good conversations. The more you can relate information to experience, the more effective will be your message. Think about and talk stories, analogies, metaphors, and similes – oh yeah, and jokes.

5. Think others

Your role as writer and conversationalist is to insert yourself enough into the dialogue to coax a response from the reader/listener but not so much that you’re forcing or over-extending your presence. No one enjoys listening to someone talk incessantly about himself any more than wading through the confessions of a self-absorbed writer.

Take long breaths between comments (and paragraphs) to make sure you being listened to and are listening. You must always stay on the same channel as the other party or reader.

Richard Skaare 07.16.09

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

The thought of writing like you talk and talking like you write is scary. Imagine the gibberish that would appear on your computer screen if you typed in word-for-word what you said at yesterday’s staff meeting? And can you see the bored look on the faces of your colleagues if you talked the way you wrote in your last email to them?

And why would you even want to talk and write the same, or at least close to it? They’re two different forms of communication, right?

I don’t think so.

Honing your writing to match your talk and upgrading the quality of your conversations might well result in a more integrated, authentic, comfortable, engaging, and downright impressive you. Your writing would seem spontaneous not contrived, and your conversation would sound more purposeful, not trite. Imagine what that would do for your self-esteem and career.

How can you write like you talk?

3 recommendations.
1. Maintain eye contact.
Conversations and writing are both dialogues that start with the interests of the other party, drift into what you want to say, and then recheck periodically to make sure the other person’s eyes are still on you.

Eye contact is simple – rather, should be simple – in conversations because the other person is right there in front of you. However, writing requires strenuous focus to visualize the reader listening across the desk from you.

If you can talk with that person as you write, however, what you create could turn out quite intriguing. Here are several ways to maintain eye contact with the reader.

• Write your document as a letter.

Even some accomplished writers use this technique. At the top of your document, write “Dear” and the name of one recipient whom you know well. If you have a photo of him or her in your organization’s digital library, bring it up on your screen. (You may want to close your door to avoid strange looks from colleagues.)

Now, write your report, or email, stopping regularly to look at the photo or thinking about the person to whom you are writing. Do this exercise for your next five documents, and you may be able to begin writing without props.

• Think attention span.

When eyes glaze over or look away in a conversation while you’re talking, you probably have lost his or her attention. Likewise, keeping eye atttention on text against a plain background is even more tedious and straining.

To keep the reader’s attention, think format and humility. Formatting means short paragraphs, bulleted lists, drop caps, italics, and whatever else it takes to keep the reader’s eyes moving through the page. Humility comes in by forgetting about what you think a writer should do: that is, write big words in big paragraphs.

2. Change your inflection.
Talk in a monotone during a conversation and your listener will certainly drop out. Attention requires changes in tone, volume, emphasis, and pace — in other words, inflection. The same is true for holding a reader’s attention, whether the document be an email, report, blog post, or journal entry. To create inflection in your writing, you might:

• drop a short, staccato-like sentence in the middle of a long paragraph.
• use not only lots of action verbs but choose edgy ones that come with sound effects, like vex, pimp, and eradicate.
• insert a surprise sentence that might be somewhat confessional or reflective, such as: “Maybe what I just said was overstated, but, hold on, maybe not.”

3. Move your hands.
In dialogue, our hands say what our words cannot and also add drama to our comments. Likewise, in writing, we can create hand-equivalent visuals.
Assume that you are asked to write an assessment report of a meeting with prospective buyers of your company. You could be analytical and dull or conversational and interesting by creating mental images, such as:

• Inserting a simple graphic. A hand-drawn diagram of nuclear energy might better reflect your view that the acquisition could create synergies and energies but had the potential to be explosive.
• Trying out similes and metaphors. For example, “Our company is like a family, dysfunctional at time, but still willing to stick together through troubles. What happens if we adopt new family members?”
• Telling a highly visual — and short — story. For instance, you might say, “Being in that meeting with all those lawyers and listening to the smooth-talking CEO reminded me of sitting cross-legged at sunset on the porch of my Uncle Jim’s dilapidated farmhouse listening to his biting jokes as the mosquitoes feasted on us.”

One final recommendation: Read Stephen King’s book, “On Writing,” and then listen to him read it on CD. He writes like he talks and talks like he writes.

Next post: How to Talk Like You Write.

