How to Network When You’re Not a Natural
Years ago when I was exploring setting up my own consultancy I sought advice from people who had been running their own businesses. One common message I heard was about the value and criticality of networking. Having worked in in the same company for so long, I never had to worry about networking. I was fortunate in that my next opportunities always came to me through mentors or those more senior to me in the organization. I never had to actually go through the process of networking. My network was built organically through work interactions.
When I left banking to start consulting, I was thrust into the realm of networking: trying to synthesize all the advice I’d gotten from master networkers about perfecting my pitch, being authentic, networking without expectation, etc., etc. and let me say, I was pretty bad at it. First, I’m in introvert…so there’s that. Second, I was raised in a “be seen, not heard” household so I was trained not to be a bother. Third, networking was no longer optional…it was a must putting added pressure on my interactions. With anything, practice and repetition helped build the muscle I needed to get comfortable with networking. Over time, I overcame the anxiety of networking using these principles as a guide:
Pick a Role Model – You probably have someone in your orbit who is great at networking. Find that person and emulate them. I know lots of people who can walk up to anyone in a room and start a conversation. These are the natural networkers! Observe how they do it and try it out. Someone else’s methods might not suit you 100% but chances are there’s something in their networking repertoire that can work for you.
Practice – There is no shortage of formal networking groups or panels and events with networking time built into their agendas. Most networking groups allow a few free visits up front, while panels can charge a small fee for attendance. These forums are great opportunities to force yourself to interact and talk about who you are and what you do. Added benefits of the formal networking group? You might find yourself a role model! And you’ll also get to hear different kinds of elevator pitches to find the one that suits you best.
Prepare to Fail – I’ve tried so many different ways to talk about what I do and at this point I can tell what goes over well and what doesn’t. Doing this repeatedly has helped me to not take the fails too personally. I’m disappointed, sure, but I don’t question my existence or my skills! Failure is a part of life and while it mostly sucks, it’s a sure way to improve.
Patience, Please! – It’s best to think about networking as an investment, not immediate gratification. Many networking conversations you have will lead to nothing, some will lead to another connection and conversation, a few may turn into a job offer or a project. Go into networking as an opportunity to learn, to build your community and gain insights.
Networking is an experience where you’ll get out of it what you put into it. You have to do the work. Lastly, don’t forget to use your networking as an opportunity to help other people out. To build meaningful connections, you have to be willing to give of yourself whether it’s your time, your knowledge or your own power to refer.
How to Dissect a Problem to Find Root Cause
I’m going to get personal for a sec. I was talking to my dad the other night. He mentioned that once his car lease was up he wouldn’t lease another car. He would give up driving all together. Through the course of our conversation he said over and over how he wasn’t sure what to do because without a car he’d never be able to run out for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. He’d go back and forth between the notion of finding an inexpensive car that he could use to do those kinds of errands and giving up driving completely. This debate was enhanced by an endless loop about bread and milk. Since Dad was on speakerphone, my husband was able to logically interject ideas about taking ride shares (which are in abundance and inexpensive where Dad lives) or tracking how often the spur of the moment milk or bread runs occur and figuring out the relative costs of ride shares versus a monthly car payment plus insurance. These were all very sound ideas, but as any expert problem solver and/or someone with aging parents knows, Dad’s concerns had zero to do with costs or supermarket runs…they had to do with loss of control and autonomy and what that means in the grand scheme of things.
I share this because my account above is a real-life example of how easily root cause can be hidden when you’re trying to solve a problem. What is being presented to us, whether it’s in work or in life, doesn’t always reveal what’s causing the issue in the first place. As a problem solver, I consider myself one-part detective, one-part analyst and one-part confidant. Whether I’m untangling a mess at work or for a friend, I’m taking this triple-pronged approach to finding root cause:
Detective: When presented with a problem to solve, the first step is to hunt for as much information as possible. I’ll do this in a variety of ways like conducting stakeholder interviews, gathering customer feedback, performing process time-studies, pulling reports, doing marketplace assessments. The tactics will all depend on which problem I’m trying to solve. The goal here is to gather data.
