Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How to Be More Optimistic at Work

I was born a pessimist.  From a young age, my thoughts have gravitated to the glass half-empty mentality, negatively impacting my own life satisfaction and my relationships with others.

Over the last several years, though, I’ve been working to change my outlook.  Dr. Noelle Nelson, the author of Make More Money By Making Your Employees Happy, thinks this is definitely a good thing.

Research from Yale University found that being optimistic adds an additional 7.6 years on average to our lives, which is more than low blood pressure, low cholesterol, healthy weight and regular exercise. From the Harvard School of Public Health, study results are similar: the most optimistic people had 50 percent less risk of a first heart attack when compared with the least optimistic.

“Other studies show optimists experience significantly less stress, less depression, and heal faster than pessimists,” notes Dr. Nelson. “Not only that, but optimists outperform their own abilities. You may be good at something, but if you’re an optimist, you’ll be better at it. No matter what you undertake, you’ll experience more success and joy by the simple decision to become an optimist.”

So how can you become more optimistic at work?  For recommendations, please visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

 

Are You Working in a Cult?

What does Steve Hassan have to do with the workplace? In a piece in Canada’s The Globe and Mail, writer Harvey Schachter uses Hassan as the subject in his column on work-life balance. 

Steve Hassan is a mental health counselor who’s an expert on cults. Hassan knows what he’s talking about. He entered the Unification Church at age 19 and spent several years recruiting and indoctrinating new members, as well as performing fundraising and campaigning duties. After rising to the rank of assistant director of the Unification Church at its national headquarters, Hassan was severely injured in a traffic accident related to his duties. While he was in the hospital, his parents took the opportunity to “deprogram” him.

It worked. Hassan left the church and is now a well-respected international authority on the effects of cult membership.

Taking a look at Hassan’s BITE Model (Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotion) of cult-like organizations, it’s immediately apparent why Schachter would draw a parallel to some of today’s workplaces.

Behavior Control

Cults regulate the individual’s physical reality, including where he lives, what he wears and how much sleep he gets. Individualism is discouraged, while group-think prevails. The individual must make major time commitments for indoctrination sessions and group rituals, be obedient, and accept having little time for leisure, entertainment or vacations.

Information Control

Leaders decide who needs to know what. Information is distorted or held back, to serve the needs of the organization. Access to outside information is discouraged, such as critical analysis of the organization or meeting with disgruntled former members.

Thought Control

The member is expected to accept the organizational doctrine as the truth. Only good thoughts are encouraged, and negative thoughts are shut down. Questions that are critical of leaders are not seen as legitimate.

Emotion Control

Fear abounds over thinking for yourself. Members are indoctrinated into having a phobia about leaving the group or questioning the leader. Those who leave are shunned, and the belief grows that there is no legitimate reason for leaving.

For more on workplace cults, visit the AMEX Open Forum.

Is Your Workplace Safe?

Safety isn’t just a manufacturer-only concern. Protecting workers from falls and other physical injuries is part of it, but organizational safety also encompasses your employees’ ability to express themselves freely, and to come to work knowing that their confidential information will not be compromised. Whether you’re a small retail operation or a big consulting firm with employees worldwide, safety should be a critical issue. Not only will making safety a priority protect you from being sued, but it will also contribute to the overall strength of your culture.

Digicast is an Australia-based workforce consultancy that recently produced a white paper, Three Factors That Influence Workplace Culture, which connected safety to strong organizational culture. One interesting section dealt with the factors that influence safety. I’ve highlighted these in the “Five Commandments of Safety.”

1. Thou Who Has an Office Shall Clean It.

Digicast cites a study by Dave DeJoy and Todd Smith from the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, which found that a well-kept site usually means safety is a priority. “If you talk to people who do safety inspections,” DeJoy says, ”they will tell you that the first impression they get when they walk into a factory or construction site—how neat it is and whether employees seem to be actively engaged—often indicates whether a workplace is safe.”