Richard Skaare 07.01.09
Photo credit: psmclaug

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I finally met the THEY’s the other day. The THEY’s were lurking and smirking down in the Control Room on the lower level.

THEY were gabbing, criticizing, speculating, boasting, back-stabbing, and vying for attention. Each one thought he knew everything. Each one made claims about being right, about having all the answers. THEY talked in generalities, nothing specific.

I was glad to meet them. People refer to them frequently, as in, “THEY say …” to prove a point, impress others, whatever. I had lots of questions for them.

I asked the one who claimed to be the Chief THEY – chief at least for the moment — why THEY were so popular.

He said, “Simple. Some people need attention and THEY – that is, we – help them stand out by looking authoritative. Then there are some who think that information, even undocumented information, makes them look smart, prestigious, and powerful; we give them that information … well, sort of.

“There are also those who don’t trust what they know. And still others who just don’t know what else to say.

“In short, put pressure on someone and voices start popping up in her head saying, “you don’t know what you’re talking about because, truthfully, you’re not really that bright or interesting or informed. So, people turn to us – to THEY — for a bail-out.”

“What do you mean, ‘bail-out?’” I asked.

“We … THEY … give them generalities that are usually untraceable and sound so authoritative that few people can refute what is said,” he replied.

“For example?”

“Three months ago, this department head guy was promoting some unworkable idea about a software platform. Actually, he didn’t know what he was talking about, yet he had the power of position and persuasion to get his way … almost.

He assumed everyone in a meeting on the issue endorsed his view until the irritable and always irritating manager from another department challenged him.

“The department head seemed trapped. So, THEY – that is, most of us – jumped in and told him what to say. He was too threatened and unfocused to resist, and couldn’t remember facts or anything substantial to rebut the criticism. He did what we told him and responded, ‘THEY say that several Fortune 500 companies are about to use the same software.’

“Then one of his loyal staffers chimed in with …”

“Let me tell it,” said someone named Experts. “I instructed the staffer to say, ‘I read somewhere that a lot of experts think this software will be a game-changer.’ Cool, huh? But I also made sure he didn’t identify the source because, to be honest, the actual article didn’t quite say what he suggested that it said. “

“Success,” said the Chief THEY. “No more objections from anyone, and the crummy idea rushed forward to become a very expensive and, ultimately, a failed program.”

Another member of the group with the unusual name of Customers jumped into the conversation. “The easiest way to win support for your program in business is to mention customers in the abstract. That’s my expertise,” she said, scanning the group, “or so THEY say.”

“I don’t understand,” I confessed.

“Here’s how it works,” said Customers. “Say, the company’s director of advertising proposes to launch a new ad campaign that features products for the automotive industry. Prominent in the ad is a yellow American car. The CEO loves everything about the ad.

“To the executive in charge of European sales, however, the campaign looks too American for his region. Yet he senses that he has no say in the matter: it’s a corporate campaign. So, he shows the prototype ad to a high-level buddy-customer and the customer’s assistant, both of whom say it’s not their favorite ad.

“The sales executive then goes over the head of the advertising director, to the CEO, and informs him, as we advised, ‘Our European customers say the ad won’t work.’ The CEO panics and the ad campaign is put on hold for Europe.”

The Chief THEY took charge of the conversation again. “We have lots of other ‘THEY say’ stories. For instance, how many times have you heard, ‘THEY say that we’re definitely going to get 12 to 18 inches of snow.’

“But our pride and joy comes when we stop all efforts to change an organization by recruiting folks to say, ‘THEY will never approve that’ or ‘THEY won’t let us do that.’ Most everyone falls for this one, even though no one knows who ‘THEY’ are. There are still some, ‘yes we can’ dreamers out there, but we’ll wear them down before long.”

“There’s no stopping you guys, is there?” I asked.

“Not really,” the Chief THEY responded. As long as people don’t want to take the time to substantiate what they’re talking about,

… or don’t want to deal with specifics,
… or don’t have the courage to be silent and, instead, resort to generalities,
… or no one holds them accountable for verifying what they’re saying,
we will be in business and there will be no change.”

I started to walk away, but turned and said defiantly: “You’re wrong about change. They say that ‘time changes things.’”

“Yeah, that’s one of our favorites,” said the Chief THEY.

