I am hopelessly bad at this. I get tongue tied, lose my train of thought, and forget something I wanted to say.
Someone shared this with me, and I thought it was great. Even more, I witnessed him make a fantastic toast: it was heartfelt, touching, and wonderful. The secret? Continue reading
I find feedback hard. I discount the positive, and I overreact to the negative.
Someone I trust said something interesting to me: “You don’t have to take all the feedback as true. But pay attention to the feedback that really bothers you.”
I thought that was a great comment to keep in mind when you receive feedback. My other observation? How seriously I take the feedback is proportionate to how much I respect the person.
If there are people who respect you, take a moment. Give them some real feedback about what they do well, and suggest some actionable items on how to work on their weaknesses. You’d be surprised on your impact.
A great article on someone’s approach to feedback: read about a high school valedictorian’s effort that will blow you away.
I sometimes co-teach a class with an old colleague who’s now a professor…and this week I came to his class on leadership. So, as always I tend to talk about Lessons Learned as a guest speaker. Little did I know I was going to have a guest myself. Continue reading
That’s my saying…what do I mean?
It’s very hard to ignore work. Once you start reading emails, you will be lost to everyone around you. If you spend all your hours at work, your universe will be defined by the office. When you work on the weekends, you get annoyed at interruptions….except that’s when your friends and family get to see you.
If you let it, work will be come the hot cup of coffee: impossible to ignore.
So make sure you focus on leaving the office at a reasonable time. Don’t look at your blackberry constantly. Take vacations. Be present when you need to be. Put down the hot cup of coffee.
Recently, someone told me about a young woman who’s looking to change jobs. She’s taken a course in the field she’s interested in, but hasn’t made the move yet. Here’s what I would share with her.
Continue reading
Some of you have the My Lessons Learned one pager posted where you work, which is really humbling to me that people find it that valuable that they want it as a reminder. Recently, someone told me that she has highlighted the ones that she wants to work on specifically as part of her development plan as a daily reminder.
I thought that was such a great idea: there are times when some of the lessons might be particularly relevant for what you’re dealing with or what you want to focus on improving…and highlighting it is a great reminder to focus your attention. And as you master those, you can focus on others. Until you’ve mastered the whole list.
Full disclosure: it’s been 20 + years, and I’m still working on it.
I heard this at a training session and love it. This is about how you should handle very senior meetings or encounters.
When you’re presenting/in a meeting/talking with someone who is significantly senior to you, this is the right strategy.
Too often I see people try to fill up the whole hour. They fill their presentation with lots of data. They leave the conclusion to the end. They hang around even though the topic is completed. They can seem like the wallflower wanting the attention of the football captain.
Without fail, my best presentations to senior people have been the ones which accomplish the objective of the meeting in the shortest time possible. In one meeting, I hadn’t even gotten past the first page before the senior person flipped through the entire deck and said “I agree. Anything you need from me?” At first I was dismayed: “Wait! I spent hours on this deck! I want to go through it!” But then my boss said to me afterwards, “Great job. Usually she takes the whole hour going through the presentation line by line.” I prefer the drive by.
Senior folks are smart and they don’t have time. The faster you’re in and out, the better.
I was asked to participate on a multicultural panel regarding gender and race, and I thought I’d do a little research since it had been awhile since I researched the topic. This article from Scientific American, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter” was interesting. Continue reading
“You’re either part of the problem, part of the solution, or part of the landscape.”
Choose to be part of the solution. You may not always have the answer, but you’ll always have a point of view.
Share it. Don’t fade into the background.