2. Thou Shall Not Overwork Your Employees.

The same study by DeJoy and Smith also found that when work interfered with family demands, job performance was affected and the risk for injury increased by 37 percent. In 2011, when excessive working hours resulted in pilot error on several airlines, the FAA stepped in with regulations. Even if you’re not dealing with human lives, ensuring your employees have solid work-life balance and are satisfied in their roles will enhance safety and culture.

3. Thou Shall Not Make Safety an Afterthought.

Digicast says that progressive companies with best-in-class safety records include safety in all major decisions. Safety is a topic at every board meeting and all departments consider safety when developing products and services. Leaders don’t bury their heads in the sand, and HR is totally on board. “A lot of organizations are set up so there is a wall between HR and occupational health and safety, but the two can no longer afford to work in silos,” DeJoy says.

Jonathan Thomas of the National Safety Council adds, “The things that HR leaders are most concerned about are also the building blocks for building a safe workplace.”

Have a look at the AMEX Open Forum for more commandments of a safe work culture.

 

Have You Planned Your Succession?

An important part of long-term success is developing your top talent so they can eventually replace you and other key players. Succession planning doesn’t have to be painful. After all, your organization is evolving, and you don’t want all the great progress you’ve made to be undermined due to an unplanned departure.

Along with Tim Kuppler, founder of consultancy The Culture Advantage and author of the ebook Building a Performance Culture, I offer this basic blueprint for succession planning that can be implemented by organizations of any size.

Track Potential Successors

Identify potential leaders on your team by reviewing 360-degree survey feedback, performance reviews and personality and strengths assessments. Ensure that your selections reflect your organization’s ideal culture and that they will keep things moving in the right direction. Keep tabs on where potential successors are headed by noting key development actions, resources and timeframes. Organize everything with a grid that makes it easy to compare one candidate to another.

Leverage Your Team

Gather your current leaders together to provide input on the most critical competencies, skills and attributes of successors. Set aside time for meetings where succession planning is the only focus. Devise a rating scale so potential candidates and supporting documentation can be reviewed objectively. Note that open discussion may bring out political sensitivities, especially if family members are involved.

Facilitate Growth

Great leaders are created, not born. Make sure potential successors, especially those who are new supervisors, have access to general management training so they “get it right the first time.” Mentoring programs are also beneficial for providing extra coaching to accelerate learning. Give employees options for potential mentors instead of making assignments where fit or trust issues could exist. Make sure mentorship is a two-way street. Your current leaders can learn a lot from the questions and approaches raised by potential successors.

For more succession planning tips, check out the AMEX Open Forum.

Drinking Too Much Kool-Aid Can Be Dangerous

Anyone who has worked in an organization for longer than a few months has heard the expression “drinking the company Kool-Aid.”

Even though Kool-Aid isn’t as popular as it used to be and may well end up with the same fate as Twinkie, the comparison still resonates. To drink the Kool-Aid means you believe in the organizational culture so much that you are willing and able to spout its principles without thinking, and that you ignore any evidence supporting the notion your company’s way of doing things isn’t working as well as it could. 

This is dangerous.

I once worked with a small company that was convinced its new accounting practices were revolutionary in the industry. Management spent a lot of money to get an automated system up and running, and drilled employees mercilessly on how to use it properly. The company got a great deal of incredible PR around the initiative. The system was easy to use! It saved tons of time! And new accounting was just the first step in a phased cultural initiative that would leverage state-of-the-art technology to free employees up to do what they did best!

There was only one problem. It didn’t work—at least not precisely enough. It turned out that some of the complex accounting issues the company faced required a human brain to sort. But the company was so busy touting its brilliance that it took numerous customer complaints to realize what was happening.

When you have a terrific culture or are in the midst of changing your culture to become terrific, it’s easy to overlook data that doesn’t support what you’re trying to do—and that’s where things get risky. A healthy organizational culture must be in touch with its thinking and have the ability to make rational decisions.

For suggestions on questions to ask to remain in touch with reality, have a look at the AMEX Open Forum.

 

Unconscious Bias is a Reality

Imagine that your employee has been talking about continuing his or her education, and is considering going back to grad school. You have a managerial position open for which this person would be perfect, but in the back of your mind, you worry that he or she will either leave or be overly distracted with school. So you create other reasons why another employee is better for the role, and leave this person as is.

