When listening is hard

Sometimes I'm at a meeting and it's hard for me to listen to whoever is speaking.  This is especially true if I have a big deadline.  It's not the speaker's fault.  The problem is that I'm at work, focused on my goals, and they're talking about something else.  I can't wait to get to back to the tasks that will move me toward my goals.

It happened this morning.  The speaker was a friend.  He's smart.  He was describing the strategy of his organization.  It was an impressive strategy, and he was describing it eloquently.  But still, I could hardly make myself listen.  It just wasn't something that was directly moving me closer to my challenging goals.  When I feel as if my goals leave no room for error, and no time to spare, then I can't easily focus on what someone else has to say on some other subject, even if that person is my friend and what he's saying makes sense.

So what to do?  One thing that often works for me is to focus on my breathing.  I'm there in the meeting, tuning into my inhalations and exhalations, and suddenly I'm making eye contact with the speaker.  I'm taking it all in.  I catch their eye and I can tell they notice and appreciate my attention.  The more I focus on my breath, the more I focus on their words, as if my lungs are connected to my ears.

Why does this seem to work for me?  I think, given my practice of meditation, when I pay attention to my breathing I remember to tune into the present moment.  In this moment, in this meeting, I'm not going to move any closer to my top work goals.  So in this moment, I can forget about those goals and listen closely to my friend.

Chores that make a difference

Some weekends, I'm energized by the chores I do at home.  Other times, the chores just feel like an obligation. They bore me, and make me crabby.  Why?

I think I'm energized by chores that make a lasting impact.  Last weekend, for example, I reorganized the garage in a way that created more space for the cars.  It is SO much easier to get the cars in and out, and their is much more room to walk around the cars carrying stuff.  The changes should last because I've got bicycles, carts, wheelbarrows and other items hung on the walls that used to rest against walls.

This is pretty mundane stuff, but doing chores that make a lasting difference feels good for me.  The weekends that make me crabby are those in which I simply make repairs, clean things, or do other work that doesn't actually leave a place BETTER than it was before I started.  If I just KEEP UP, or just restore a room to the condition it used to be in, I feel as if I'm running in place.

I have to be willing to do this restorative work.  It isn't glamorous work.  I have to share it with the rest of the family.  But I want to be conscious of how much more I enjoy making IMPROVEMENTS.  Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance recommends that you become mindful of the activities that you enjoy at work and those that you don't, and then fill your work day with activities that energize you.  This same strategy applies to your activities at home.  It helps to choose those home activities that energize you.

If I favor the chores I most enjoy--the chores that make a lasting change in the home--I think I'll be happier, I'll contribute more to the family, and we'll all win.  Or, at a minimum, we'll all be able to get in and out of the garage!

If you could go shopping at Amazon

Imagine the ultimate department store.  If you decide you want to go there, you can get there in 10 seconds.  You walk in.  You ask to see some headphones in Electonics.  Instantly, you are transported to the right department and there in front of you are hundreds of headphones.  Feeling overwhelmed, you ask to see just the noise cancelling headphones.  Now you have a few dozen choices.  It's still hard to decide until you notice that there is a sign above each model that lists the "Average Customer Review".  Now you focus on the few that average 4 out of 5 stars or higher and are in your price range.

You pick one up, wondering what are its best and worst features.  Suddenly, 55 people show up who bought that same pair of headphones and have strong opinions about them.  They all want to tell you about their experiences to help you make the right choice.  Again, you don't know where to begin.  So someone suggests, "why don't you first ask the people who loved the headphones, the ones who gave them 5 stars?"  You agree, and now you only have 20 people to deal with.  They quickly tell you what they liked and didn't like.  Then you check with a few of the people who did NOT like the headphones.  

You repeat this process for the 2 or 3 other most highly rated and affordable headphones.  Finally, you make your choice, basing it on detailed customer feedback, confident that you will be satisfied.

You decide you want to also get a new coffeemaker, some books, garden tools, and clothing.  In every case you buy with confidence because of all the customers who let you know what worked well for them and what did not work.

This fantasy department store is how I see Amazon.com.  I know this sounds like a commercial, but the site never ceases to amaze me, and I rarely end up with a product that disappoints me.