Richard Skaare 06.24.09
Photo credit: Annie Ominous

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Four minutes is not much time to do much of anything. However …

But I’m a reality coach. What hinders productivity and increases stress, I think, is failure to clean up loitering vexations – those slight annoyances, anxieties, and distresses that we leave unresolved. Consequently, we suffer more pain avoiding than attending to them.

So, take four minutes to read this list of vexations and then spend four minutes on each one that fits, getting them off your mind and out of your life. You’ll be a happier, healthier, greener person – guaranteed, says pitchman Billy May.

1. Vexation: You’re bothered by knowing who you are but not being able to yank the words out of your soul.
   Un-vex: Your mind has taken charge. Stop intellectualizing and try simplifying. Come up with four words in four minutes that describe who you are and what you do — not boilerplate words, gritty words like “edgy thinker, detail addict.”
2. Vexation: You keep promising yourself to get healthier.
   Un-vex: Eat a banana. During the four minutes it takes to eat the banana, you might realize, what would happen if I stopped dieting and every day – every day! – ate five servings of fruits and vegetables.” C’mon, this is easy.
3. Vexation: You made an off-handed comment to a less-liked colleague this morning and are still feeling somewhat righteous yet regretful that you said it.
   Un-vex: Take two minutes alone in your office to collect your thoughts, 30 seconds to walk down the hall, one minute to surprise and apologize to the colleague you offended, and the remaining 30 seconds walking back to your office feeling relieved, humbled, and committed to getting better at biting your lip rather than people.
4. Vexation: You cared about a former staff member and his future when he worked for you, but you wonder how he is doing six months after you were forced to let him go because of budget cuts.
   Un-vex: Call a staff member who is still friends with her former colleague and get an update. Contacting the individual directly can be sticky for legal, HR, and personal reasons. But going through an intermediary will get you honest information. During the call, don’t justify your decision or otherwise explain yourself; just ask questions.
5. Vexation: You have been so enamored and owned by technology — your laptop, your smartphone, your social networking app, your home theater – that you worry about losing perspective.
   Un-vex: You need to be reminded how amazing creation is. Spend four minutes looking out a window when you hear an airplane coming. Think about the technology that, as one comedian says, lets people sit in a chair in the sky. Then look at a bird and also your reflection in the glass. You get the point.
6. Vexation: You’ve been arguing all day to yourself and others why your position was the right one during yesterday’s troublesome, stalemated meeting – and you know you have been wasting valuable time.
   Un-vex: Read your meeting notes, think again about what you said, but this time more open-mindedly than analytically, and jot down a possible solution that could break the gridlock. Give up the wrong belief that you have to be either right or compromised in exchange for compromising to do what might be right for the organization.
7. Vexation: You’ve been personally offended by people not spending much time on your website, the content of which you wrote.
   Un-vex: The next time you’re stopped at a four-minute traffic light, ask yourself, how can only three colors influence the behavior of so many people when all the information on your website cannot. Then go back to the office, re-edit, reduce, and re-energize the content … and insert images that are worth a thousand words.
8. Vexation: The pile of must-read and want-to read materials on your desk is slowly convincing you that they may become never-read.
   Un-vex: Toss all the materials into the bottom drawer. Then make a note on your calendar for the last day of the month to pull out the drawer, and empty its contents into your waste basket without thinking. There, now you will have to rely on your own wits to be smart.
9. Vexation: You hate meetings because too many participants are consuming too much time on trivia, but you don’t want to say something that would irritate everyone.
   Un-vex: During a meeting, when someone makes a brief but insightful comment, ask her to spend four minutes expanding on the idea. This will serve as an example of the kind of high-quality, potentially high-impact thinking that should dominate every meeting.
10. Vexation: You have been worrying too much about being lame and underappreciated.
    Un-vex: Spend four minutes thinking of some simple accomplishment that recently gave you an ego boost: an amazing golf shot, the loss of four pounds in one week, the unexpected congratulatory note from the CEO you’ve never met. Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance you can lower your handicap, lose another three pounds, and get to finally know the top-gun.

Richard Skaare 06.17.09
Photo credit: phxpma

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Years back, I was chatting with a small group of communication graduate students near the end of the program’s final semester when a classmate approached, a bounce in her step and a confident smile on her face. She was eager to show us her resume, which she had just picked up at a commercial printer.

