Category: Leadership

No Compromise on Religious Traditions

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Dear Jean,

Here comes another religious holiday (not my religion), and all the little kiddies will be hunting eggs at my boss’s ranch.  If I refuse to take my child to the big shindig, I’m a spoilsport.  If I take her, I’m a hypocrite.  Please help me, Jean.  If you can come up with some compromise, I’ll be eternally grateful.

Reply:

Based on the information you gave me, I don’t see any need for a compromise.  The party conflicts with your religious traditions, and that’s that!  You can explain that to your daughter in words she can understand.  Remind her of all the fun activities that coincide with her own traditions as a way to soften her charge that you’re a spoilsport.

I don’t see any reason that you should be embarrassed about not taking your child to the party.  Just send a nice handwritten note to your boss.  Something like this would work well:

Dear Boss,

Thank you for your kind invitation to the Easter egg hunt at your ranch.  Because the party conflicts with our family’s religious beliefs, we must decline.  We appreciate your generosity and thoughtfulness.

Sincerely,

Should I Invite Her?

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Dear Jean,

My administrative assistant is a Jehovah’s Witness.  I am told she is not allowed by her religion to celebrate holidays or birthdays.  Should I invite her to attend birthday parties of her co-workers?

Reply:

It is nice manners to give her the dignity of choice.  Mostly likely, she will graciously decline.  Because you don’t fully understand her religious loyalties, ask.  She will be delighted to tell you anything you want to know.  Please don’t assume.  You may end up not inviting her to a baby shower she really wanted to attend.

I learned about the traditions of Jehovah’s Witnesses firsthand from a most delightful person, a previous receptionist of mine.  It was I who almost didn’t have a baby shower for her.  Somehow I got the idea that Jehovah’s Witnesses just said “no” to parties of any kind.  Boy, was I wrong!  A good rule of thumb is, “When in doubt, ask.”  Halloween parties are a definite “no” and anniversaries are a definite “yes.”

Bad Breath Boss

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Dear Jean,

My boss has really bad breath.  When he speaks to me, I almost gag.  What can I do to let him know of his problem?  He is a very defensive person.

Reply:

I know only two options:  Get up your courage and tell him, or stay two arms’ lengths away.

I have a client who was the person with the bad breath.  His secretary kept a bunch of mints in her desk.  As he would be walking out of the office for a meeting, she would say, “Wait, here are a couple of mints.”  It wasn’t too long before he asked her if he had a breath problem.  She told him the truth, and he was thankful to hear it.  She probably saved him a couple of teeth too.  Her courage helped her boss detect early stages of gum disease.

Punished for Honesty

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Dear Jean,

I’m a salesperson for a large company.  I feel that my sales manager overlooks and doesn’t monitor people who over exaggerate their numbers just to reach their quotas.  I feel I am being punished because I am being honest.  What should I do?

Reply:

It depends on your motives.  Are you concerned for the welfare of the company, or are you concerned that your bonuses won’t be as big as your co-workers’?  If you are truly concerned for the welfare of the company, blowing the whistle is certainly an option.  It does have its drawbacks; I’m sure you know what they are.

If you are concerned about your numbers and bonuses as they compare to your co-workers’, stop.  There is nothing you can do about someone else’s behavior on the job.  Don’t give much thought to telling anyone else at this point.  The boss will find out sooner or later, so just keep your mind on your job and be honest in reporting your quotas.

Forget Time Management…Are You Managing Your Energy?

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Phrases like “manage your time” and “do more with less” have become the buzzwords for this decade. The idea is that if you can manage your time well, you’ll be more productive in all areas of life. The only flaw in this thinking is that time is finite. In other words, you can manage time all you want and continually push yourself to get more done. But all this managing and pushing tires your brain, drains your spirit, and disengages your soul. That’s when mistakes occur and burnout ensues. The key, then, is not to simply manage your time, but also to manage your energy.

Unlike time, energy is restorable. And when you manage your energy well, you’ll have more energy for your priorities, whether they are personal or professional in nature. If you don’t manage your energy, you can’t manage your time. Sure, you can think about all the things you need to do and you can schedule them, but if you don’t have the energy to do the tasks, you won’t be able to accomplish them appropriately.

Realize, too, that managing your energy goes beyond work/life balance. While many people talk about work/life balance (devoting ample time to all areas of your life), few address those things that make life rich and fun. With so many things competing for your attention daily, you need to give attention to energy replenishment so you can devote the time your life’s priorities demand. This is why it’s important to manage your energy before you manage your time.

The Three Pillars of Energy Management

Keeping your energy in check means giving attention to your brain, your spirit, and your soul. Think of it like a three-legged stool. For the stool to be useful, you need all three legs. Remove one leg from the equation, and the stool topples over and is useless. The same is true for your energy. Therefore, to keep your energy replenished, implement the following suggestions into your daily life.