You're Hired!!!!

For the last 2 weeks, my top priority has been picking the right candidate for an important job.  There is a lot of risk in this hiring decision.  As of right now, none of the candidates has the skills and knowledge to do the job.  So I've had to decide based on my best guess about potential.

I think I have my man.  I had been thinking for 2 weeks about the recommendations regarding interviews of the book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance  The author says that your top priority in interviews should be to find out whether the TASKS that the job requires are the types of tasks that the person has shown himself to be attracted to.

1. In this person's history, have they tended to volunteer for similar tasks?  
2. Explore what activities the person finds most rewarding.  Will this job provide similar rewards?
3. What activities has the person been successful doing.  Will similar things be required by this job?

If the answers to the three questions above is yes, then the job applicant has strengths in the types of activities the job requires.  I just finished the interviews, and  I think I one of the candidates has the strengths needed for the job.  He does not yet have the skills and knowledge.  But I think the job fits his strengths so well that he'll train himself with the intensity of an athlete preparing for the Olympics.

The Messages We Send

Last week, I had some training at work based on the book The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life.  I found one exercise especially thought provoking.  We each had to list our bad habits and why we find each habit attractive and hard to quit.  Then we had to think about the messages each habit sends to the people around us.

This part of the exercise had an impact on me.  What message do I send my co-workers if I go to a meeting and catch up on my e-mails?  What message do I send my kids if I have a few drinks because I'm upset?  I think my bad habits are relatively innocent, and I have lots of great habits, too.  But when I think about the messages my worst habits send to friends and family, I feel motivated to change.

The instructor described a study of people trying to quit smoking.  What group of people has had by far the most success quitting smoking?   Pregnant women.  Sometimes knowing what your habits do to others is more compelling than knowing what your habits do to you.

Hit and Run Mentoring

Every Friday morning at work, an alarm goes off on my computer reminding me to mentor someone.  Anyone.  Look across the sea of cubicles for someone who doesn't look too busy.  Someone I haven't talked to in a while.  Someone I usually don't work with.

I pick someone and ask if they've got 10 minutes to go to a huddle room and talk.  They look puzzled, wondering what I'm looking for.  We get to the room and I tell them I've made a habit of what I call "hit and run mentoring".  I just check on someone, find out how they are doing, let them talk about their projects or anything that's bothering them.  I tell them I believe in mentoring people at work, just as we've all been taught to do, but that the formality of asking someone, "Can you be my mentor?", is often so intimidating that nobody gets around to it.  And if you do get around to it, what if the person you ask doesn't really want to do be your mentor, but they feel they can't say no?  Will your meetings be clouded by their resentment?  Or what if they DO want to be your mentor, and you soon learn that the relationship doesn't work for you?  How do you get out of it?

To avoid these issues, most of my mentoring is "hit and run".  I ensure the other person that there's no commitment.  I just want to hear what's going on with them for a few minutes and offer suggestions if they want them.  I usually pick people who have a lot less experience in the company than I do or who are lower ranking managers, people I'm more likely to be able to help.

I find that my 10 minute "mentees" are usually quite grateful for the interest I show in them, all the questions I ask, and the coaching I offer.  The experience often leaves me with a little high that lasts for an hour or more.  It fits with my personality since I've tested high for "Woo", which amounts to "schmoozing" or bantering with acquaintances.  So it fits my strengths and gives me the reward of giving to others.  It also makes me a little less shy about approaching people higher up the org chart than I am and asking them for 10 minutes of mentoring when I need help.

Let yourself go

For the last few weeks, I let myself go.  Some tough personal stuff happened.  And I got lax in some of the habits that usually keep me happy and optimistic.

I wasn't meditating every day.  I wasn't as careful about nutrition.  I almost never exercised.  I wasn't writing every day.  I wasn't listing all the things I am grateful for.

This isn't unusual.  A lot of people let themselves go when times get rough.  Things are better now and I'm getting back to my good habits.  But I'm wondering why it's so tempting to let yourself go in hard times.  

Maybe I stopped listing what I have to be grateful for, stopped meditating, and stopped seeking pleasure because I didn't WANT to cheer up.  Not yet.  Part of me may have sensed that if I worked on happiness, I'd fail to face my pain.  Maybe sometimes it's healthy to stop being healthy.  For a while.

