Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How to Transform Your Company One Team at a Time

I see it everywhere. Companies hire people to perform certain roles and then fail to support them in those roles. They don’t share their vision for the business and restrict employee involvement in it. This behavior creates a loosely connected team with members who have no vested interest in the company and won't stick around for the long haul.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could create a culture of contribution, and be able to positively leverage your staff as an extension of your organization? I asked Dr. Maryann Baumgarten, the president and CEO of transformation training and coaching firm LitUp Leadership, about how managers and owners can build more engaged and productive workforces. Here's her advice on how to move your culture needle one team at a time.

Lead With Purpose

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can endure any how.” When was the last time you articulated your purpose? Why are you in business? What are you aiming to accomplish as an individual, as a team, as a company? Why does it matter? Purpose creates a single point of focus for the whole team. Not only will you approach your own work with more passion, but each team member will feel empowered and connected to the company’s success. Communicate your why regularly by working it into meetings, marketing materials and even performance reviews to make it a living, breathing force.

Build A Sense Of Belonging

Sports teams have colors, names and logos so fans can easily relate to and internalize them. Making the sense of belonging more explicit in your team will increase each member’s sense of peace, camaraderie and connection, which, in turn, will drive loyalty and productivity. Have you considered a team name? Rituals, events and other opportunities to bring the team together also can help create a secure foundation.

For more of Maryann's tips, head over to the full post at the AMEX Open Forum.

Sweeten the Bad Apple On Your Team

I’ve been getting a lot of reader emails about the pervasiveness of negativity in the workplace. I can understand where people are coming from. After all, the business world is still reeling from the effects of the recession, and many employees are overworked, frustrated and stressed out. Perhaps you have a mostly terrific team made up of individuals who are upbeat, motivated and dedicated to doing the best job possible. But there’s one person who is souring the group with her bad attitude. She doesn’t get along with anyone and complains about everything, and group morale and job satisfaction is suffering as a result.

According to a study by Will Felps, associate professor of organization and personnel management at Rotterdam School of Management, the behaviors of one negative group member can have a powerful, detrimental influence on an entire team. Felps found that groups with bad apples performed 30 to 40 percent worse than groups without a bad apple. The ability to get along, share work and collaborate significantly dropped in groups with a bad apple, as other team members took on the bad apple’s characteristics.

You must neutralize your bad apple before she destroys your group’s culture—and you must do so without appearing to single her out. Otherwise, she may feel attacked and picked on, and her level of antagonism may reach a new high, and hit a level where she’ll be unlikely to make the necessary behavioral changes.

Focus On The Bunch

My friend Marshall Goldsmith, author of Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get it Back if You Lose It, shares a wonderful tip. He suggests that you work on improving team behavior across the board by having each team member ask every other member a simple question: “In the future, how can I do a great job of helping our team demonstrate effective teamwork?” This will foster healthy dialogue, encouraging people to stay positive and focused in their replies to other team members. Listen to your people, learn and express gratitude for the feedback.

Then in one-on-one meetings, have each employee discuss with you what he or she has learned from the other team members. As the team leader, after hearing the suggestions from this person's co-workers, share your ideas. Finally, to maintain the flow of information, do a similarly structured follow up in a few months. By participating in this process, you will lead by example.

For more where this came from, have a look at the full post on AMEX's Open Forum.

The Coolest New Trend in Office Space

The pond is cool and still. The trees sway gently. The walking paths curve invitingly over rolling green hills. Every now and then, some form of wildlife peaks out to catch some sun.

No, it’s not a nature preserve. It’s the grounds of your average suburban corporate headquarters. And chances are, there are no people milling about. The place is completely deserted because the employees are hiding out in the sterile, overly air-conditioned office buildings. What is wrong here?

At NeoCon, the annual contract furniture industry exposition in Chicago, someone recently dared to ask: Why don’t developers make better use of the premium outdoor space that surrounds their properties?

As Elijah Brumback, a reporter for Michigan Business, writes, “Over the years, companies have concentrated on how work is accomplished within an office. But while they’ve provided new office designs to accommodate the mobile workforce, they haven’t paid the same attention to spaces outside the office buildings.”

Furniture and industrial designers, however, are now illustrating the value of outdoor office space. Instead of treating it as an afterthought, they are considering what kind of work can be done outdoors and how products can meet the needs of a workforce that is increasingly diverse, digitized and on-the-go.

Well Design’s Workaway outdoor pod, for instance, offers an alternative to the cramped cubicle with a cut-out cubic design that can be positioned in parks, plazas and anywhere in between. It features a built-in seat, a work surface and shade, is equipped with WiFi, and can be reserved ahead of time by checking in on a smartphone app.