  • Stimulate Your Brain

The human brain likes control and certainty, and it’s very good at predicting the next thing that is likely to happen based on the information it has. That’s why you often feel better when you perceive you have control over a situation and feel stressed if you think you have no control over events. Additionally, the brain is programmed to fear. This is a good thing, though, because the inborn fear is what has allowed our species to evolve. The only drawback to this natural fear is that the brain will take three pieces of information and make a story out of it—usually a negative one. This negative story becomes your reality until you get another piece of data. Talk about an energy drain on your brain!

In order to replenish your brain’s energy, do the following:

  • Since your brain is part of your body, it needs to be fed the right food for optimum health. Eat three nutritious meals a day, exercise to increase the oxygen flow to your brain, and drink plenty of water to keep hydrated.
  • Reconstruct your stories. You have to purposefully stop the story and seek out the missing pieces of information. For example, if you get an email from your boss telling you not to take part in a task you volunteered for, with no explanation why, you would likely think your boss doesn’t believe you’re capable of the task. In reality, your boss may need you for another task, he or she may think the task is not challenging enough for you, or your boss may simply not need any assistance on the task any longer. But you’ll never know (and never stop the negative story) until you ask.
  • Analyze what helps and hurts your thinking ability. For instance, do 200 emails staring at you first thing in the morning make you exhausted before you even start the day? If so, then don’t do that task first thing. Do the most important things when you’re alert and at your best, as those tasks will actually energize you so you can handle the stressful tasks later.
  • Give yourself two hours a day for focused attention on a key project—the earlier in the day the better. No multi-tasking during this time! Whether you are a night or a morning person, the fact is that your brain is rested after your sleep, so this is the key time for focused attention and productivity.
  • Awaken Your Spirit

The human spirit yearns to soar. The spirit enjoys lofty goals and challenging tasks to accomplish. How spirited someone is often relates to how purposeful he or she is. In fact, it’s common that when people lose their purpose in life, they feel deflated and even depressed. Hence the phrase: “Her spirit was broken.”

An energized spirit is what catapults you out of the mundane and into a new and exciting endeavor. In order to replenish your spirit’s energy, do the following:

  • Do one thing every day that makes your spirit soar. Whether it’s reading poetry or listening to music, if you feel your spirit is fed by that, do it.
  • Think about what you want to do in your life. Dream big! Give planned time to your future in order to nurture your spirit.
  • Read things that stretch your mind. Your spirit wants to reach for the next best thing. Unleash the power of your spirit by exposing your mind to new things—even things that you feel are impossible to accomplish right now.
  • Take time each day to think and concentrate. Many people are in knowledge-oriented jobs and need some degree of quiet time. So even though a particular task must get done, that task often requires planning and thinking. Your spirit can’t gain energy to tackle big goals unless it has some quiet time to prepare. So let people know that you require quiet thinking time, and actually put this time in your schedule. If others know your needs and intentions, they will respect them.
  • Feed Your Soul

The human soul likes the familiar, the deep, and the poignant. The soul likes ritual, doing the same thing at the same time every day. It also enjoys the simple things in life, beauty, and nature. The soul is what connects you to life and to what is deeply meaningful to you.

In order to replenish your soul’s energy, do the following:

  • Clarify your intentions and plan what you want your tomorrow to be like before you go to bed. This allows your subconscious to work on your challenges and big decisions while you sleep.
  • Take time for enchantment. Linger through a museum. Enjoy preparing a simple elegant meal. Go outside regularly and really look at nature. Your soul loves beauty and wants a connection with the earth.
  • Experience the present fully. Focus on the things around you—the colors and textures. Be mindful of your current surroundings and activities rather than always trying to multi-task. Really engage in life in the moment. Feel yourself breathe.
  • Build rituals for yourself and your family. Even something as simple as eating dinner at the same time every day is a ritual. Both your soul and your brain crave ritual and gain energy from it.

Energize!

By focusing on these three areas of your life—your brain, your spirit, and your soul—you’ll gain the much needed energy to tackle life with enthusiasm and zest. With your energy fully replenished, time will no longer be an issue. You’ll feel ready to handle anything that comes your way with ease…and you’ll do it much faster. So make it a habit to stimulate your brain, awaken your spirit, and feed your soul. It’s one investment in yourself you can’t afford not to make.

Thanking the Boss’s Mom

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Dear Jean,

Our boss lives with his mother and this sweet old lady has been baking us “holiday goodies” for the office.  We love to nibble her “offerings” when we go to the break room.  Should we send the boss’s mother something?

Reply:

Of course.  A flowering plant and a thank-you note would be an ideal gift.  It would also be nice to remember her for these kind gestures during the holiday season, and if practical, on her birthday.  Aside from pleasing her, it will please your boss too – and you can’t go wrong with pleasing your boss.