Oddly, the resume was anything but traditional: formatted like a brochure, Alice in Wonderland-type characters strewn across the pages, and minimal copy.

The group responded awkwardly but politely with “interesting” and “creative.” However, I was intrigued by her cleverness and boldness, and asked her why she had taken such a gutsy approach to her job search.

She replied that the piece reflected her personality, interests, and priorities. A prospective employer who reacted favorably to her approach, she said, was the type of organization for which she wanted to work. She knew there weren’t many such employers out there.

Within a few weeks, five organizations showed interest, three scheduled interviews, and two made offers.

My classmate demonstrated exceptional clarity about her individuality and an enviable courage to brand that difference.

Do those two words – clarity and courage — describe you, as well?

I had to face that question early and periodically in my career. Getting internal clarity was not easy. I knew I was wired, gifted, and educated as a communicator, but was that a job category — public relations, speechwriter, etc. – or a competency that applied to many situations?

Mustering courage was even more difficult. If I didn’t lock myself into a category, could I still convince someone to hire me, and later would I always be pushing out the boundaries of the job description in ways that would unsettle my bosses?

In the end I decided that I had no choice. I could not box up my capabilities and interests. I would live with the discomfort of being different.

The discomfort of the economic downturn has unraveled the confidence of many people. Yet I suspect that it has also scared many others, maybe you, into re-examining priorities, redefining skills and styles, and committing to never again letting one’s uniqueness be homogenized into the mediocrity of so many workplaces. Now comes the tough part: the courage to act on that difference.

3 challenges that will require courage to avoid compromising yourself.

1 FEAR OF NOT GETTING A JOB.
Your instinct will tell you to do everything that conforms to what you perceive the prospective employer expects in your resume and interview. Unfortunately, that’s also what the scores of other equally skilled applicants for the same position will be doing.

How do you differentiate yourself when competitors for the job can match you accomplishment for accomplishment?

5 pieces of advice:

1. Convert your uniqueness into a yours-only, core message that has teeth but not overbite. (For help, read “The 140-Character Resume.”)
2. Avoid the vanilla resume. Edit out buzzwords, generalities, and fuzzy claims, and balance the “I’s” of your accomplishments with the “We’s” of teamwork. (Read ““The I-Resume, We-Job.”)
3. Emphasize differentiators such as ingenuity, risk-taking, accountability, clever thinking, and unusual problem-solving. None of those describe you? Sure they do. Think harder.
4. After answering a “what would you do in this situation?” question, ask the interviewer what she would do. Only one or two people I’ve interviewed over the years have ever done that, and was I impressed by their confidence.
5. Present your individuality in such a way that convinces the interviewer you are definitely the person the organization needs regardless of whether or not your credentials perfectly match the job description.

2 FEAR OF LOSING YOUR JOB.
Your sensible self – you know, the cautious side — won’t want to do anything that could jeopardize the security of the job you landed after debilitating months of unemployment or the job you thankfully kept after most of your colleagues were let go. How do you overcome anxiety, imprint your individuality, and contribute without being unnecessarily disruptive?

5 pieces of advice:

1. During meetings, lean on your elbow and put one hand over your mouth. This will help you avoid impulsively and enthusiastically venting interesting ideas that unnerve your colleagues unnecessarily.
2. Listen without interruption, process content afterwards, formulate responses over time, and then recommend action when others are ready to listen to you.
3. Realize that the post-recession climate will be a “new normal” that looks for more results with fewer resources. Speed, high-efficiency, and hard-data results will be differentiators. Do they characterize you? Of course they do … or should … or will.
4. Spend considerable time building trusting relationships broadly throughout the organization. The better your colleagues know you, the more accepting they will be of your off-center ideas.
5. Invest in your future impact on the organization by accelerating your learning — online courses, webinars, in-house seminars. Smart organizations and leaders take advantage of down-times by preparing for the future good times.

3 FEAR OF MOVING OUT.
When the economy hums again and comfort levels increase, you may get the urge to make a move to do something that better fits who you are. That could mean changing jobs, taking up a new career, or starting your own business.

Such a decision is always nerve-wracking because the possibility of making a mistake is high. Memories of being unemployed or underemployed will make the decision even more intimidating. How do you gather the courage to move?