I'm not really sure.  Would it have been better to keep meditating, writing, exercising, and counting my blessings?  Would this have made the last few weeks a little less bleak?   Or would these "happy habits" have distanced me from pain that I needed to address?

Can you love this job?

I have to interview three people next week for a critical job.  I'll be working with them for the next five years or so.  If I pick the right person, they'll make my life easier.  Pick the wrong person, and I'll work harder than ever as I try to get them to deliver.

It won't be easy because none of the candidates has the skills and knowledge to hit the ground running.  I'll have to pick based on my guess about their potential versus picking based on what they've already shown they can do.

Traditionally, people will hire someone based on the answer to this question, "Do I think they can do the job?"  I need to change the question.  "Do I think they can love the job?"

This is the recommended hiring strategy from the book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance  The author says that most Human Resource departments put too much emphasis on whether the candidate has skills and knowledge.  Not enough emphasis on how the candidate FEELS about the work.

It won't be easy to assess how they feel.  But my goal next week is to explore more than each candidate's relevant skill and knowledge.  I need to look for evidence that they LIKE this kind of work.  If so, the work may line up with their personalities.  If it does, that's more than half the battle.  Skills and knowledge can be developed.  Passion cannot.

Finding your strengths

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance,by Marcus Buckingham, makes a surprising claim.  Your strengths are NOT necessarily what you are good at.  You could be good at something, but the activity might not be a "strength" because it doesn't engage your strongest passions and interests.

So how to find your strengths?  The author recommends you just pay attention to how you feel as you do different activities.  When something has you completely captured your attention and you've lost track of time, stop and write down exactly what you are doing.  Buckingham offers suggestions on how to take all the specific notes and identify common themes so that you can identify the activities that make you happy and engaged.  You can then work to fill your day with more of these activities and spend less time on things that weaken you.

The BEST Strengths Book

I think this is the best of the "Strengths" books.  The author, Marcus Buckingham, has written or co-written a variety of best-sellers, beginning in 2001 with Now, Discover Your Strengths.  As a researcher with the Gallup Organization (the people with the famous Gallup polls) he and colleagues such as Donald Clifton, analyzed over 1.7 million interviews to define 34 positive personality themes that help people succeed and, more importantly, learned that we are all different--we each have several dominant personality themes that cause us to do well at some activities, but not others.  They developed an online test that they thoroughly tested to verify that, if you take the test, it will accurately identify your personal themes.

This was followed by StrengthsFinder 2.0, Strengths-Based Leadership, and several others.  Everyone in my family has taken this test and the results feel true for all of us.  I also have known lots of people at work who have taken this test in the past and found it insightful.

So why do I think Buckingham's latest book is his best?  Because the previous books left me and others wondering how to apply the insights that came from the on-line test.  OK, so my themes are "Includer", "Focus", "Connected", "Maximiser", and "Woo".  What do I do with this information?  EVERYONE I know who has taken the test has told me the same thing.  Everyone has said, "Now what?"

I suspect Buckingham has heard this feedback for the last 10 years.  He finally gets practical in Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance.  The book is step by step method to identify your strengths, to build on them, and to fill your work with activities that leverage these strengths.  In addition, he does something the other books never did.  He addresses your weaknesses--those things that conflict with your personality so much that they drain you, even if you're good at them.  His method helps you identify these and gives you strategies to minimize these activities in your job.

The methods are simple but require commitment.  For example, in the course of each day, you take notes on what you were doing when you felt engaged and absorbed in what you were doing and what you couldn't wait for the activity to be over.  By the time you complete the process, if you follow it with rigor and dedication, you are likely to transform your daily work into something that invigorates you instead of something that drains you.

I feel as if there is no excuse anymore.  With the information I've seen in this book, if I don't use my strengths at work, I have nobody to blame but myself.  Buckingham has given me all the tools.  But it's up to me to use them.

Can you be Great at Something without Talent?

