How to hit ideas out of the park

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Take inspiration from the baseball season as you strive to discover great ideas and solve problems. These habits will boost your thinking:

  • Go out to the ballpark, or anywhere other than your office. When you take a break from focusing on a problem, your brain will continue to work on it in the background.
  • Play. Have a hobby and spend time with interesting people. Innovators often make connections between seemingly unrelated things. If the bookmarks slipping out of his choir hymnal had not frustrated Art Fry, 3M may have never found a marketable use for the low-tack adhesive Spencer Silver had invented. And we wouldn’t have Post-it notes and other products.
  • Be a team member. Collaborate with your colleagues. Talk about your problems and ideas. Build on and combine each other’s thoughts.
  • Keep records. Don’t rely on being able to scrawl your great idea on the back of a napkin. Always carry a way to record your thoughts. It doesn’t matter whether you choose a paper or digital method, as long as it’s always available and easy to use. Review those notes periodically, because sometimes ideas take a while to simmer.
  • Meet the fans. Your customers, that is. Chemists at Procter & Gamble spent years trying to invent a better cleaning solution for mopping. But when P&G partnered with an outside firm, that company watched customers cleaning their own floors and discovered the problem was with the mop. The result: the Swiffer line of products, which is worth about half a billion dollars a year.

Finally, keep swinging. Remember, base hits can lead to the scoring run, and when you swing hard you’re likely to miss sometimes—but you also can hit a home run.

See ideas through to action with tips in the Communication Briefings E-letter.

What habits do you have for spurring your creativity?

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Elaborate even on positive feedback

Posted on April 25, 2012 by | 2 Comments

It’s common sense—though not always common practice—to fully explain negative feedback. To fix mistakes and improve habits, people need to truly understand what wasn’t right the first time around. Sometimes, however, it’s just as important to clarify what you mean by your positive feedback. Here’s an example:

One semester in college, I worked in a psychology lab for credit. I worked under a Ph.D. candidate who had designed a behavioral psychology experiment to test whether certain emotional activities affected people’s short-term empathy. Because I was in a teaching program at the time and was used to instructing students, she asked me to lead the experiments. My job was pretty simple: I handed out the materials and explained the instructions to the participants, sticking to a script.

After the first experiment, the Ph.D. candidate was very positive about my performance: “Yes, that was perfect! Your teacher mode is perfect for this!”

I was happy to have done well and tried to emphasize my “teacher mode” during the next experiment. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearly as impressed that time. She told me “You weren’t as teacher-y this time. Try to get into that teacher mode you used last time.”

Inconsistencies in administering the test were a big deal because they could skew the data, so I wanted to get it right. But I was confused. I thought I’d really brought out the “teacher mode” this time, so I asked her for clarification.

“You know, you acted like a teacher. You weren’t mean, but you seemed stern and in charge.”

Well, that explained it. Our definitions of “teacher mode” were completely different. I had assumed that she meant that she liked my warmth and inviting nature—qualities that were stressed in my teaching program—but she actually was referring to attributes that were practically the opposite.

Once we got on the same page, I was able to act the way she wanted, and the rest of the semester went smoothly. But the whole issue could have been avoided if we’d spent a little time discussing that first piece of praise.

If the circumstances had been different and she hadn’t been there to observe my second experiment, I could have gone on doing the wrong thing for weeks, all the while assuming I was right on target. Think about that the next time you offhandedly praise an employee or co-worker. Follow up a vague “I like the way you handled that” with some specifics, or risk the person misinterpreting your intent.

Do you have a good miscommunication story? Share it in the Comments section!

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Communication problem-personalities: the Energy Vampire

Posted on April 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Do you work with anyone whose presence drains you? Pop psychology has a term for that person: the Energy Vampire.

Communication M.O.:

Energy Vampires can come in many forms—from the egomaniac who doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise to the passive aggressor who always makes you feel (unduly) guilty—but their effect is consistent: They leave you feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.

Working with energy vampires:

  • Recognize the warning signs. Identify the people at work who regularly drain or demoralize you. Pay attention to the early physical and emotional signs (e.g. fatigue and irritability) that those people bring out in you. Once you’re aware of those signs, you can take steps to minimize the Energy Vampires’ effect on you.
  • Stay calm. If you allow yourself to react negatively by becoming defensive, arguing or stewing internally, you will only further drain yourself. Instead, stay emotionally neutral. Quickly and calmly remove yourself from the situation.
  • Be assertive. Learn effective ways to end conversations with Energy Vampires. When one approaches you, say “I only have two minutes to talk right now. What can I do for you?” Be honest about your needs. Say “I need my lunch break to be a time of relaxation, so I cannot get caught up in that issue right now.” Practice saying “No.”

If you’re an energy vampire:

  • Pay attention to others’ behavior around you. Do the people you speak with generally walk away looking happy and energized or irritable and drained? If the latter is more common, reflect on your conversations. After each, think about what you talked about, what tone of voice you used, how you felt and how it appeared the other person felt. That will make you more self-aware in future conversations with co-workers.
  • Fix what’s broken in your life. Happy people aren’t energy vampires. If your negativity is draining those around you, chances are high that there is something in your life making you depressed, angry or fearful. Spend time reflecting and journaling to identify that trigger. Then, work out a plan to fix it. As with any to-do list, make sure each item is a single task, not a whole project, otherwise your list will make you feel more overwhelmed than empowered. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. But instead of dumping your problems on your co-workers, ask for their assistance in specific ways to overcome those obstacles.
  • Take responsibility for your part in every relationship. Even if you’re not sucking the life out of people around you, think about any work relationships that could be better. Perhaps you’re always in a bad mood after working with a particular co-worker. Instead of blaming that person, consider what you can do to improve that relationship. Example: Do you agonize over the thought of working with the person? That might cause you to begin each interaction in a bad mood, worsening your relationship. Try altering your own mood before your next conversation with the person, and see if your positive attitude spreads.