Analyst: Once I have the data, it’s time to dig into it to find trends, gaps, etc. to build the facts. I often find that when I’m gathering anecdotal information, it’s often skewed by the people suppling the information. I’ll get into that more deeply when I talk about the third prong. This is why the analysis stage is so essential, to gather hard facts that can support any ultimate solution I may come up with. Plus, it’s hard to refute facts when they are staring you in the face.
Confidant: When I’m working with a team or an individual, I always make a point of listening. And I don’t mean just listening to hear someone out. I mean listening to understand. To really get a sense on where the team is or where an individual is with a particular problem. Are they bringing fear into it? Job insecurity? Anger? There is an emotional component to work that is as real as any you find in a personal situation. Listening with an understanding ear helps me get a better read on root cause and preps me for building solutions that will work within a given environment. It also helps the people with whom I’m working feel more comfortable sharing what’s really troubling them. It’s a win-win for building trust and getting work across the finish line.
What other roles can a problem solver play when looking for root cause? Let’s discuss!
How to Stay Motivated When You’d Rather Stay in Bed
Have you ever found yourself with a mile-long to do list, deadlines looming, friends and family looking for your attention and all you want to do is curl up and hide? Is this a rhetorical question? Of course you have! We all have! Especially now with a global pandemic, a presidential election, social unrest, unemployment, layoffs, pay cuts, bonus checks evaporating. It’s enough to make you set the snooze button to the year 2021. It’s a nice thought, but we have to keep moving forward. But, how? It’s not easy, even for me who bills herself as a productivity expert! I do, however, have a few tricks up my sleeve for staying motivated.
The first step to building your motivation tactics is figuring out what motivates you. Is it money, power, recognition, helping others, giving back? When you understand which motivators resonate with you it’ll be easier to drum up ways to keep yourself motivated. Think about it, when you’re managing staff, Management Principles 101 will tell you to figure out what motivates each member of your team and lean into those things. We have to do that same exercise for ourselves.
Here are the ways that I stay motivated, hopefully they can help you too:
Music – Is there any easier way to get pumped up than by listening to your favorite song? The sports world has the use of music as a motivator down to a science. This is probably simplest trick and easiest to execute. Make a playlist of songs that make you feel good and dispense as needed!
Visual Prompts – I’m a big believer of visual cues as inspiration and, dare I say, vision. You don’t need to have a vision board but at least have a mental picture of people you admire, places you’d like to visit and things you’d like to achieve/buy/do.
Mandatory Downtime – Give yourself an hour, a day even, to be a slug. I know lots of business people who never seem to take a minute off. I admire their ability to always be moving, closing deals and growing their businesses. One thing they all have in common is they take time for their workouts or walks or meditation. They may always be physically moving, but mentally they’re giving themselves time to disconnect.
Objective Reviews – Feedback from others is a powerful motivator. We are all our own worst critics, so take some time to check in with a mentor or a friend and get their point of view on YOU. There have been many times when I thought I’ve sucked at something or I was failing miserably and then someone will tell me how I’ve helped them solve a problem or kept them calm during a chaotic work situation. These are powerful reminders that people see us in a way more positive light than we see ourselves.
Optimism – And speaking of positivity, skewing towards optimism is a surefire way to stay motivated. There are dozens of articles on how negative thinking affects the brain and how chronic negativity will ultimately reduce our ability to see things in a positive light. If optimism and positivity don’t come naturally for you, you must practice and make it a habit. Do those daily affirmations or write down one positive thing about your day. It’s impossible to completely banish negativity but these simple acts can shift you toward more positive thinking.
What tricks can you add to the list? Let’s discuss!