Marcus Buckingham, in his book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, tells a story of a kid who hated swimming but had amazing natural ability.  When his parents encouraged him to show the school swim coach what he could do, he tried to fake incompetence but his mom saw what he was doing and yelled at him, so he swam in his normal way and soon found himself on the team.  He went through years of practices and competitions, won swim meet after swim meet, was the champion of the school, but hated every minute of it.  He eventually found another career as a musician, a career he was passionate about, that brought him immense satisfaction.

Buckingham used this story to illustrate his point that you can be great at something even if it doesn't allow you to express your most personal "talents".  Buckingham defines "talent" differently than I'm used to thinking of it.  For him, a "talent" is not an ability.  It is more of a preference or a pattern.  Based on identical twin studies, these patterns start at birth that only get MORE pronounced with age.  If you have what he calls the "talent" of "empathy", this doesn't necessarily mean you have an amazing ability to empathize.  It means, instead, that if you are doing something that allows you to apply "empathy" to the task, you're going to love doing the task.  You will get totally focused on it, losing track of time, and--looking back on what you did--you'll feel immense satisfaction.

The swimmer was a "success" at swimming by any external measure.  He had a shelf full of swimming trophies.  But he couldn't apply his best "talents" while swimming.  Therefore, it gave him no joy or passion.  Swimming was not a "strength" for him.  From the equation I shared in yesterday's post, which comes from this same book, Strength = Talent + Skills + Knowledge.  The boy had swimming Skills + Knowledge, but it engaged none of his Talents, so he had no passion for it--it brought him misery rather than joy.  He couldn't combine all three of these into a strength until he picked up a guitar.

The future Hall of Fame tennis player, Andre Agassi, may be an even more amazing example of being great at something that you hate.  I only read the first few chapters of his book, Open: An Autobiography (Vintage), but I might go back to it to see how this plays out.  Despite having one of the greatest tennis careers ever, he constantly refers to hating tennis, to being driven into tennis by his parents, to his lack of joy in the game.  Maybe he should have picked up a guitar.

Strength = Talent + Skill + Knowledge

Today, I read about the equation Strength = Talent + Skill + Knowledge in the book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance.  The book is a guide to transforming your job into an experience that lets you spend most of your time doing what you do best.

"Talents" are traits that you have that make you enjoy some activities much more than others.  Examples from this and past books by this author include "competitive", "ideation", "self assurance", "empathy", "includer", and "winning others over".  These aren't strengths by themselves.  They are just part of the equation.  If you have a trait such as "empathy" and have no skills or knowledge to go with it, such as training in medicine or psychology, you don't have a strength.

Strength comes from cultivating and applying skills and knowledge in an activity that fits with your "talents".  Because my 14 year old son is "competitive", "analytical", and "self assured", he enjoys expressing strong opinions about competitive sports.  But to turn these passions into a strength, he had to add skills and knowledge to his "talents".  He had to develop writing skills.  He had to turn himself into an encyclopedia of sports statistics and principles.  He had to spend hundreds of hours studying game film.  Only then did he combine his Talent + Skill + Knowledge into the Strength that allows him to be one of the top three writers on NFLMocks.com

"You'll be better off if you spare my life"

I'm currently involved in a negotiation in which the other party is as nasty and bloodthirsty as the guy on the right.  Their poor grasp of reality has led them to imagine I've wronged them in ways that never happened.  They feel justified now in attacking me viciously.  What few facts they DO understand, they distort without hesitation or shame in their zeal to do me harm.

So what can I do?  How can I negotiate effectively to get an outcome that meets my needs?  I can't appeal to their sense of fairness, because they are not fair.  I can't appeal to their conscience because it is missing.  I can't reason with them because they are irrational.

All that is left is appealing to their interests.  Make it clear that this attack is not in their interest.

This attack, as nasty as it has been, at least has reinforced everything I've read about negotiation.  I can see why the classic book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, describes the core of successful negotiation as identifying and then addressing both your own interests and the interests of the other person.  

Fortunately, 99% of the time, I negotiate with decent people. Both parties want what's good and fair, but have different priorities and perspectives.  But in the worst case, when I'm dealing with a really nasty person, I've learned that I can still broker a deal.  The other person may hate me, may want to do me harm, may be dishonest, unreasonable, deluded, and corrupt--but they have interests.  I must find those interests.  And make them see that those interests will best be served if they change their position.