This is just one example of the new workplace bias.

Bias Goes from Conscious to Unconscious

Bill Shackelford is the president of diversity consulting firm IEC Enterprises and the author of Minority Recruiting: Building the Strategies and Relationships for Effective Diversity Recruiting. In his article for Workforce Diversity Network, Shackelford says an understanding of how bias creeps into today’s enlightened workplace starts with an expanded definition, which is: 

Bias: “Intentional and unintentional, conscious and subconscious, attitudes, behaviors and actions that have a negative and differential impact on segments of the society, or favor one segment of the society.”       

As Shackelford points out, most employers have adopted fair employment practices designed to manage the classic forms of bias (i.e., intentional and conscious). Examples of intentional and conscious bias would be actions designed to intentionally discriminate against individuals because of their race, gender or ethnicity. Refusing to hire people because of their race or promote people because of their gender are classic examples from the past.  

But today’s most common forms of bias are more subtle, as in the case listed above. Decisions to hire and promote are often not based solely on the qualifications of the candidates, but are influenced by subjective criteria. When these subjective criteria relate to fixed diversity dimensions (race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc.), the resulting decision is inherently biased.

Learn to combat unconscious bias over at the AMEX Open Forum.

How to Lose a Pointless Process

It’s one of the great injustices of Corporate America.  Complex processes spring up around everything, and only some of them make sense.  As someone with an eye toward improving productivity and adding to the bottom line at your organization, inefficient, overly complicated, unethical, or just downright silly processes may irritate you to no end.

Off With Its Head!

Whether you’re a new employee who has seen things done better on the outside or a tenured one who knows change is essential, your first reaction might be to march into your manager’s office and let her know exactly what you think of this nonsense.  This may include an emotional, frustration-fueled recommendation (read: rant) to do away with the process immediately.  Or better yet, why not skip your boss and go straight to the source of the problem – the “keeper” of the process?

Well, hold your horses because this approach doesn’t usually work.  The truth is, most processes were implemented for a reason, and most were sensible at one time.  Managers, and especially the “keeper” of the process, are invested in it and presumably understand the big picture regarding how the process fits into the scheme of general operations.  They will probably not appreciate being told how things should be by someone who doesn’t have the whole story.  And by railing on said process, you may in fact be implying that they are not doing their jobs well, which will put them on the defensive right away.

For more tips on coping with bureaucracy, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

It's Time to Tip Over Those Sacred Cows!

I have to admit, when my colleague Jake Breeden told me the title of his new book, I had to look up what it meant.  But once I did, it made perfect sense.  Jake’s book, Tipping Sacred Cows, is about the hidden beliefs that keep us from achieving our true potential.  While they are mostly virtuous, they can also be dangerous because they are rarely questioned.  Some of them really resonated with me, and I bet they will with you as well:

Balance

This value is often misconstrued to mean constant compromise, but bold leaders must make tough choices. And when we as leaders move from doing one thing well to many things poorly, our organizations suffer. Leaders who hide behind balance as an excuse to avoid taking a stand for an unpopular position do themselves and their companies a disservice. In short, when balance encourages us to say yes to everything all at once, we end up saying no to leadership.

Collaboration

Too often collaboration is automatic, meaning that we work on something together by default instead of making the purposeful, conscious choice to do so.  The default state of working should be working alone; leaders should collaborate only when they must.  Depending on your role, that may mean a significant part of your job requires collaboration.  But ask yourself the question: does this work really need more than me?

Creativity

This value can backfire because of a leader’s need to add her own ideas.  Adopting someone else’s best practice doesn’t give you the same sense of pride and accomplishment as generating a new best practice.  Creating a needless innovation feels better to the innovator than does creating nothing at all. In such cases, creativity has stopped being a tool used in service of larger goals, and has become the very personal source of a leader’s narcissistic needs.

For more sacred cows you should consider tipping, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Help - My Co-Worker Can't Say No!

Over at Intuit's Fast Track blog, a reader wrote us with the following question:

Here’s the question, with our experts’ responses below:

My manager quit earlier this year, leaving me to run the marketing department with a woman we’d just hired.

