Nominated for "Best of..." Help Out With a Vote!

All Things Workplace has been nominated for the Top Leadership Blog of 2008 by a crack team put together by Kevin Eikenberry.

This really is an honor, especially after seeing the other nominees.

I would appreciate it if you would cast your vote here for All Things Workplace. If you've enjoyed the posts and learned something new, it would be terrific to see that acknowledged in the most "bloggy" way:-)

And thanks, as always, for your daily support and comments.

--Steve Roesler

Person Steve Roesler

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You, Creativity, and Business

Do you consider yourself to be "creative?"

Do you want to breed some creativity in your workplace?

Then we need to help people, including ourselves, get back to first grade. And be intentional about it.

I started my career as a teacher. If you ask first-graders how many of them are "creative," pretty much all of the hands in the class go up. They smile. They show their colorful drawings and finger painting and maybe even compose a song along the way.

What happens when the same question is asked of the same kids a few years later?

The responses drop to nearly zero. And the kids are still in elementary school.

Fast forward to your business meeting. Someone says, "Let's get creative about how to grow the market in Asia. We've got until 5 o'clock."

Are you and I seeing the same thing here?

We've got little kids who are convinced they are creative. Then we've got bigger little kids who begin to think not. Now we've got adults who are sure they aren't creative but are being asked to create--and with a deadline.

This post is a call for thought, not a rant. (Well, a little one). It seems to me that we have taken an entire population of creative youngsters, told them to color inside the box (or else!), and now tell them to "think outside the box"--(or else!).

Nine things to encourage creativity

Silvano Arieti  wrote a book in 1976 called Creativity: The Magic Synthesis (you can get a used copy through amazon.com). Here are his nine conditions and the reasons why:

1. Aloneness. Being alone allows the person to make contact with the self and be open to new kinds of inspiration.

2. Inactivity. Periods of time are needed to focus on inner resources and to be removed from the constraints of routine activities.

3. Daydreaming. Allows exploration of one's fantasy life and venturing into new avenues for growth.

4. Free thinking. Allows the mind to wander in any direction without restriction and permits the similarities among remote topics or concepts to emerge.

5. State of readiness to catch similarities. One must practice recognizing similarities and resemblances across to perceptual of cognitive domains.

6. Gullibility. A willingness to suspend judgment allows one to be open to possibilities without treating them as nonsense.

7. Remembering & replaying past traumatic conflicts. Conflict can be transformed into more stable creative products.

8. Alertness. A state of awareness that permits the person to grasp the relevance of seemingly insignificant similarities.

9. Discipline. A devotion to the techniques, logic, and repetition that permit creative ideas to be realized.

So now we go to our boss and say "I'd like to have some extended alone time for inactivity and daydreaming so I can come up with a creative idea for your strategy."

(Please let me know how that conversation goes).

You can act to create creativity

Then next time you're in charge of a meeting or idea session, how about using some of the above items to lay a foundation for creativity.

• Build in "alone time" by having people think about the task well in advance.

• Use something like a mind-mapping activity to address numbers 4 and 5.

• Suspend judgment and encourage the craziest ideas in the room, because

• Alertness (number 8) will connect the "crazy" dots

I hope you'll use these to start thinking about how you can recapture creativity. And be intentional about it. It sounds almost like an oxymoron--"intentional creativity"--but according to number 9 it isn't.

Intentional Creativity--that's a lot easier to sell to your boss than some alone time.

The Business of Forgiveness

Downsizing. Corruption. Bullying. Harassment. "Do more with less." Reduced benefits. Add to that list some of the people with whom you have to work every day (see Bob Sutton's No Asshole Rule).

There's a lot of opportunity for anger and hurt on the job.

Where you find anger, you find the need for forgiveness.

Why?

It's good for you. For your physical and mental health. For your relationships. For your ability to move on peacefully and productively.

Why forgiveness instead of revenge?

Christina M. Puchalski, M.D. is the Founder and Director of the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine. She says:

"On a personal level, forgiveness of self can help us achieve an inner peace as well as peace with others and with God. Wrongdoing against others and ourselves can result in guilt and resentment.  This can then lead to self-recrimination and self-loathing; it also can create a distance or disconnect from self and others. Resentment can give away to hate and intolerance. Forgiveness is the first stage of self-love and acceptance. It is also the basic building block of loving relationships with others."

It's not the offense. It's your response to it.

I confess, I'm not always a quick-to-forgive person once I've felt "wronged". I give people a very long leash and a long time to "get their act together" if things aren't going well. But there is some point at which I just say "that's it" and cut them off from my life. It is very infrequent, but the pattern is always the same. I decide that the differences are irreconcilable. So, the relationship in its present form is finished.

Does that serve me well?

Only if I genuinely forgive. It is both possible and imperative to do that and, at the same time, acknowledge that the nature of the relationship may not be productive. This is the harder part, I think. It begs the nagging question, "If I can forgive, why can't I just continue?"

Sometimes it's possible. More often, it becomes apparent that I wasn't seeing clearly to begin with and that continuing the relationship--without changing expectations--would not be peaceful or productive for either of us.

Dr. Frederic Luskin specializes in Learning to Forgive. He explains that:

"The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health."

Dr. Luskin's 9 Steps to Forgiveness

1. Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience.

2. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.

3. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning their action. What you are after is to find peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the "peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story."

4. Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes--or ten years ago. Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.

5. At the moment you feel upset practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's fight or flight response.

6. Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize that "unenforceable rules" you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them.

7. Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt seek out new ways to get what you want.

8. Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you.

9. Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive.

