Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Should You Get Rid of Classroom-Based Training?

My colleagues Bruce Tulgan and Jeff Coombs at Rainmaker Thinking have trained thousands of managers in their 20+ year careers as generational management experts.  In that time, they’ve identified five problems with the typical classroom-model of training.

Training is short-lived and event-based

When training occurs on one or two days every once in a while, it creates short-lived excitement and short-lived skill uptake and on-the-job application.

Training is in a bubble

Classroom training tends to be removed from the day to day work experience of the participants, both in terms of time and real world application.

Training is now or never

When an employee misses a training class due to other obligations or due to starting employment after the class, he/she is left behind until there is another opportunity to take the class and by that point the class may be “history” to the rest of the group.

For more issues with classroom-based training and alternative solutions you might consider, have a look at my full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

 

Are You Selling Yourself as Well as You Could?

For several years, I’ve been recommending that people focus on being able to succinctly and effectively highlight their accomplishments because others (i.e. recruiters, managers, partners) will judge them mostly based on their past track record of success.

It turns out that’s not exactly the case.

What You Could Do is Better Than What You Have Done

According to Heidi Grant Harvorson at the Harvard Business Review, when we are deciding who to hire, promote, or do business with, it turns out that we don’t like the Big Thing nearly as much as we like the Next Big Thing. We have a bias — one that operates below our conscious awareness — leading us to prefer the potential for greatness over someone who has already achieved it.

In a series of studies conducted by Stanford’s Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia, and Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton, it is clear that human beings demonstrate an unconscious preference for potential over actual success.

In an experiment related to the workplace, hiring managers evaluated two equally impressive candidates who varied on one factor:  one had two years of relevant experience who scored highly on a test of leadership achievement, and the other had no relevant experience but scored highly on a test of leadership potential.  Interestingly, the evaluators believed the candidate with leadership potential would be more successful at the new company than the candidate with a proven record of leadership ability. The researchers documented this preference in laboratory and field experiments, using targets ranging from athletes to comedians to graduate school applicants and measures ranging from salary allocations to online ad clicks to admission decisions.

For more, check out the full post on 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.

For Gen X, The Pressure's On

Perry Marshall is in the compression zone.  So are my husband and I.   So are most of our friends.

When I read Marshall’s blog post, Shout Out to the 30-Something Street Fightin Man, I thought a lot of you might be in the compression zone too.  According to Marshall, here’s what that phase of life involves:

Kid #3 just arrived.  Kid #2 is still in diapers and kid #1 is barely out of diapers.  The day starts when one of ‘em starts screaming at 3:45am and the sweet honey-dew of sleep is OVER.  Momma either stays at home, which means money is impossibly scarce, or momma goes to work and puts the kids in daycare, which means money is… impossibly scarce.  Everybody’s emotional tank is on “E” for Empty.

Dad works 1 1/2 jobs and he’s the “Go-To-Guy” in both of them.  His ‘superiors’ regard him as a promising young lad who has a lot of potential and a lot of heart, if only his daring adventures would pay off.  One morning he calls in late because a spat about loading the dishwasher all wrong turned into World War 3, and if we don’t sit down and talk this out right now, Momma’s probably gonna move in with her parents.

Deep in his heart he craves, yearns for, thirsts for… Respect.  From… somebody. Anybody.  “I wish SOMEBODY would listen to me. I wish ONE of these projects would come through as promised.  I wish ONE of these resumes I’m sending out would get an answer from a real manager instead of a form letter.”

When he was in the midst of the compression zone, a friend of Marshall’s told him:  “If you get through this and keep pressing forward, you’re gonna get to a next stage that’s a whole lot better.  It’s the harvest season of your life.  It’s when things really do start paying off.”

Is there really a light at the end of the tunnel?  More at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

5 Work Habits to Break Today

Okay, it's honesty time.  I do some of these - what about you?

Being 10 minutes late for everything

You may run late in all aspects of your life, or maybe you just do it at work because you’ve over-scheduled your time.  Either way, stop being the person who’s always holding things up.  Being punctual will endear you to your colleagues and protect you in case your manager happens to be a clock-watcher.

Spending too much time on personal stuff

We’ve all been there.  Things are a little slow at the office, so the work hours between 10AM-12PM are spent shopping on Amazon, checking Facebook, and reading gossip sites.  As much as you can, strive to curb this behavior.  If you need something to do, volunteer to help a colleague or invest in your professional development.

Complaining

The business world isn’t always an easy place to be, but whining about negative circumstances or annoying people only makes your situation worse.  Try to be the solution-oriented person on your team who is always looking for ways to turn a bad scenario into a more positive one.

For a few more bad habits to watch out for, have a look at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

In the Workplace, Appearance Still Counts for A Lot

In June of 2012, the University of Virginia announced the resignation of its president, Teresa Sullivan.  Faculty members received an e-mail indicating that the dismissal was due to a “philosophical difference of opinion” with the institution’s governing board.  Sullivan had been with the university just two years, and in the opinion of some, had been let go for little or no reason.

College presidents are chief executives too

In the New York Times Magazine, Sullivan’s allies suggested that she didn’t fit the governing board’s image of a chief executive.  Sullivan’s fashion sense, which was typically academic, had apparently offended the higher-ups.  During Sullivan’s performance review, she received comments that her dress was too informal. “I don’t know what the unprofessional dress was,” Sullivan told the Times. “I do live here at the university, so when I’m working out or doing something else here, people will see me.”

Would the same criticism be given to a man? Here what I think over at Intuit's Fast Track blog.