What I Learned from My Bad Bosses
Leadership has been on my mind lately. With all that’s going on in the world the question keeps coming up. Where is the leadership? Who is guiding us through our crises? It’s caused me to reflect on my own leadership skills and on the managers and leaders I’ve encountered throughout my career. I had 18 managers during my corporate career and only six of them would fall into the bad category. And bad is a scale. For me it ranges from bosses who I’d hide from to bosses who were completely harmless but totally ineffective. The rest were great or neutral in terms of their management skills, their ability to lead a team and their interactions with their peers or direct reports.
I've learned from everyone who has managed me. The bad ones, however, left an indelible mark. Along with funny anecdotes I can tell or inside jokes I can share with my former colleagues, I took away tangible skills from those experiences. If it weren’t for these bad bosses, I wouldn’t have honed these essential skills:
Network Building: When you’re working for someone who won’t be your advocate or your coach, it’s important to make connections with other leaders inside or outside your organization. Bad bosses typically don’t leave so it’s up to you to make a move elsewhere. The best way to do that is through networking. I made a point of getting to know people outside of my department and built relationships with my manager’s peers. And I always got to know my boss’ boss. These are all no brainers. Letting others see your skills and get to know you for yourself will give you plenty of opportunity to eventually make a move. Having a network to leverage is important in any work situation, good or bad.
Feedback Seeking: A lot of my interactions with bad bosses were confidence killers. I remember one moment when a manager who’d known me for all of 30 days told me that I didn’t seemed stressed enough at work. To him, that was a bad thing! It meant I wasn’t working hard enough, which was not the case. I had another boss who "no-showed" every single one of our one-on-one meetings and never returned a message or an email from me. Confidence killed! Look for feedback from your bad boss and from others. Get a broad view of how you’re doing and take an introspective look at your own performance. When you’re working in a bad environment it’s easy to let the toxicity of that situation color your view of how you’re doing. Getting feedback and input can help give you a balanced view of how you’re doing and where you can make any necessary adjustments.
Career Management: One common thread I saw with all of my bad bosses is they were out to make their own career marks. They were ambitious and driven. They were all about them, which is an important lesson in work. There are some rare cases where a mentor or an advocate will help usher you along in your career. But most often, you’re on your own. Your boss, especially the bad one, is not going to help you get the next promotion/raise/big project. You have to be your own advocate, ask for what you want and make your own career moves. If you don’t know how to do it, there are so many resources available from blog posts to podcasts to career coaches that will offer practical advice for navigating the chess game that is your career.
Do you have bad boss stories to share? Let’s discuss!
Three Tips for Getting Unstuck
Most of us have found ourselves in the following situation: you’ve got tons to do, the pressure is on and you want to crawl into bed and hide. Whether it’s in your work life or personal life, it’s easy to get stuck and hard to get out of it.
When I see clients or see myself, for that matter, stuck with something I go immediately into discovery mode to figure out how to get moving. What’s interesting with this type of problem solving is you already know what the problem is but the why and how are often unclear. And we like to keep it that way, because staying stuck can be comfortable!
Sometimes, simply working through this mental routine will be enough to get unstuck, sometimes external resources are needed. In either case, these tips will help get you into the mode of forward momentum.
Seek to Understand: The key to getting unstuck is figuring out why you’re stuck in the first place. This is all about self-examination. Are you being lazy? Are you out of your depth? Are you afraid? The next dimension here is to ask yourself whether this is a recurring or one-time issue. The resolutions could be very different depending on that answer. For example, do you always have trouble building PowerPoint presentations, or are you struggling with a specific one? Understanding the why will propel you into figuring out how to get unstuck.
One caution, self-examination can expand quickly, so be sure to stay focused on the immediate problem. If you suddenly find yourself questioning your career choices or your feelings for your boss, take a breath and refocus on the matter at hand. Those larger questions are probably best dealt with through a conversation with a mentor, trusted advisor or therapist.
Plot Your Course: Now that you know why you’re stuck, the solutioning can move very rapidly. You’ve figured out you don’t have PowerPoint skills? Take a class, delegate, or hire a freelancer! You need content for your specific presentation? Go to a subject matter expert for input! Unlocking the underlying concern – the why – will drive you toward the appropriate and tangible solutions. The answers can be very simple and obvious but action without understanding is a recipe for getting stuck again down the road.