5 pieces of advice:

1. Project yourself at the end of your career. What is more painful: the risk of making a major change and possibly failing or the irreversible regret of not following your heart?
2. The more you talk about what you are going to do, the less likely you will actually follow through. Step back and reexamine your fear.
3. Courage has more to do with motion and perspiration than emotion and inspiration.
4. If the change is a reaction to a frustrating job or holds some false expectation of a better life elsewhere, don’t move. Your decision to change must be proactive not reactive, internally driven not externally triggered.
5. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to be courageous. You’re on your own. That’s why it’s called courage.

Richard Skaare 06.08.09

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Aptly or sadly, Louis Caldera’s name is likely to appear on Jeopardy some day. Answer: “Responsible for Air Force One photo-op fiasco.”

As you remember, on April 27, a clone of the president’s Air Force One flew low over New York City, accompanied by F-16 fighters, to let military photographers capture images of the plane against the backdrop of the city and harbor. Flashbacks of 9/11 alarmed city dwellers and workers, which led to a political outcry.

Caldera, director of the White House Military Office and an accomplished and seemingly decent fellow, resigned on May 8 when so many fingers were pointing in so many directions that apparently no culprit could be identified. Despite the F.A.A.’s statement that “the photo op was approved and coordinated with everyone,” everyone had an alibi. So, Caldera took the hit.

While most people scramble for cover when blame seeks a source, taking responsibility for mistakes does have a certain respectability these days. Admission of guilt, or at least acceptance of the fact that, ultimately, you are accountable for an error under your charge, separates leaders from lemmings.

In fact, learning from mistakes is in vogue in most organizations. Executives are quoted in the media espousing mistake-making as natural and integral to leadership maturation. It is better to try and fail than to fail to try goes the cliché. Make a mistake, take the heat, analyze the erroneous path, clean yourself off, and move forward smarter and bolder. Forgiven and forgotten.

Well, not quite forgotten. That’s one of the lessons to learn: mistakes are remembered. If you can understand the mechanics of your mistake and learn to be especially cautious, you are manager material. However, if you can unravel the social dynamics resulting from your mistake, you will be well on your way to becoming a leader.

One of those social dynamics is that people – most people? some people? – take a measure of vicarious interest in the mistakes of others. Mistakes are like bad news: uncomfortable but titillating, anxiety-provoking, and remembered. While many colleagues will be sympathetic and empathetic (“We all make mistakes”) during your ordeal, and some will laugh it off with you over a beer, while still others won’t say anything (just think it), few will forget it and some will use it against you.

Who are those abusers and why?

• The scowler who flat-out does not like you. That’s difficult to accept because you consider yourself reasonably likable and you’ve done nothing to cause his distaste of you — or so you think. Still, your philosophy or style or whatever doesn’t sit well with him. Your mistake confirms what he already believed about you: loser.
• The competitive colleague who gains by your loss. By resurrecting your error periodically and subtly, she erodes your credibility and possible advancement. She gains by your pain.
• The narcissistic boss who can now manipulate you because you are damaged goods. Deviate from his path and you will be reminded of your past deviance.

How do you combat those detractors? Much more important, what lessons can you extrapolate and apply from the mistake that will help expunge the bad memory?

I have some suggestions.

1. A mistake can be compounded if you overreact or counteract. Joking about it regularly or beating up on yourself from time to time will keep the mistake visible. And going after those who remind everyone of your weak moment will confirm your weakness.
2. A mistake is a mistake, not an indictment of your abilities, your intelligence, your personality, your upbringing, or whatever other excuse you might employ to catastrophize the situation.
3. A mistake is painful mostly because of embarrassment, which is only an emotion that vaporizes quickly into a fog and makes it difficult to see reality clearly. You will think and see better once the fog lifts.
4. A mistake is rarely made in isolation. Lack of information, misinterpretation, unexpected resistance – these and other factors and people can coalesce and cause you to make a hasty judgment, an erratic decision, or a wild guess – in other words, a mistake.
5. A mistake that you made is your mistake. Make sure you have a good ethical compass handy to prevent you from blaming, weasel-wording, lying, minimizing, suggesting, or gossiping and to keep you away from arrogance, anger, ennui, pride, or impulsiveness — all of which can trigger more serious mistakes.