If you would like to explore other resources, check out The Forgiveness Web  and Forgiveness Net.

Think about this today: Your workplace is a web of relationships. Being at peace with them can only make your own life a lot more satisfying.

photo attribution: www.thirdway.com 

 

Communicating on the Right Wavelength

"The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through."--Sydney J. Harris

Communication: Don't Mix and Match Your Verbal Wardrobe

I want to offer an easy, uncluttered model to use when you want to bump up your communication game.

Think about your levels of interaction on a scale of Nicety all the way to Intimacy. One of the keys to keeping your interactions on target is making sure that you "meet people where they are" and not try to take them where you want to go before they are ready. (They may never be ready).

Here's a way to look at it on five levels of increasing depth:

1. Niceties. "Hey, how are you?"

"Fine,how are you?"

"Ok."

Polite acknowledgment of another person is part of social graciousness. If you or the other person doesn't want to take it any further, that's fine. Just don't mistake it for anything other than what it is.  But don't discount the social importance of niceties, either. It' s amazing how many people get miffed when they offer a "Hey, waddup?" and don't get a response.

2. Facts. If the other person is into facts, stay with the facts until (s)he moves on. If that's where they stay, just ask if there is anything that you should do with those facts.

3. Thoughts and Ideas. These are different from facts. They reflect what's going on inside someone's head. This is also where we get into difficulty by passing judgment on someone in the middle of their personal brainstorm. Stay in non-evaluative brainstorm mode with them.

4. Feelings. When people start expressing how they feel, you've hit a pretty high level on their personal trust scale. The best way to keep it is to acknowledge the legitimacy of how they feel. The best way to lose it is to tell them they shouldn't feel that way.

5. Intimacy. Familiarity that reaches a deeply personal level.

In the workplace you may not reach this level inside the confines of the office building. In fact, it may be totally inappropriate. But highly relational people can have a tendency to unconsciously go here because it's so innately comfortable and meaningful (for them).

I can't tell you the number of coaching/advising engagements I've had with people who have gotten themselves into difficulty at this level. They've said things that were taken as "way too intimate" by others. Fortunately, most well-meaning people "get it" when they are coached regarding the distinctions in levels and how other people may interpret personal warmth or familiarity.

If you want to keep your emloyer--and yourself--out of litigation, save your intimacy-level conversations for home and friends.

How to Use This?

The next time you're engaged in a discussion, pay attention to where the other person is operating on the "depth" chart.

1. Listen and stay with them.

2. If you want to move from one level to another, say something like: "We've been talking about the factual data related to the Romanian project. Would you be willing to hear some thoughts and ideas I have about this?"

They'll tell you if they need to play with the facts some more. And your question will be appreciated because it acknowledges that you've really heard them and aren't going to automatically step on their "stuff."

3. Building trust takes place at levels 3 and 4. The more time you can spend there, the closer the working relationship can become.

Share this with the people around you. It may get you out of "mix" and into "match."

What do you think?

Getting Employees Engaged: How About the First Date?

With all the talk about employee engagement, it's easy to forget that there's no one to be engaged until someone agrees to accept an engagement with the company.

The Law of Employee Attraction: How Do You Become a Recruiting Peacock?

Sales people are quick to let you know that nothing happens in a company until a sale is made. And even that can't happen until good prospects are found, courted, and closed.

Tim Wright, (that's not Tim in the photo!) fellow EE Network member, sparked my thinking on this with his Brand EE post. He pointed to Julie Norquist Roy's article, Your Brand Here: Why Employer Brand Is Critical to Retention and Engagement, in the May issue of Talent Management.

He was especially struck by this:

The employee's...first impression may extend far beyond company offerings in position, salary and benefits. Today's workforce is equally concerned with opportunities for career advancement, rewards and recognition, management style, and company culture. Together these blend to make up the employer value proposition and employer brand, that impact the employee experience and, ultimately, the hire's decision to join and remain with an organization.

So I decided to check with one of my Age of Conversation co-authors, Dan Schawbel, who lives and breathes "Brand" every day. For those who want a peek at what a pro is seeing when it comes to employer branding, here's a stream-of-consciousness insight from Dan:

Employer branding isn't revolutionary, but it has  been streamlined by the outbreak of social media. With a minimal budget, any company can portray an honest and impactful brand to a worldwide audience.  From podcasts highlighting what it would be like to work there, to a strong presence on social networks like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, companies can almost physically touch applicants like never before.  Why would they want to do this?  Companies are looking to recruit passive candidates, whom are either happily employed at respective companies or who are attending colleges or universities.  In this war for talent, companies are being forced to break out of their "legal chains" and embrace new tools to communicate with excellent candidates.  Although employers are not yet ready to accept video resumes and websites, there is research to show that they will screen candidates by their personal eBrand through Google.

Who are out in front of the employer branding pack?

Some companies, such as Microsoft, have had breakthroughs in the employer branding regime, with viewmyworld.com.  Other companies have stepped foot onto the Second Life platform.  They have met candidates through virtual job fairs online and actually hired them in real life.  Other companies have leveraged Twitter to push out job postings to candidates interested in the company.  What better to communicate the opening of a job or introduce a candidate into a new role than a blog.  Polly Pearson (www.pollypearson.com) is one of the first HR Executives from an enterprise to blog about corporate culture and actually interview employees for her blog posts.  The goal with employer branding is to close the gap between hearing about a job and actually holding a position in the company.  Those who will succeed in this area will use social media in order to attract, recruit and retain new talent.

Is this what you're hearing in your organization? If so, is it being done well?

Person Dan Schawbel

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