Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Cautionary Tales About Work-Related Fraud

We all know that we can’t believe everything we hear and read, don’t we? Yet many of us are naturally trusting, leaving us open to fraud in the most unlikely of places. Let’s look at two real-life work scenarios in which a bit of skepticism would serve us well.

Scenario 1: The Research Study

Imagine that your boss has asked you to do some Internet research to find arguments supporting a new project or change of strategy. Naturally, you are thrilled when you come across a recent study on a respected business outlet that showcases exactly what you were looking for. You send the article to your boss right away, and before long, your entire initiative hinges on the claims in this single piece.

Trouble is, what if the article isn’t entirely accurate? I’m not saying that the author set out to mislead you, but let’s face it, most websites do minimal fact checking and editing. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the results were at least somewhat editorialized so the author could make his or her point. It’s also possible that the study on which the article was based was not scientifically sound or relevant in the first place. For instance, perhaps the sample was only a handful of people, or the respondents were only located in the U.S. If you are looking for support for a significant global trend, results like this aren’t going to cut it.

So, if you find a piece of research on the Internet and want to use it for something important, don’t risk relying on false conclusions and having to start over either before or after a scandal occurs. Do your homework upfront. Locate the original source of the research (journal article, etc.) and read the whole paper. If there are parts you don’t understand, tap a colleague or academic friend who can help you decipher them. Make sure the study’s overall conclusions enhance your argument, not just one piece taken out of context. Keep the original document on hand so that you can formally cite it later.

If, despite your best efforts, you can’t locate the original source, that’s a red flag. It could still be legitimate, but you simply don’t have enough information to risk it. Take a little extra time and move onto a stronger selection.

For the second cautionary tale and more advice, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Deal When Your Company Sucks

Let’s face it: we can’t all work for one of Fortune’s Top 100 Companies or non-profit organizations. And in fact, a large percentage of the population works in for-profits whose products/services employees don’t necessarily find meaningful. Thousands of people walk McDonalds’ corporate halls who would never eat Big Macs, and thousands more do their best work to advance the cause of things like staples and light sockets.

If you have an indifferent or even aversive reaction to what your organization produces or stands for, can you still work there? The answer is yes, especially if it isn’t practical or you aren’t in a position to lend your talents to a company that’s a better fit. Here are some recommendations for coming to terms with the situation and making the best of it.

Honesty

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the stress and discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. For instance, you may like your job writing copy for an oil and gas company while preferring to use alternative fuel sources in your home. One way to ease cognitive dissonance is to acknowledge it. Instead of pretending the problem isn’t there, tell yourself that it’s okay to be a little inconsistent. You’re only human after all.

Emotional Re-Engagement

If you have recently soured on your company’s mission, put that aside for now. Recall why you took the job initially and how enthusiastic you were on your first day. Write down all of the benefits you derive from working at your company (salary, perks, networking, etc.) and ways this organization is helping you make progress toward your big picture career goals. Ask yourself if your negative feelings about the organization are fair and/or grounded in reality. Remember that no workplace is perfect and it’s unhealthy and non-productive to focus too much on the way things should be.

For more where this came from, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Get Over Stage Fright

According to WebMD, millions of people suffer from performance anxiety, commonly called stage fright. In fact, most people would rather get the flu than perform. Performance anxiety can prevent you from doing what you enjoy and can affect your career because people who cannot speak in public are not considered promotion material.

The Symptoms of Presentation Stage Fright

Being the center of attention and having all eyes on you can be stressful, especially if you are an introvert. Your body reacts to this situation in much the same way as it would if you were being attacked. Your body’s “fight-or-flight” mechanism kicks in, which is why symptoms of stage fright are similar to symptoms that occur when you are in real danger. They include:

• Racing pulse and rapid breathing
• Dry mouth and tight throat
• Trembling hands, knees, lips, and voice
• Sweaty and cold hands
• Nausea and an uneasy feeling in your stomach
• Vision changes

Although it may be impossible to totally overcome performance anxiety, there are things you can do to control your emotions and reduce anxiety. Some are more obvious, like breathing deeply and knowing your material cold. Here are a few you might not have thought about.