Richard Skaare 05.27.09
Photo credit: swanksalot

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

When I had lunch with a good friend and professional colleague (he’s now 75 years old) while visiting New York City recently, we simply picked up where we left off 12 years ago. That evening, I spent time with another gracious friend and mentor (now 89), and, likewise, our conversation flowed naturally from our last meeting 22 years ago.

Good friend and gracious friend after 12 and 22 years of separation? Wrong words? Am I fabricating relationships that no longer exist?

It’s true that occasionally I feel like the person who, if he wants to be your best friend, there is nothing you can do about it. However, most of the time I don’t consider myself a cling-on nor a sentimentalist. My self-esteem is reasonably high, so it’s not that.

I just have tribal instincts and the DNA of a social networker. I happen to truly like staying linked, no matter how much time intervenes, with interesting people who are quotable and affirming, with whom I have some history, and from whom I gain nothing financially. I considered them friends years ago; why would they not be friends now? And if you asked them if I was their friend, they would say, yes.

What I have found is that, at first, friends formed in previous lives are cordial when I suggest getting together after a long stretch of time. I can hear an ever so slight undertone of puzzlement, though. Yet they never put me off – in fact, their demeanor turns warm – and they flex their schedule to book time with me. Often, my friend will say that our get-together has reminded him that he, too, needs to renew friendships with people he once prized but, regretfully, with whom he has let the relationship lapse.

So, as my former corporate mate and funny friend John, whom I haven’t seen in 10 years, used to say as I blathered on and on, “What’s your point, Rich?” It’s this:

Periodically rewiring yourself back to the people who connected you to life-shaping experiences, ideas, and influentials will remind you of who you were, snap you out of who you may be pretending to be, and set priorities for who you want to be.

Sorry, John, I have to add a corollary:

The joy of enduring, albeit interrupted, friendships is far more life-giving than the cheap thrill of networking-by-numbers.

So, pick someone you remember warmly – your first boss, for instance — and surprise him or her with a handwritten letter (okay, an email or call can suffice).

3 likely outcomes from that contact.

1. You will not know what to say, nor will your former boss – at least at first. That’s because, of course, what you had in common has dissipated – or so you think. Small talk for awhile in your letter or call. Then, say something that has long stuck in your mind and soul about that person, something memorable, something he said that made you turn left in your career rather than right, some parable of his that you have passed on or should have passed on to a younger colleague of yours. If you write, edit out the mushiness on the second draft: make it more affirmation than affection.
2. Your old boss will respond with surprise and appreciation. She likely will tell you that all is well in her life despite the early signs of her husband’s dementia and that she continues to enjoy her work but finds more meaning in stuffing envelopes for breast cancer awareness campaigns. And she will make wonderful comments about your contributions when you worked for her and even more wonderful accolades about who you are as a good person. This is the stuff you knew, or rather have always wanted to believe. But now you have it from someone for whom time has not skewed your true worth.
3. You will be inspired to repeat the reconnecting exercise with others. And you should. But wait a month. Let the good feelings and the memories distill for awhile. Get beyond the sincere words from an outsider and translate them as truisms about you. Then, go ye into the world and do likewise.

When you’re ready for the next batch of revived friendships, here are
5 people to consider.

1. The administrative assistant to the executive with whom you dealt the most. She or he was the kindly gatekeeper to someone you needed to achieve your goals. But, equally important, she taught you, perhaps subtly, how to negotiate your way through power.
2. The CEO who served the organization faithfully and effectively but who may have overstayed and was removed, maybe unceremoniously. He could use some psychological backfilling – so could you, perhaps — about the rich tradition of the organization and the often unheralded contributions of employees – like yours.
3. The consultant who went miles beyond compensated time not only to produce results that made you look good but to teach you how to think. Money was his or her reward at the time, but a word of appreciation will be much richer now.
4. The colleague who never let you get too serious about yourself. He may not have been that spectacular in his job, but he sure could figure out how the two of you could get the really important stuff done, without the politics and propaganda.
5. Yourself. What a strange idea. I don’t want to go too far into your psyche, but try this: write yourself a letter that reminds you of what you tried to do two or three jobs ago, some regret at having failed occasionally, and a paragraph on why you were good, real good at what you attempted to do. Mail it, but don’t open the letter when it arrives. You won’t have to.