Outdoor workspace offers the fresh air and change of scenery known for helping humans be more productive. It sounds appealing, but is it right for your company?

Before hopping on this latest trend, think through the pros and cons as discussed over at the AMEX Open Forum.

How to Cope with Clients Who Don't Listen

As a consultant, I’ve often made recommendations to my clients that were not acted upon. Sometimes the client simply pretended she didn’t hear my advice, and other times she disagreed with me overtly and did the exact opposite.

It’s frustrating to be hired as an expert in a particular area, only to learn that your clients feel they know better. It’s even worse when the client’s change in direction results in diminished business results that affect whether you get re-hired on another project.

We all have clients, whether we’re consultants or not. But whether our clients are official or unofficial, internal or external, it’s critical to our reputations and future success that we take the right actions when the people who depend on us seem to be losing faith.

Listen Without Getting Defensive

When a client ignores your guidance and a project starts to run amuck, it’s easy to feel angry and powerless. Instead, calmly ask your client why she is proceeding in this manner. Has she properly understood what you’re recommending? If so, why isn’t she implementing it? Is it a question of resources, finances, or time? Perhaps someone higher up the chain wants an alternative plan? This conversation is best had in person, but a phone chat is better than none at all.

For the rest of my tips, head over to the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Duke University Study Shows Why People Prefer Dead End Jobs

When I was a child growing up in Maryland, we visited relatives in New York and Philadelphia often. Back in the eighties, the toll booth operator job on the New Jersey turnpike was the national symbol of boredom. I remember sitting at the booth longer than we had to just so that the poor operator could have some human conversation.

Albert Camus might have been thinking of the toll booth operator when he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus. The famous essay refers to the ancient Greek story about a man who’s condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill, watch it roll down, and then repeat the cycle for all eternity. In Camus’ view, the more modern worker is much like Sisyphus, working every day of his life at the exact same tasks.

In the enlightened twenty-first century, we often talk about work being meaningful, and about engaging in careers about which we feel passionate. But it turns out that at the end of the day, most people will still pick a Sisyphus-like job over an engaging one if they aren’t getting paid for the extra effort required by the latter. And in a recovering economy where salaries still have not come up to post-recession levels, this means that millions of disillusioned job seekers are selecting dead end jobs.

Duke University Fuqua School of Business marketing professor Peter Ubel and David Comerford, an assistant professor at Stirling University, explored the idea of “effort aversion,” or why people choose to put forth less effort even if it means less personal satisfaction. The results of their studies, “Effort Aversion: Job Choice and Compensation Decisions Overweigh Effort,” were recently published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. The researchers found that even when an effort-filled job would be more interesting and enjoyable than a boring one, people tend to price themselves out of the job market because they feel their efforts need to be rewarded.

For more on the Duke study, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Use Your Brain to Build Better Relationships at Work

According to Judith Glaser, the CEO of Benchmark Communications and the author of the new book, Conversation Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results, the key to success in life and in work is to prime your brain for trust, mutual respect, and partnership.

Based on advances made in the neuroscience field over the last decade, Glaser’s framework involves understanding what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain, and what kind activate higher-level intelligences such as integrity, empathy, and good judgment.

I asked Glaser for a few examples of how neuroscience affects the way we handle challenging workplace relationships and how we can leverage our brain’s natural tendencies to better these relationships, and here were her top tips.

Our Brains Are Designed to Be Social

The need to belong is more powerful than the need for safety. Rejection activates our fear networks and increases the levels of cortisol, which move us into protect behavior. Focus on being inclusive and using physical and verbal touch in order to reduce the level of cortisol and increase the level of oxytocin, which promotes bonding.

Appreciation Reshapes Neural Networks

Appreciation activates a large framework of neurons that are part of the functions of sight, hearing, and perspective. It enables us to see more broadly and think bigger. Better your relationships by focusing on appreciating others’ perspectives even if you don’t agree.

Like what you're reading? Continue to the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

In the Homeland, Learn and Share with the Pros

For those who haven't yet Netflixed Homeland, you should. In it, thirty-something CIA operative Carrie Mathison is actively mentored by her fifty-something senior colleague, Saul Berenson. It’s a good thing that Carrie is trying to learn everything she can from Saul now, because within a matter of years, Saul will likely retire from government service. Carrie is ensuring that all of the knowledge he has gleaned from decades of work in the field doesn’t disappear into a black hole.