I wasn’t in favor of the hire because I was concerned that she lacks professional maturity, but now she’s my co-director and we’re making do.  They’re not replacing my manager, and there’s been no conversation about how our roles have changed or what our strategic direction forward looks like—we’re just barging ahead.  My problem is this:  She’s hardworking, cheerful, and bright—and absolutely incapable of saying “no” to any request.  Whether it’s another director, a member of the senior team, or even (not making this up) a janitor with another “great idea” for improving the web site, she’s on board and happy to make it happen.  Web cams on the roof?  Sure!  Amateur photo contest?  Why not!  Some of the projects have been great, but most just clutter up the site and create huge amounts of work for me, because she doesn’t think about how her “happy to do it” attitude drags me into hours of editing work for unproven ideas that sound like fun and then backfire in big ways.  Our more boring, but important, work falls by the wayside, and our numbers are suffering because she won’t focus on fundamentals.

We now report to someone off-site, and he’s as hands-off as can be.  How can I work with her to make her understand that we need to make decisions as a team, and that her decisions set precedents for expectations we can’t undo?

Here's my response:

I can rather picture this person.  She is very idealistic and enthusiastic, but lacks the experience and critical eye to fully understand what’s doable and what isn’t.  Working with her would probably drive me to distraction too.

But that’s not helpful, because your success in your role depends on your ability to get this co-manager to cooperate with you.  So I’d appeal to what seems to matter most to her – that people like her.  I’d take her to lunch and preface the discussion with how happy you are to be working alongside one of the group’s rising stars.  Ask her if she’s amenable to developing a system for vetting projects so that the two of you are perceived as a can-do team, the one with which everyone wants to work.

Then, lay out your suggestion.  I recommend that this include meeting semi-weekly to discuss your duo’s priorities and decide what you’re going to move forward on, and in what order.  Neither of you should give other team members definitive answers on their recommendations until the two of you have met.  This will hopefully give you a regular chance to talk her out of ideas that are not feasible, or re-direct her energies into the fundamentals you mention.  Always remain positive when discussing an idea, no matter how wacky.  Say something like:  “That sounds really fun, but given that we’ve already committed to X, I think we should revisit it.”  The less forcefully you shut her down, the more likely she is to comply.

It sounds like you may be a little older than her.   If this is the case, perhaps you can offer yourself as a mentor and she’ll begin to lean on you for more strategic direction.  At that point, you can probably be even more direct with her about the problems that can arise when expectations aren’t managed properly, and your advice will be better received.

For great answers from the other experts, have a look at the full post at Fast Track.

Is Business Travel a Blessing or a Curse?

It’s fun to travel with colleagues.  No, really.  Back when I worked at CA, my whole team traveled from New York City to Las Vegas once a year for our company’s annual trade show.  After the highs and lows only a harried week of work in Vegas can provide, I really bonded with these people.  Many years later, I still keep in touch with many of them.  And I still love Vegas.

Traveling with co-workers, however, involves a set of informal rules of which it’s helpful to be aware.  Here are a few that I’ve learned over time.

1. Don’t insist on sitting together on the plane.

Plane etiquette is tricky.  Some people don’t mind gabbing away the whole time, while others would like nothing more than sit silently with their iPad and relish the calm before their trip’s storm.  Because it can be difficult to ascertain your co-worker’s camp and awkward if you get it wrong, sit apart unless you can’t avoid it.  You can probably use the quiet time yourself.

2. Do use the trip as an opportunity.

During a trip, you will probably have more chances to converse with your colleagues than usual.  Use the time to get to know them as human beings.  Express curiosity about their family and hobbies and be open in answering their questions about your lifestyle.  The closer you become when you travel, the stronger your relationship will be back at the office.

3. Don’t let your guard down too far.

Of course, there is a such thing as getting too close.  Always look presentable and avoid inappropriate conversation topics such as sex, drugs, current personal struggles, mean-spirited gossip, and anything you’d be embarrassed about if your boss found out.  Never use a business trip to launch a physical or sexual relationship with a colleague.  Even if you are both single, this is not the time or the place.

For more dos and don'ts for traveling with colleagues, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.