Richard Skaare 05.20.09

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I once hula-hooped for 72 minutes as a kid — a record in my old neighborhood that I’m sure remains unbroken. Hula Hoops were the rage back then. Wham-O, which trademarked the name, reportedly sold more than 100 million of the plastic hoops in the U.S. in just over a year.

The Hula Hoop’s popularity came from its simplicity, availability, ease-of-learning, and competitiveness. The molded plastic ring cost $1.98 (equal to $14.88 today). If you didn’t have one, all your friends did, and a bit of kissing up could get you a loaner. For a 10-year old, the learning curve was about 10 minutes. Contests abounded: how long could you gyrate, how many hoops could you keep going at once, etc.

One more note: The Hula Hoop product created a new phenomenon but rotating a hoop around your body certainly was not new. The ancients did it and, today, you can see hula-hooping in stage acts and cheering contests. In other words, what was considered a fad had history and sustainability.

Now to the issue I want to raise. The Hula Hoop craze makes me think about business fads. Management jumps into them because the concepts seem simple, packaged programs from consultants are readily available, adoption doesn’t appear all that difficult, and, heck, all the competitors are into it.

Organizational experts Danny Miller and Jon Hartwick shared some fascinating insights into such fads in a 2002 Harvard Business Review article that I recently pulled out of my files. They pinpoint eight factors that seduce executives into signing up for big-bucks change programs and the subsequent failings of those programs. Here they are, paraphrased and interpreted by me.

1. Simple. Though easy for anyone to grasp and laced with memorable buzzwords and acronyms, the fad’s simplicity ultimately doesn’t synchronize well with the complexity of the organization,
2. Prescriptive. The implementation formula seems straight-forward but is open to personal and often problematic interpretation and application.
3. Falsely encouraging. Fads promise what management wants — more productive employees, more satisfied customers – but come up short on measureable criteria for success.
4. One-size-fits-all. Industries differ, competitors differ, and departments differ. Why would anyone think that one seemingly novel approach could be universally applied?
5. Easy to cut-and-paste. Parts of a fad sometimes can be easily bolted onto an organization’s ongoing operations but then the purported impact of the full program is not realized. Nothing much changes; the status quo trudges on.
6. In tune with the zeitgeist. The realization by a lagging organization that leadership skills, for example, are deficient opens the door for leadership development fads. But is the problem with the next generation of executives or the current group?
7. Novel, not radical. Does the fad challenge management’s thinking, assumptions, and values, or does it simply repackage and repurpose what won’t change?
8. Legitimized by gurus and disciples. Creators of fads become increasingly impeccable and untouchable as their band of quick-fix devotees grow.

Back to the hula hoop metaphor. Keep in your mind simplicity, availability, ease-of-learning, and competitiveness. When tempted by the latest-and-greatest, how can management decide if it has the legs that can get the organization running faster? The answer is actually simple: first, decide if the organization has the legs. I offer three questions for decision-makers to ponder.

1. Does your organization need a total body makeover program or simply some stretching exercises?
   As kids, my friends and I didn’t (couldn’t afford) two weeks at a sports camp. Our Hula Hoops provided entertainment and kept us skinny. That appealed to adults like our parents. However, they had a tougher time learning to hula-hoop because they were intimidated and too self-conscious. But when they realized that, if they could wiggle their hips while dancing, they certainly could keep the hoop moving and have some real fun.

   So, managers, build on what employees are doing naturally, give them confidence to do something different, let them have fun, and watch your organization quickly get into shape.

2. Does the top of the organization have the right attitude to convince the middle to get moving?
   Hula-hooping is 80% a mental exercise: believe that you can do it and you likely will. The same is true of organizations. Executives who are willing to learn and change by first enrolling themselves in a new-wave program are much more credible and persuasive to the rest of the body than if they had bought a packaged candy program for “the troops.”
3. If the organization regains some pudginess a year after the regimen of the initial program, can a routine of light workouts return the organization to fitness?
   Hula-hooping for more than an hour was a killer even when I was young. But thereafter – I mean a few days thereafter – I could do it again with much less pain. If I were to pick up a Hula Hoop today … no, forget that idea. My point is, you may want to sweat your organization into shape, but plan ahead for routines that will keep it trim.

Richard Skaare 05.14.09
Photo credit: Tony Fischer, Carpe Diem Photography (a.k.a. on Flickr: Tony the Misfit)

©2009 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.