In the next ten years, the massive Baby Boom generation (born 1946-63) will exit traditional jobs en masse, resulting in a major brain drain. You may be well acquainted with many of these Boomers now, but waiting to pick their brains until they’re out the door is not a good strategy. It’s much better to strike while you have easy access. To that end, here are a few knowledge sharing and gleaning recommendations to employ immediately.

Be a Joiner

Get involved in extracurricular activities sponsored by your company (sports teams, volunteer initiatives, etc.) and third-party industry associations so that you are naturally exposed to senior people inside and outside your field. Become a regular at events that take place more than once, and every time you meet someone, show genuine interest in their work and ask lots of questions.

Practice Reciprocal Mentorship

An evolution of reverse mentoring, reciprocal mentorship is a two-way relationship in which advice and information pass easily between a senior and junior-level colleague. The senior colleague may mentor the junior colleague on general business and career matters, while the junior colleague may provide guidance on twenty-first century workplace efficiencies and technologies.

For more tips, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Thankful for What You Have? – A HR Comparison Between US and UK

While in the U.K., I made some interesting observations with the help of the brilliant Lieven Lambrecht, a European HR veteran at First Data Corporation:

European workers are jealous of American workers because the U.S. has so many more job opportunities, and they are attainable if people have the right skills and interview well. What may appear to be a dead-end job can actually lead somewhere. American workers don’t have to fork over half their income in taxes, and employers actually care about developing their people.

European HR professionals are jealous of American HR professionals because we have to deal with so much less legal red tape, and our jobs are more scalable. Recruiting someone from Texas to work in New York is nowhere near the headache of recruiting someone from Hungary to work in Sweden. American HR professionals can afford to specialize because companies are so large that the HR function is as well. But

Who Is Jealous of Who?

I compare these sentiments with how we Americans feel about work conditions and the HR function in Europe. American workers bemoan the state of the U.S. job market and think moving overseas would make things a heck of a lot easier. We envy the opportunities Europeans have to travel and experience different cultures during their work lives. We love the fact that they can actually have personal lives because they aren’t working 70 hours a week. Their benefits are such that they don’t have to worry about going broke from healthcare costs and are guaranteed a safety net at retirement age.

On the HR side of things, American professionals think that it’s far simpler for European companies to recruit and retain diverse talent – a problem that sticks in the craw of most U.S. and global organizations. And they are jealous of the sexiness of the jobs European companies can provide to restless Millennials who want to go everywhere and see everything before they’re 30.

For more where this came from, head over to the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How the Latitude Assessment Changed My Life – in Reverse

College career counselors often ask me to recommend assessments, which is kind of funny I never took any kind of test to inform the decision about a major or a career.  I’d taken AP psychology in high school and did well in it, and so I picked that.  I didn’t take a test when I graduated from Northwestern University either.  I just knew that pursuing psychology would take at least four more years of school, and I wasn’t having any of that.  I wanted to go into the business world right away, and since I wasn’t trained to do much, I landed in an entry-level public relations job at a large agency in New York City. 

Fifteen years later, I received the opportunity to take YouScience’s two-hour online assessment, Latitude.  Essentially, Latitude uncovers what you’re wired to do well and why.  The assessment’s series of five to 12 minute exercises reveal 14 of the aptitudes most important to college and career plus the types of work you’ll find most satisfying.

My Results

Latitude provided me with loads of meaty material as well as a summary that included these highlights: When it comes to idea generation, I’m a brainstormer.  I’m able to come up with multiple examples when describing something or with multiple activities to engage in.  I’m also an investigator.  This means that I enjoy acquiring new information and learning how facts influence each other.  My high sequential reasoning ability lets me automatically shuffle and organize large amounts of information in my head and easily organize my thoughts and learned information in a methodical way.

Halfway between introverted and extroverted, I work best when I have a balance between collaborating with others and focusing on my area of expertise.  I’m equally comfortable leading and following depending on the situation.  Well, that explains why I always confused the Myers-Briggs folks!

Because I like to advise others and am apparently good at it, Latitude recommended that I pursue the fields of psychology, training and development, and communications.

Guess what?  That’s pretty much how I’ve spent the last 20 years.

Latitude: Definitely Better Late Than Never

My career evolution was a happy accident, hitting all of the areas of natural strength that Latitude identified.  But my life would have been much easier if I had taken Latitude sooner.  I would have been able to make more confident, better informed decisions about areas of study and careers.  Due to the assessment’s uncanny accuracy, I might have ended up in the same place – but I wouldn’t have had to rely on fate to get there.

Understanding why I am the way I am – why I find certain tasks invigorating and others frustrating, is helping me to even further hone my career aspirations.  My career probably has a good 30+ years left and I’m going to be glad to have Latitude as a partner every step of the way.