They Needle Me to Drink

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Dear Jean,

I’m a lawyer and I work with a team of high-strung, deadline-oriented lawyers.  Occasionally, after a long, intense day, we go out together for a drink.  Most of them drink quite a bit.  I don’t drink at all, but I enjoy being with the group.  With holiday parties coming up, I need to know how to keep them from needling me to drink!

Reply:

Just say, “I don’t drink, thanks.”  The next time they needle you to drink, just say, “I don’t drink.”  The next time — repeat it again…..

How to Be a Memorable Leader

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If you look back over your career, chances are you can identify one or two people who stand out as memorable leaders. Even if these people didn’t hold an official leadership role, their actions and words rallied people together to achieve a common goal. And whether that goal was large or small, far reaching or contained, you remember these leaders for a long time.

While there are many great leaders in the world, not all of them are truly memorable—that is, they don’t leave an impression that lasts beyond their current accomplishment or focus. But being memorable is essential if you want long-term success. So what makes one leader memorable and puts another in the “out of sight, out of mind” category? It comes down to three key elements. Develop these characteristics in yourself and you, too, can be a memorable leader.

Know Who You Are

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” While that’s a little harsh, it does make the point that everyone must examine their life. For what? To pinpoint your “moral compass”—your true values. Memorable leaders know their values, why those values are important, and how those values play out in life.

Realize that you can’t have one set of values in your work life and a different set in your personal life. You take your set of values with you everywhere, and a mess up in one area of life can easily affect another. For example, it was a seemingly personal value that distracted and somewhat derailed Bill Clinton’s career, not a business value, which shows that values are not compartmentalized. So if you don’t examine your life and know what you stand for, you can easily get sidetracked.

Getting to know yourself starts with honesty—with others and yourself. While most people have “cash register” honesty, meaning they’d never steal money from their employer, they aren’t always honest in other ways. Perhaps they tell the world they value one thing, yet display something else. For example, some people will tout the value of hard work and claim they work harder than anyone else. Yet when you really look at their work behaviors, you find that they’re spending most of the day on long conversations that have little to do with work or are surfing the Internet—things that don’t advance the company. That’s not personal honesty or personal awareness.

If you’re having trouble knowing who you are and what you stand for, ask a trusted colleague or family member to give you feedback. You can also opt to do a formal 360-degree feedback assessment, which enables others to give objective insight on how they view you.

Know Your Vision, Communicate It, and Live It

A Harvard Business School professor once said, “The only thing a CEO needs to do is communicate their vision, communicate their vision, and then communicate their vision.” Why is communicating the vision so important? Because if you don’t know where you’re going and tell others where you’re going, then you and everyone around you are going to lose the way. With all the things employees have going on in their lives, they’re distracted during some of the week, so it’s easy for them to get off track. Memorable leaders keep communicating the vision so everyone is always on the same page.

Living your vision and your company’s core values means everyone—those you report to and those who report to you—knows the vision as well. If you don’t understand your company’s vision or core values, have a conversation with your boss about them. Without vision and values, both companies and people lose their way—people are floundering, no one knows what they should be doing, and people hide their potential talent. Not a good situation for sure! For example, in a manufacturing company, getting the product out on time isn’t a core value and has nothing to do with the company’s vision. In order to have a healthy and synergistic team, people need to connect to something bigger than a goal of moving product. Vision and values make the difference.

Also realize that communicating a vision does not mean the leader needs to be talkative. Many memorable leaders are quiet and reserved, such as presidents Truman and Eisenhower. People follow memorable leaders because they exemplify their vision, not just tout it.

Be Teachable

Being open to learning new things and admitting your limitations and your struggles give you power; it’s not a weakness. Realize that people don’t want to think they’re following a robot. They want to know that whoever they’re following is real.

Memorable leaders teach other leaders and are interested in the development of people beneath them. That’s why you need to be in touch with your direct reports and learn their dreams, goals, and career aspirations. As the old quote says, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” So the “teachable” part goes in two directions: you have to be willing to learn for yourself and you have to be willing to teach others.

Finally, Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, once said, “Leaders are readers.” That means it’s important you know what’s going on in all industries, not just your own. Staying too focused on one viewpoint of issues makes you one-dimensional. Creativity comes from combining what you know with what other leaders know and then adapting it to your own industry in order to improve or innovate. That’s why “overview” publications like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Inc. are favorites of memorable leaders.

A Leader for the Ages

While few people are natural born leaders, you can learn to be a memorable leader and have people lining up, asking to work for you. All it takes is a commitment to lead others in a way that reflects your deepest held values, embraces your vision, and encourages lifelong learning. The more you commit to practicing and living these three keys, the more memorable you’ll be.