Be sure not to over-solution. Having too many fixes in front of you can be paralyzing. Find ones that are easily executable and aligned with your deadlines. The point is to move forward, not bombard yourself with so many options you wind up stuck for different reasons. If that does happen, keep running this routine with some refinement to your solutioning.
Celebrate Yourself: When we’re stuck getting through a problem or a task it’s easy to get down and be our own worst critics. It’s important to look back at past successes or past moments of forward progress to remind ourselves that we CAN get ourselves unstuck. We can do it! If you’ve gotten unstuck before, chances are you can and will do it again. The more we repeat the process the better we will be at it. The more we train ourselves to understand what’s holding us back there’s no telling how far we will go.
Do you have another approach for getting unstuck? Let’s discuss!
What I Learned from My Kid’s Zoom School
As a working parent it’s been difficult for me to be completely tuned in to my son’s school experience. Before COVID19, we outsourced homework and tutoring as much as financially possible and we relied on school as a babysitter of sorts. Obviously that all went out the window with Stay at Home orders and social distancing. Now I juggle the demands of consulting along with the demands of Zoom school, which has been both fun and frustrating.
What I’ve realized is that there’s a lot we working parents can learn a lot from our kids’ virtual school experience. While eavesdropping on middle school classes I found three principles consistently at play in the classroom that should always translate to the conference room.
Eliminate Distractions – my son’s Zoom classes followed these ground rules: no eating, no pets, no toys, no devices. How many meetings do we sit through where colleagues are half paying attention while they scroll on their phones or answer emails on their laptops? This type of multitasking was a no-no in the virtual classroom. Meetings would be much more effective, and faster, if we take away distraction.
Everyone’s Ideas Count – do you remember the kid who always had his or her hand raised in the classroom? Their son or daughter are doing the same thing! In the classes I overheard the teachers made a point of seeking input from the quieter kids. It was important that all voices be heard and that there was a diversity in perspectives and points of view. Next time you run a meeting, try engaging the introverts.
Emotional Intelligence is Essential – I was blown away with the empathy and patience displayed by my son’s teachers. No matter how many times the students asked the same question that had already been answered, the teachers kept their cool. It was a brilliant reminder of how we should treat our coworkers. The way we field questions lobbed at us in our meetings can influence the way our teams interoperate and succeed.
While all of these points are common sense, they are easy to forget when we’re working and operating in the unknown. Lucky for us we have the next generation to remind us of the basics.
What have you observed in the virtual classroom, let’s discuss!
Leading Through Adversity: How to Adjust Your Style to Weather Any Storm
If this pandemic has taught us anything, the level and style of leadership across the US Government and US Businesses varies widely. A quick look at government leaders like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Dr. Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom shows how differently a crisis can be addressed. For the public, there seems to be no middle ground. You either love the way they’re handling things or you hate it. The same seems to be true with our captains of industry: Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos. Are they helping the world or helping themselves?
One thing is evident being a leader is difficult, leading through adversity is next level stuff. When you’re in a leadership position, whether it’s at work, as a volunteer or within your friend circle, how do you adapt your style to fit the situation?
Read, Don’t React: when things are changing, a leader must quickly read the situation and accept that change is occurring. He or she may not understand the full extent of the change or know how to solution it, but recognizing that there’s a shift is critical. This is not the time to be obtuse or flippant about what’s happening. Leaders stand out when they can say, “I see this happening and we’ll get through it.”
Adopt a 360° View: during a crisis it’s easy to look outward to find a cause or pinpoint a problem. This may be key to identifying the “what” of it all. But in order to adjust, a leader must look within. For example, are you a leader who takes input from others or do you act on your own advice? Are you purely data driven or do you apply gut feel to decision making? Understanding your leadership motivators will help you pivot, strengthen or soften where needed.