The Cure for Presentation Stage Fright

Give the Stage Fright a Deadline

A mentor once suggested to me that I acknowledge my fear of giving presentations – to a point. I was allowed to be nervous in the hours leading up to each event, but at the moment I was being introduced, I was to say: “time’s up.” It was then that I allowed my confident side to take over. It took a few events of practice, but my mind eventually got the hang of it.

Pack your Schedule

When you’re very busy, you don’t have time to worry about how miserable you might feel. So on the day you’re due to give your remarks, schedule as many meetings as possible so you are running from one thing to another right up to the time you’re up to speak. Being frazzled can actually work in stage fright’s favor.

For more tips, please see the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Introducing the "Under 10 Minutes" Rule

The “Under 10 Minutes Rule” is simple. It states that if a task arrives in your queue and it can be completed in less than 10 minutes, you take care of it right away.

Why does this work? Well, first of all, you are more likely to procrastinate on smaller tasks, allowing them to become bigger and bigger over the course of the day as more time and thought are put in than necessary. Secondly, you are more likely to get results when a task is finished immediately. Small assignments are the most vulnerable to being buried in the workflow and never attended to. You say “I can do that later,” but “later” never arrives.

Of course, the “Under 10 Minutes Rule” is only effective if you leave some wiggle room in your schedule. If you have back-to-back meetings or multiple assignments that require heavy lifting every day, you just won’t have time for anything else. Therefore, you should assume that you’ll spend at least an hour per work day dealing with these small tasks and budget accordingly.

In my mailbox, as soon as a task has been attended to, the corresponding messages are removed and placed in an appropriate folder. Thanks to the “Under 10 Minutes” Rule, my inbox is nearly always empty. I don’t lose things due to clutter, I don’t get overwhelmed by all of the things I have to do, and my level of responsiveness is second to none.

To crystallize how this works in practice, here are my to-dos for a given work day. At the bottom are “Under 10 Minutes” tasks that came in that day, and went right back out.

For an example of theory in practice, see the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

A-Z Retention Strategies from Beverly Kaye

Since employees who quit cost their companies up to 200 percent of their annual salaries to replace, retention is one of the most important issues facing businesses today. Virtual employees are especially vulnerable to retention issues because they often lack the camaraderie that’s present in an in-person environment.  Adapted from the new edition of Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans’ bestselling book Love Em or Lose Em, here are 26 A to Z strategies you can employ right away to keep your virtual team members from quitting this year.

Ask WHAT KEEPS YOU?

Do you know what your virtual employees want from their careers? Never assume. Since you don’t have the benefit of face-to-face communication, you’ll be wrong.

Buck IT STOPS HERE

Your virtual employees are every bit as much of your responsibility as your in-office employees. It’s up to you to make sure they are engaged and want to stay.

Careers SUPPORT GROWTH

Don’t confuse virtual employees with short-term, hourly employees. They need viable career paths too. Facilitate these. Don’t ignore them or get in the way of professional development.

Dignity SHOW RESPECT

Do your virtual employees know that you value and appreciate them? Ask yourself honestly if you are taking them for granted because you don’t have a strong in-person rapport.

Enrich ENERGIZE THE JOB

Are you constantly challenging your virtual employees, or is it the same old, same old? Make an effort to take things up a notch.

Family GET FRIENDLY

Even virtual employees can have work/life integration challenges. Don’t force them to choose between work and loved ones.

Goals EXPAND OPTIONS

Your virtual employees might not be interested in moving up, but they should have some forward-thinking goals. Take the time to help them develop and execute these.

Hire FIT IS IT

Take care to hire people upfront who will not only be successful virtual employees but who will also be a strong fit for your culture.

For the rest, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Get Your Millennial Leaders to Fulfill Their Potential

The traditional ways of developing employees and helping them to acquire critical skills don’t work anymore. According to the Deloitte 2014 Millennial Leadership study, most young professionals prefer to learn by doing rather than sitting in a classroom. However, few organizations offer any specialized training for millennials, and if they do, it’s very old school.

As a result, Deloitte’s results show that 36 percent of young managers did not feel ready when they first took on supervisory relationships, and 30 percent still don’t feel ready today. Given that millennials are a confident bunch, this is not a good sign. They are flying by the seat of their pants, and it’s only a matter of time before big mistakes are made.