How do you deal with energy vampires?  

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Don’t be a pawn in the game of office politics

Posted on April 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

A co-worker always looks down on you—literally—standing while you sit and leaving you feeling powerless. A peer summons you to her office, giving her the home field advantage during your discussion.

Those are just a couple of ways team members can strip you of your confidence—if you let them. Learn how to recognize more warning signs by reading Mary Foley’s full article “How to Tell if Someone is Playing Power Games with You.”

Then let Mary show you how to anticipate power plays and neutralize the behavior, in this week’s audio conference Office Power Games: Recognizing and Dealing with Troublemakers on Your Team, Among Your Peers, and in Your Company. Sign up today while seats are still available.

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Be constructive with criticism

Posted on April 18, 2012 by | 5 Comments

By Kendall Martin

Communicating criticism within the workplace can be challenging for all of us. One of the hardest things I had to learn the first time I managed people was how to deliver helpful criticism. I was hesitant to correct actions when I felt like it could be received as condescending or judgmental.

Some people are naturally good at managing others. The rest of us have to learn how to cross that communication threshold so that we can deliver criticism in a way that is helpful and motivational to our employees. Use these guidelines when delivering constructive criticism to employees and co-workers:

  • Start with the positive. If you show appreciation and give credit where it is due, then your employees will have an easier time accepting criticism. Giving balanced feedback can eliminate the stress for both you and the employee when corrections are necessary.
  • Show support. Let your employees know it’s important to you that they grow in their position and with the company. Offer ways they can improve their performance to meet that goal.  Instead of telling employees what they are doing wrong, use the conversation as a way to coach and encourage. Make suggestions and ask for feedback.
  • Give your attention. As easy as it may seem to send off a quick email or say in passing a problem that should be fixed, it is more effective to have a direct conversation with eye contact. Explain the problem that is occurring and ask if the employee understands. Ask for input on how changes can be implemented to fix the problem.

What tips do you have for delivering constructive criticism in the workplace?

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Save your unique voice

Posted on April 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

More than half a century ago John Steinbeck lamented that regional American speech patterns were disappearing. In Travels With Charley he observed that the radio and television were destroying “localness” with a more standardized type of speech.

“Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech,” Steinbeck predicted.

While I expect people to use correct grammar in the workplace and to avoid expressions that might confuse others, I don’t want use to lose all the flavor of our speech. As Steinbeck noted, speech is not just words and sentences but also the accents and emphasis that we use. (I have been listening to an audio version of Travels With Charley read by actor Gary Sinise, by the way, and I think his voice adds texture to Steinbeck’s words.)

Our speech can make us stand out from a crowd and create an instant connection with others.

Listen to a group of diners ordering beverages in a restaurant, and you can start to guess where they grew up based on who orders “Soda,” who orders “Pop” and who says “Coke,” regardless of the brand of carbonated beverage desired. If I hear the expression “Bless her heart,” I know the speaker has Southern roots somewhere.

I once worked in an office in West Virginia were most of the employees were from other states. One of my co-workers who was a native of another region of West Virginia had a slight accent—until he started talking on the phone with someone in town. His accent became thicker as he spoke, and it seemed to make the caller more comfortable.

If you want to learn and savor regional expressions, you’re in luck. The final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English has just been published. The project to collect and explain regional expressions started 50 years ago, although it doesn’t appear that Steinbeck’s commentary inspired the effort.

What’s makes your speech memorable?

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Be a team player

Posted on April 11, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Kendall Martin

I expect courtesy from co-workers when working in a team environment. We each hold different positions in the hierarchy of the company, but I still expect that all team members receive the same amount of respect. Whether we’re working on a product launch, a revised marketing strategy or a streamlined approach to a project, every person is contributing to the greater goal.

Communicating with respect can be the difference between a successful team project and one that leaves people feeling defeated, underappreciated and resentful. Those morale-busting emotions are easily avoided if all team members pay attention to how they communicate up and down the ladder. Follow these tips and ensure that you make everyone on your team feel appreciated:

  • Listen to team members. When in a position of power, many people unconsciously tune out the opinions or ideas of others. Always consider that other team members may have discovered alternate solutions that are worth discussing. If every team member feels their opinions are valued and there is an equal playing field, they are apt to work harder and smarter.
  • Include all relevant team members in communication. If you are depending on email to work out project details or discuss ideas, be sure you are including all team members involved in the assignment. Never assume information will naturally be relayed to the appropriate party. Open communication can save a lot of time and prevent mistakes.
  • Be polite. While each team member has tasks that are a direct function of their job, it never hurts to say “please” or “thank you.” Those words go a long way in establishing positive relationships among team members. Instead of saying, “Take care of this by Monday,” you can easily say, “Please take care of this by Monday,” and the entire tone changes.

What do you find most important when communicating on a team?

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