Be the Calm: When your team struggles or is concerned about what’s next you have the opportunity to hear them out. Town Halls, Manager Q&As or AMAs are easy ways to solicit feedback and hear what’s on your team’s mind. Recognize that as a leader, people need to hear from you and you need to hear from them. The act of listening should never be underestimated.
How have you evolved your leadership style to navigate a crisis? Let’s discuss!
The Simple Dos and Don’ts of Prioritization
In my last blog I wrote about the importance of prioritizing to help you maximize your time. We prioritize all day, every day without even knowing it. In business, more often than not, we’re asked to prioritize our work, our people, our spend…you name it. In my advisory work, I often help organizations and teams create their quarterly or yearly priorities. There are simple tricks to use and hang ups to avoid to help in the process whether you’re prioritizing professionally or personally.
Prioritization Dos
Tie your priorities to your goals – always ask yourself if your individual priority is helping you achieve one of your desired goals or objectives. If it doesn’t, it may still be a valid priority but it shouldn’t rank highly on your list.
Choose your levers – understand what you’re using to judge your priorities – is it time, money, resources, brand integrity, competition? Tuning in to these factors is integral to sorting through and ranking your work.
Categorize your tasks – it’s always helpful to see if you’re prioritizing across a diverse set of To Dos or a or within a set that’s similar. For example, if you’re ranking a group of projects that need to be completed in order of priority it’s useful to prioritize them relative to one another, especially when you have finite resources as a lever.
Prioritization Don’ts
Overcomplicate your methodology – sometimes prioritization comes down to gut feel, sometimes you need a weighted matrix to score your priorities and rank them. Whichever route you take, keep it simple and easy to articulate or defend.
Get stuck – don’t get hung up prioritizing and re-prioritizing until you get your list absolutely perfect. The point is to give yourself, or your team, a guide for action and doing.
Make it all top priority – this almost goes without saying, but not everything can be number one on the list. If you believe in your prioritization methodology, trust the outcome.
Need help building your prioritization methodology or want to talk about how you prioritize? Contact me!
Busy or Bored? Three Tips for Whichever Mode You’re In
In these unprecedented times businesses and employees are challenged with new ways of interoperating, revenue and cash flow instability, personal and world health concerns, job loss, furlough, the list goes on. When I speak to colleagues and friends, with whom I’m checking in more than ever, they seem to fall into two camps – busy or bored. Those in the busy camp are working more than ever, killing themselves to stay necessary/employed and are secretly envious of those in the bored camp. Those on the bored front are struggling to stay productive, desperately wanting to be engaged in something and are tired of hearing the busy people complain about how much work they have on their hands.
While these two groups are stuck at opposite ends of the spectrum they can leverage the same tools and tricks to cope and thrive in their current work environment.
Stay Organized – use whichever tool appeals most to you. I’m a fan of handwritten To Do Lists. I get a lot of satisfaction out of crossing things off. I categorize mine by Work, Personal, Family so I can cover the actual work I do to get paid, the things I want to do for myself and the things I need to do to keep our household running. There’s no shortage of task management apps out there if you’re not a paper person. I’m a fan of Asana and the notes app on my phone.
Prioritize – as someone who lives in the efficiency and productivity space, prioritization is the most basic of concepts but it’s also one that many people struggle with. If you’re among the bored you may want to do everything from finding a job to redoing your closet to attending online learning courses. Those are all great pursuits, but which one requires your immediate attention? The fastest and easiest way to prioritize is to tie your to do’s to your goals and needs and work from there.
Master Your Attitude – when things are not going as expected it’s natural to get negative. Staying in a negative headspace will inevitably take you off track whether your goal is to hold on to your job or pick up your next gig. Doses of positivity and optimism can go a long way to help keep you going through the chaos and the unknown. Even if you naturally skew more on the pessimistic side of things, fake it. Even the slightest lean into the positive can be a key to unlocking what’s next for you.
Questions on incorporating these tips into your day-to-day? Contact me!