If you are relying on sending your employees to isolated training seminars once or twice a year, you’re holding them back now and possibly contributing to their setbacks later. Millennial professionals will make up the majority of the workforce in the next 20 years, so how can we make sure they are well prepared to lead our organizations? Fortunately, there are a few things you can do as an individual manager that don’t require a complete overhaul of your company’s operations.

Emphasize experiential learning

Today’s employees value the apprenticeship model, in which they are allowed to work alongside senior leaders during a typical project or atypical crisis situation. Apprenticeship is beneficial in anchoring new and soon-to-be leaders in tangible responsibilities and scenarios with reduced risk. To this end, many forward-thinking organizations have adopted project-based mentorship. At its core, project-based mentorship puts employee development into the hands of many instead of being centered on a very busy primary supervisor. Each employee has the opportunity to work on assignments with a diverse group of team members, all of whom are aware of that person’s strengths and career goals. In the context of the individual project, employees may be placed in situations that are out of their comfort zones (for example, a board meeting) and mentored actively on appropriate preparation, actions, and behaviors.

For more, please head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office

Ten years ago, I first read a fantastic book by Lois Frankel called Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, which was about unconscious mistakes women make that sabotage their careers. Well, apparently not much has changed in a decade because nice girls still don’t get the corner office, and in response Lois has released a new edition of her essential advice guide.

Given that I’m still making some of these errors myself, I thought it might be helpful to show my fellow professional women how to overcome deeply ingrained habits that are presently holding us – and our teams – back. And guys, you owe it to the women you love to share this piece with them.

Needing to be liked

The desire to be liked is so strong in some nice girls that it becomes impossible for them to act in any alternative manner. They become immobilized at the thought of disappointing someone. But there’s a difference between being liked and being respected, and if you’re concerned only by being liked or preserving your workplace relationships, you will not take the kinds of risks that lead to respect. Lois suggests that you use self-talk to counter the need to have everyone like you all the time, because that won’t happen no matter what you do. Replace the thought “but people won’t like me if…” with “people might get upset with me, but at least I will be acting in accordance with my values.” Also, balance your inclination to serve others’ needs with serving your own. Before agreeing to something you don’t want to do, ask yourself how much it will matter if the person’s a little annoyed.

Playing the game in bounds

Even when a woman knows the workplace is a game, she has the tendency to play safe rather than play smart. She obeys all the rules to the letter and expects others to as well. If the policy says don’t do it, then it can’t be done. If it might upset someone, she doesn’t do it. Lois says that you never want to act unethically, but it is a game, and one you want to win. Therefore, you should play the game within bounds, but right at the edges. If you’re not sure where the edges of your company’s playing field are, look at the women in your workplace who are winning the game. Consider what they’re doing that you should be doing too. Also, try writing down two rules you interpret narrowly and always follow. Have you seen other people bend these rules? If nothing has happened to them, take the risk!

For the rest of Lois' tips, please see the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Why Boomers Make Better Business Owners

A study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation reported that the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the last few years is not Gen-Y upstarts, but Baby Boomers in the 55-64 year age group. In fact, Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom as they retire from their traditional corporate jobs and seek more meaningful sources of work.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 60 percent of the country’s workforce is currently made up of senior employees, but long-term employment has fallen dramatically for people ages 35-64. Since the first Internet-era recession, transaction costs and barriers to entry have fallen for entrepreneurs of every age. And with longer life expectancies and greater health in later life, older generations are starting new firms and mentoring young entrepreneurs in record numbers.

According to Jeff Mariola, the Boomer CEO of online marketing firm Digital Brandworks, Boomers are also more likely to succeed as entrepreneurs. When I asked Jeff why this was the case, he provided four compelling reasons.

Greater emotional intelligence

The rapid growth and constant change environment inherent in a start-up business requires steady and consistent leadership. Boomer CEOs have worked through countless change management initiatives over the years. They can provide their coworkers with the guidance, inspiration and motivation required to get everyone focused on the vision of the business while acknowledging that the road to get there will naturally be filled with anxiety, fear and exhilaration.

Check out the whole post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.